Wanted: Pertec Tape Controller

[Jay Jaeger]

I would love to see that Verilog, as I have a Digilent Nexys2 (Xilinx
Spartan 3E) and a Pertec drive I could play with.

On 8/6/2015 11:19 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 08/06/2015 08:35 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
> 
>> Formatted Pertec is a fairly simple interface. Chuck has talked in
>> the past of designing one, and some of the gotchas with the
>> interface.
>>
>> Qualstar built two different styles of Pertec-SCSI adapter for the
>> 1054. I'll see about putting board pics and rom dumps up, but as has
>> been discussed, SCSI has problems when talking to tapes.
>>
>> I think Pertec - Ethernet is the way to go, and not mess around with
>>  SCSI or USB.
> 
> I've got the Verilog for an XC95128 CPLD checked out--and have tested
> the programming on one in a testbed lashup.   The interface is basically
> "wishbone", via a single 8-bit port and 3 address lines.  All of the
> detail, such as parity generation, error latching, etc. is handled by
> the CPLD.  Done that way mostly to create a generic interface without a
> lot of SSI packages.  I can talk to it directly from a PC parallel port.
> 
> Rolling your own is easy.  The interface is basically unidirectional
> open-collector.  You could probably do it, if you weren't too fussy,
> with an 8255 or two.
> 
> For me, that "last mile" is a bit of a problem.
> 
> Is the goal simply to grab all the data from a tape and save it?  Then
> an interface to, say, an SD Card is both cheap and affords plenty of
> space.  Or is something wanted that gives immediate control over the
> tape drive--that is, something like SCSI?  USB and Ethernet are both
> attractive, but you'll have to work out the host-side driver software.
> 
> Does anyone still *write* tapes any more, save for the occasional
> copying task?
> 
> Lots of questions with no clear answers.
> 
> --Chuck
> 
> 
>