A new haul - questions on TA81 and TA78

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sat Feb 5 17:38:48 2005

Michael wrote about the STI interface:
> It's the tape version of SDI. The drive ports of an HSC *are* SDI,

Depending on which HSC channel card you have. The original channel
cards came in specific SDI and STI versions, which were the same
module with different microcode. Later channel cards could do both.
I assume that the later channel cards were redesigned to have a
larger microcode store, but I don't have one to inspect.

> while UDA50 and KDA50 controllers
> usable with PDP-11s only support disks.

Also a matter of microcode on the controller.

> (It may be possible that they have secret undocumented support for tapes,

Doubtful.

Eric
Received on Sat Feb 05 2005 - 17:38:48 GMT