TU-58

[Jerome H. Fine]

 >On Friday, December 4th, 2015 at 11:41 A.M. GMT (6:41 A.M. EST) Rod 
Smallwood wrote:

> Hello All
>                Well I managed to find some suitable rubber tubing and 
> glued it in place of the nasty black mess.
> So I put everything back and turned on. Lo and Behold LED on the board 
> flashed once and stayed on.
>
> I had been told (Tony D I think) thats what its supposed to do.
>
> Anybody know whats the quickest way to test a TU-58?

As expected, my approach will always be based on using RT-11.
There are DD(X).SYS device drivers available up to V05.04G
of RT-11.  If you are able to boot one of those versions and
you manage to connect the null-modem cable between the
DL and the TU-58, you should be able to read and write
to the TU-58 device.

If you don't have a cabinet kit, then use whatever is needed
at both ends.  If your cable is 10-pin at each end, then
disconnect the 10-pin cable to the cabinet kit for that DL
port and connect the cable directly to the DLV11-J.

Note that under RT11XM, I believe
it is necessary to first LOAD the DDX device handler as in:
LOAD  DD:

In addition, even before that, you must match the CSR and
VECTOR with the DL port you are using.  On a Qbus
system with a DLV11-J, usually the first DL port is:
SET  DD  CSR=176500
SET  DD  VECTOR=300

On a PDP-11/23, there is an extra port at:
SET  DD  CSR=177570
SET  DD  VECTOR=70
if I remember correctly.

With a Unibus system, I am not sure, but the values will be
similar.

Let us know what happens.  Don't forget that the TU58 is
a very slow serial tape device, not a disk drive even though
the RT-11 software thinks that there is a small disk drive
being used.

Jerome Fine