>Zane H. Healy wrote:
> >If anyone has not been able to figure out the answer to that question,
> >or with any of the other PDP-11/44 systems, I am looking for a TU-58
> >tape drive which I understand came as an external unit with this system.
> I know on mine, it's located in the same rack as the CPU and the RX02
> drives. It's not external. They did make external ones, though I don't
> have one.
Jerome Fine replies:
I had not realized that the PDP-11/44 had both internal and external
TU-58 drives. I was able to obtain an external model from an old
PDP-11/44 some time ago when I needed to replace the internal one
from a VT103 that had died - the TU-58, not the VT103 part.
When I got the TU-58, both the rollers were worn out and had to
be replaced. Finally, I was able to get the external unit to work.
> >Does anyone have one that they are not using? I understand they were
> >used for diagnostics and if the tapes and manuals are still available, they
> >might still be useful. Otherwise, I have some old tapes I would like to
> >read.
> It's possible to run RT-11 off of them, which I believe is where the
> external drive came into play.
>
> Zane
> | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
> | healyzh_at_ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
> | healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
> +----------------------------------+----------------------------+
> | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
> | and Zane's Computer Museum. |
> | http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
Yes, that is true. The problem is that I am afraid that the TU-58 I
have is showing signs of problems and I wanted to have a spare
if that was possible. Do anyone have a spare external TU-58
available? I don't likely have much use for the TU-58 more
than once or twice a year, but I can't predict when it might happen
again.
As far as RT-11 is concerned, I actually saw RT-11 run on the TU-58,
but at the time, the TU-58 was connected to a PC running an
emulator under W95. One of the versions of the RT-11 Operating
System I ran was from 1978 and was V3.0B of RT-11,
or so the banner said when it was booted. Quite a thrill, actually.
But, then the other version of RT-11 was V5.4G which had been
patched to make it Year 2000 compatible. So, there was an
actual 20 year old tape drive that looks like a disk drive under
RT-11 that was able to boot both a 20 year old version of
the RT-11 Operating System and a 10 year old version of the
RT-11 Operating System (well - next month the OS will be
10 years old) which is now able to run for another 100 years
until 31-Dec-2099 since the patches were applied to V5.4G
to make that OS Y2K. Of course, the real PDP-11 hardware,
which is also 20 years old, also still runs both versions of the
RT-11 Operating System. Quite a difference between PC
hardware and OSs which seem to be so incompatible after
only 10 years at the most and often after only 5 years. The
only question I am thinking about is whether there will still
be runnable PDP-11 hardware for another 100 years. Or
as an alternative or fallback, will there be hardware that can
run an emulator for another 100 years? From what I have
seen, I am more concerned about being able to use an
emulator in fallback mode for even as long as real PDP-11
hardware still runs.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
Year 2000 Solutions for RT-11 Operating Systems and Applications
(Sources not always required)
Received on Sun Nov 01 1998 - 20:54:29 GMT