--- Peter Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com> wrote:
> On Mar 28, 9:47, Jay West wrote:
> > I've heard these really aren't to be found anywhere, but thought I'd
> > check with the list.
Not that you can use it (see below), but I bought one (RL8A) from a DEC
reseller for well under $100 a couple of years ago (either $30 or
$60, I can't remember now). Cables are hard to come by, though.
> > I'd like to get a disk subsystem on my PDP-8E. I've pretty much given
> > up that I'll ever find an RK05 drive and controller for it
I understand that feeling - it took me years to track down an RK8E at
a decent price (swap) - I've had a 16-sector RK05F pack since 1984 and
have never read it (and still can't - no RK05F drive/heads) At least
thanks to David Gesswein, I have one 16-sector RK05J pack.
> > ... so I'm now looking to hook up an existing RL02 drive to it. I think
> this is done via the M8433?
Yes. One RL8A (M8433) can talk to up to 4 drives, and you can have up
to two RL8As in one OMNIBUS (but there aren't enough driver slots in
OS/8 to view all those partitions at once - you have to juggle around
a bunch).
> If you have an 8/E, I'm afraid an M8433 won't be any use to you,
> because it's an RL8A, which is a hex board, not a quad one. It's meant
> for a PDP-8/A.
True. Now... if you have an -8/a hex-wide *chassis*, you can mount the
KK8E CPU board set in there, or, IIRC, with OMNIBUS extension cables,
you can attach the -8/a chassis to the -8/e backplane, but if all you
have is a single -8/e box, you are out of luck. I have my -8/e in
test mode with the PSU sitting *next to* its box - there's room for
hex cards then, but I wouldn't want to run that way full-time.
There aren't a lot of hard disk options for a quad-wide box... floppy
(RX8E), RK05 (RK8E) and older stuff (through an external bus converter).
By the time newer disks came out, DEC was only selling hex-wide 12-bit
boxes, and all the new devices could fit on a single hex-height card
instead of several quad-height cards, so there you are.
There might be a third party quad disk controller or two, but I can't
quote vendor and model numbers. My machines are 100% DEC.
-ethan
Received on Fri Mar 28 2003 - 13:31:00 GMT