PDP-11's DECcasete

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Thu Mar 16 01:52:49 2000

On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 07:36:53AM +0100, Maciej S Szymanski wrote:
> I'm trying to put back in service PDP-11/05 used to controll aircraft
> structural test sytem. I's equiped with DECcassete drive (it looks like
> normal audio cassete).
> Is there any replacement for them ? I mean using good audio casset or
> so.

Replacement for which, the media, or the whole drive?

DEC claimed that you couldn't use regular audio cassettes with the TU60
because they couldn't handle the high tension used by the drive. Sounds like
it could be hype but you never know. I mean, what's the point of building a
peripheral that uses regular audio cassettes, except that it *doesn't* use
regular audio cassettes? Worst of both worlds.

As for drives, I don't know of any aftermarket TU60 hardware clone. However,
if you're willing to replace the entire system with a software emulator,
Ersatz-11 includes TU60 emulation, using tape image files for media (the "full"
version of E11 can also use SCSI tapes as the physical medium for the TU60
but that seems like overkill, I mean how many GB of data do you really need
to store on one emulated ~90 KB cassette? :-) Information is on www.dbit.com,
and the command you use to create a TU60 drive is "MOUNT CT0: file.tap".

John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Thu Mar 16 2000 - 01:52:49 GMT