MASSBUS disk emulator (Was: Unibus controller for MFM disks)

[Paul Birkel]

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Pontus
Pihlgren
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 1:58 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: MASSBUS disk emulator (Was: Unibus controller for MFM disks)

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 10:20:58PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Ian S. King
> 
>     >> Does anyone know anything about the status of the plans to
open-source
>     >> it?
> 
>     > I've made some inquries, stay tuned....
> 
> OK, thanks!
> 
>     >> Can you briefly describe what it was? 
> 
> I'm still curious about what it was: was it a stand-alone board with a 
> separate power supply, or did it plug into some sort of backplane? Did 
> it use something like SD cards for storage? And what was the MASSBUS 
> connection
> like: a set of 3 Berg headers into which one plugged the flat cables, 
> or was there some oddball connector that wound up connected to a 
> standard MASSBUS connector?
> 
> 	Noel

I recall seing a picture of it long ago in someones online album. It was a
separate 19 inch box a few RUs high with at least one pcb and a jumble of
wires :) Obviously in some sort of development stage and I'm not sure it was
working at that point.

I think it might even be the compaq rackbox shown here:

http://www.panix.com/~alderson/LivingComputerMuseum/07_Storage_comparison_in
_open_space.jpg

Of course this is just speculation :)

/P

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Maaaaaybe there are three ribbon cables back there ....

What is the big white disk (platters plus heads?) near the front end of the
table?

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paul