On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
> >Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>
> > Is there a similar document for the RL8A, RL11, RLV11 or RLV12? I'd
> > really like to get enough documentation together to build a controller
> > that can work with other machines (maybe ISA bus, or more likely a
> > microcontroller with a nice sized chunk of cache ram and a serial port) to
> > facilitate getting data onto/off of RL02 disks. Really, I'm just looking
> > for the microcode PROM dump, or specs on the drive<->controller bus that
> > are detailed enough to contain a 'protocol description'.
>
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> I don't want to rain on your parade, but just a suggestion - a motherboard
> with an ISA slot is now almost impossible to find, new of course. And
> a serial port is a bit slow.
That doesn't bother me. I'm just looking for the simplest implementation
that'll allow me to connect an RL01/02 to a PeeCee or other non
[Q/UNI/OMNI]BUS machine. I'm not interested in practicality as much and
the fun of running the thing. This is the same reason I want a (non slot
load) 9track tape drive, and an RM0x-style 'washing machine' disk drive.
> Far better would be a PCI slot, although how much longer they will last
> is hard to know.
I rather not play with something that 'speedy' yet. I'd rather work up
from slow/narrow/simple bus (ISA) to fast/wide/complex bus (PCI) instead
of jumping in head first.
> BUT, if you are so inclined, FAR FAR more useful would be an MSCP
> implementation for IDE (now EIDE) drives which are themselves threatened,
> but should last for a few more years. Since the MSCP patent has expired,
> there will not be a conflict with DEC/Compaq/HP. If you are so inclined,
> ask for some help since a number of individuals have already considered
> this - especially for an ISA slot.
That would be interesting, but IDE disks are too small to play with. ;o)
But it would be nice to stick a nice "small" 1-10GB disk on a QBUS machine
of mine without using up my QBUS MSCP SCSI controller. As I remember
though, the hard part about making QBUS things was finding the bus driver
chips - unless you wanted to sever them off of working boards... which I'm
not inclined to do at the moment.
Thanks for the suggestions anyhow.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
Received on Wed Jun 04 2003 - 09:00:01 BST