TU58 problems

[Brad Parker]

On 1/16/16 12:44 PM, tony duell wrote:
> Does anyone have any sensible ideas as to what to try next. At the moment I have no idea if
> it's the tape, heads, roller or what....
>
This might not be what you want, but I boot my 11/730 from a tu58 
emulator running on a linux box.  I used a little ttl<->rs232 converter 
board.  It works well and is reliable.

If nothing more, it will let you load the microcode so you can check out 
the cpu.

That R80, however. mmm.  Those are cranky.  And noisy.  At first I put a 
UDA50 in to boot off more modern disks.  But that took 2 slots so I 
switched to a unibus scsi card.  That allowed me to get a slot back for 
memory.

The fun thing about emulated tu58 is that it was easy to make a new boot 
tape with PUTR and put a unix loader which knows how to boot over 
ethernet.  These days I tend to boot new kernels over ethernet with that.

just a thought.

ps: tu58 controller boards are easy to find.  I have at least 4-5 of 
them.  The rollers are the issue, when they turn to goo.

-brad