Disk hardware emulation, was Re: Grandfather system RTE6/VM?

From: Bob Shannon <bshannon_at_tiac.net>
Date: Fri Nov 28 09:54:52 2003

Mike Gemeny wrote:

>>it's a museum!!! Emulate hardware for display?
>>
>
>
>
>I agree, I?m running two 2883s on Access under simulation. I run a single
>7900 on the TSB E version, and a single 2883 on the F version.
>
>
>
Ok, you can try to support 'classic' HP disk drives, and pay for
filters, etc. Until your media
wears out, or your heads need replacement. These are all life-limited
components.

But at some point the original disk hardware will no longer be practical
to support. That time is
fast approaching for all but CS/80 series disks, and they have a
lifetime limit also.

So at some point disk drive emulation will be the only option. Its
important to develop these
emulations NOW, while there are still some working 'real' disk drives to
use as a reference for
the development of the emulation.

As for appearances, emulated drives can be built into the chassis of
non-functional drives
for a museum-quality appearance. But if you shun disk hardware
emulation now it may not
be as easy or practical to implement after the real hardware is gone.

Personally, I've already bypassed emulating real HP disk drives and have
developed my own
disk controller for HP 1000's (not supported by RTE). RTE-IVB is such
an ugly O/S I have
no interest in running it, so compatibility with actual HP hardware was
not as important as was
making the device driver development and interface hardware as simple as
possible.

Now I run modern ATA (IDE) disk drives on my HP 1000's. This is just so
much more
practical than running real drives (including the real CS/80 disks I have).

You might want to rethink your objections to disk hardware emulation.
 I'd be happy to help
adapt my existing emulation scheme to include compatibility with 'real'
HP disk drives.

Another possibility would be to produce a kit-form of my existing ATA
disk controller for
HP collectors, but this would only be supported by HP-IL/OS, and not by
RTE (unless
someone wants to write an RTE driver for my controller!).
Received on Fri Nov 28 2003 - 09:54:52 GMT