Subject: Re: DEC RL02 anyone need one?

From: Al Kossow <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jun 3 16:11:50 2003

If anyone has a copy of the RL02 Technical Manual, I'd like to borrow it to
add to the documentation archive.

---

From: "Antonio Carlini" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jun 3 16:11:55 2003

> If anyone has a copy of the RL02 Technical Manual, I'd like 
> to borrow it to add to the documentation archive.

Can you scan fiche yet?

Antonio
 
-- 

---------------
Antonio Carlini             [email-masked]

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From: Tom Uban <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jun 3 16:12:17 2003

Hi Al,

I have one. If you remind me of your USPS address, I will send you
a xerox.

--tom

---

From: Jochen Kunz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jun 3 16:12:28 2003

On 2003.06.03 18:31 Al Kossow wrote:

> If anyone has a copy of the RL02 Technical Manual, I'd like to borrow
> it to add to the documentation archive.
Do you mean: "RL01/RL02 User Guide" EK-RL012-UG-005?
(It contains installation, operation and detaild RL11 and RL8A
programming information.)
-- 

tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

---

From: Tom Uban <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jun 3 16:12:36 2003

>programming information.)

There are two volumes to the RL01/RL02 manual set. The one you
mention is Volume I and the Technical Manual is Volume II EK-RL122-TM-001.

--tom

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From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Tue Jun 3 18:09:00 2003

> programming information.)

No, there's a separate technical manual, which includes fairly complete 
circuit descriptions, PROM dumps, FRU replacement procedures, and so on. 
It's a very useful document.

I have it on microfiche, and the person who gave me my PDP8/a (with RL8, 
etc) gave me a version he'd printed out from said fiche. It's not very 
readable in places (sometimes I have to dig out the microfiche reader), 
but most of it sure is useful.

-tony

---

From: Patrick Finnegan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:29:59 2003

> It's a very useful document.

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'.

Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/

---

From: "Jerome H. Fine" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:30:48 2003

>Patrick Finnegan wrote:

> 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.

Far better would be a PCI slot, although how much longer they will last
is hard to know.

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.

Of course, even more useful might be a Qbus controller for EIDE hard
drives that can be used on real DEC Qbus PDP-11 system that uses
MSCP.  This has also been looked at, but back 10 years ago before
the patent expired was not allowed for hobby users.  Note that there
are no NEW Qbus host adapters for use with SCSI hard drives and
the price of a Qbus host adapter is still quite high.  A Qbus controller
for "small" EIDE drives of 40 GBytes might be useful for a hobby user.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.

---

From: Patrick Finnegan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:30:54 2003

> 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

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.

> 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

---

From: "Peter C. Wallace" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:30:57 2003

> load) 9track tape drive, and an RM0x-style 'washing machine' disk drive.

If you are serious about doing this I can offer a free PCI FPGA card (one of
our "blems") That would give you a 200K FPGA and 72 I/O lines.

Sounds like a fun project...

> not inclined to do at the moment.

There arent that many QBUS lines to drive. If I was to make a new QBUS card I
would use SOT-23 MOSFETs as the bus drivers, maybe with a 10 ohm series
resistor for output protection against VCC shorts and slew rate limited gate
drive...

> Thanks for the suggestions anyhow.

Peter Wallace

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:31:07 2003

--- "Peter C. Wallace" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > But it would be nice to stick a nice "small" 1-10GB disk on a QBUS...
> > ...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.
> 
> There arent that many QBUS lines to drive. If I was to make a new QBUS
> card I would use SOT-23 MOSFETs as the bus drivers, maybe with a 10 ohm
> series resistor for output protection against VCC shorts and slew rate
> limited gate drive...

Full specs of the Qbus are available to evaluate a discrete replacement,
but I know that some boards used 74LS240s in lieu of DC005 chips, etc.

There are two aspects of attaching third-party devices to a DEC bus:
bus drivers and bus receivers.  Receivers are the more critical item
if you are planning on deploying the device in a marginal backplane.
Some of DEC's solutions included hand-selecting 74-series chips for
low leakage current as well as a fistful of custom bus chips.  In a
single 9-slot "standard" Qbus backplane, you can get away with murder.
It's when you want to have two or three loaded backplanes chained
together that things get "interesting".  Same goes for Unibus and
OMNIBUS.  At 25% of "max expansion", out of spec parts might not
drag you down.  Start filling the box and attaching it to long cables
and you will probably have a different experience.

I have plenty of 8641s, but not many of the other chips of the day
(8881s, 8837s, etc.)

I'm more interested in OMNIBUS attachment than Qbus attachment.  I
do have plenty of Unibus interface ICs (new and used), from my massive
COMBOARD stockpile.

-ethan

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:31:20 2003

> a serial port is a bit slow.

THis is a major problem, I am told. There are lots of custom ISA cards 
(varios special-purpose interfaces, measurement systems, etc) that never 
had PCI equivalents. There's nothing to plug them into when the old 
ISA-capable motherboards die. And of course (as I've moaned about several 
times), service docs and spares for PC motherboards are somewhat rarer 
than PERQ T4s...

-tony

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:31:24 2003

> for the microcode PROM dump, or specs on the drive<->controller bus that

The RLV11 prints contain a ROM dump. I don't think the RL11 prints do, 
but there's a rather complete timing diagram from which it's possible to 
deduce much of the ROM contents...

The drive bus info can be deduced from the RL01 technical manual and/or 
the appropriate printsets (RL11, RLV11, RL01, RL02, etc). It didn't take 
me long to work out a design for a test box that does things like read 
out the drive's status, position the heads, select upper or lower head, etc.

> are detailed enough to contain a 'protocol description'.

An alternative approach (and one that I'd probably try) would be to use a 
real RL11 (or similar), a Unibus (or as applicable) RAM card, and a 
home-made bus master/arbiter that could tall the RL11 to read a sector 
(using DMA into the RAM card) and could then read out the RAM to the host 
computer. Doing something like that would let your PC (or whatever) talk 
to just about any small DEC disk drive using the appropriate Unibus 
controller.

-tony

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:31:34 2003

> to just about any small DEC disk drive using the appropriate Unibus 

If you are going to do that, why not use a DEC CPU?

It's a nice idea and all, but at that point, wouldn't a real PDP-11
be easier to talk to (and not much more expensive than a box with
a controller and some RAM)?

Why not just use a PDP-11/53 CPU board with local serial and on-board
RAM?  The trick then would be to whip up some kind of protocol between
the PeeCee and the PDP-11 to manipulate the disk registers and fetch
blocks on command.  If you wanted something to transfer blocks faster,
there are DRV11s that could blow the data out in parallel fashion.
There's also the possibility of porting code from the 2BSD distribution
to run out of a RAM disk... then you could even use existing drivers
and talk to the PeeCee at a high level instead of proxy register tweaking.

Except for the local RAM requirement for disk buffers, I could probably
whip something together with a COMBOARD.  Unfortunately for me, the model
I'm most abundant in has COM5025 serial chip - the scarce models are
later ones with a Zilog Z8530.

If someone wants to design a microcontroller-based Qbus/Unibus register
thumper from scratch, I'd consider building one.  Best to define how
to talk to it from the outside before getting too far along on the design.

-ethan

---

From: [email-masked] (Fritz Chwolka)
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:31:54 2003

On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 09:27:13 -0400, Jerome H. Fine

>> that can work with other machines (maybe ISA bus, or more likely a

http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/dec/manuals/decimages/
rlv12.pdf
http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/dec/manuals/marco/rl02
_manual.pdf

Greetings from 
Fritz Chwolka

<collecting old computers just for fun>
> www.alterechner.de <

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:32:15 2003

> If you are going to do that, why not use a DEC CPU?

I thought about suggesting that, but the hardware hacker in me wants to
keep it as simple as possible :-). I think I could make a Unibus master
and arbiter in a handful of TTL chips (look at the releveant bits of a
Unibus CPU printset -- it's not that complicated). Using a CPU sounds 
like overkill..

There's also the issue that I wanted to keep stuff 'out of the way' I was
thinking it would be useful if the new host could do _anything_ to the
disk controller (that's one good reason to avoidthe BSD device drivers,
actually). 

> Why not just use a PDP-11/53 CPU board with local serial and on-board

I don;t have one :-) Anyway, I'm more of a Unibus person...

> to talk to it from the outside before getting too far along on the design.

It's a pity that computers with lots of parallel I/O lines are so 
uncommon, and the user ports are out of fashion now...

One thing I would _love_ to find is a portable-ish machine which can 
write a disk that's readable on a PC, and which has at least 32 parallel 
I/O lines, totally user controllable. At the moment I'm using an HP71, a 
9114 disk drive, an 82165 GPIO interface and some homebrew hardware 
(which is still undergoing hackery). Pity HP never made a real user port 
for HPIL....

-tony

---

From: Patrick Finnegan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:32:20 2003

> a controller and some RAM)?

Why, that's no fun!  I already have QBUS machines laying around I could do
that with (I don't think I have a working RLV12, however).  I'm also
working on getting another machine with another RL controller to make this
work.

This is just something I'd like to be able to play with.  A hardware
project to work on 'getting my hands dirty'.

> to talk to it from the outside before getting too far along on the design.

I tend to like either serial or ethernet for interfaces, because they're
fairly simple and nearly universal.  This might be an interesting summer
project...

Pat

---

From: Patrick Finnegan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:32:24 2003

> http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/dec/manuals/marco/rl02

I already have copies of those, and IIRC, they don't have any specs on the
control 'messages' passed between things, a PROM dump, or anything else
that is helpful for figuring out how to send commands to the drive.

Pat

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Jun 5 08:33:01 2003

--- Tony Duell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> keep it as simple as possible :-)

I understand.  I'm both a software and a hardware hacker, so I don't mind
moving the set-point over a bit for a combination solution.

> I think I could make a Unibus master and arbiter in a handful of TTL
> chips (look at the releveant bits of a Unibus CPU printset -- it's not
> that complicated). Using a CPU sounds like overkill..

Overkill from one sense, but it depends on how elaborate you'd want
it to be.

> disk controller (that's one good reason to avoidthe BSD device drivers,

True.
 
> I don;t have one :-)

Good reason.  :-)

> Anyway, I'm more of a Unibus person...

Fair enough.  I do both (plus VAXBI) since I used to make all of that
kind of stuff for a living.  Personally, I have a lot of experience with
Qbus machines because that's what was popular when I began to take over
the hardware department.  I still love Unibus stuff, though.
 
> uncommon, and the user ports are out of fashion now...

No doubt.  I did a lot of stuff with the User Port on the PET and C-64
(the Simon clone from Byte, an external big-key keyboard, a 2-digit
7-segment display, a high-speed CBM interconnect, a rudimentary IEEE-488
tracer, etc.)

> I/O lines, totally user controllable.

Hmm... you'll laugh... my SBC-6120 w/IOB-6120 fits the bill... the
IOB-6120 has 36 I/O lines that are designatable I, O or Z by PDP-8 IOTs,
and a CF socket, and the base SBC-6120 has an IDE port.  The CF cards/disks
do not use a DOS-compatible partition scheme, but can be read/written-to
by DOS utilities.  I have a ZIP drive backpack battery that can power it,
or I can drive it from the PS/2 port of my laptop.

You could even modify the FPGA code to make the 36 I/O pins be something
other than plain vanilla I/O lines, if that were necessary for timing
reasons.

I wonder how hard it would be to add an RL8A to the IOB-6120... I better
finish assembling one first, before I start trying to enhance it.  :-)

-ethan

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:23:06 2003

> moving the set-point over a bit for a combination solution.

Me too, actually, mut more on the hardware side. 

> Fair enough.  I do both (plus VAXBI) since I used to make all of that

Well, my 'main' PDP11 has both Unibus and Qbus (!). It's an 11/45 with a 
DW11-B. On the Unibus side I have memory, RX11-C, RX611, DR11-Bs, paper 
tape, etc. On the Q-bus side I have an RLV11, MINC modules, IBV11, etc... 
Quite an unconventional system...

For hardware hacking, I find the Unibus to be simpler. I also have more 
'exotic' controllers for that bus.. 

> No doubt.  I did a lot of stuff with the User Port on the PET and C-64

I try to fit at least one 16 line user port on everything I own... I 
suspect I'm the only person to have written microcode to bit-bang the I2C 
protocol over a few of the lines on the PERQlink interface, for example ;-)

> Hmm... you'll laugh... my SBC-6120 w/IOB-6120 fits the bill... the

:-)... That;s the sort of machine that would probably do the job... Pity 
it's not available commercially...

-tony

---

From: "Antonio Carlini" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:23:25 2003

> it's not available commercially...

I expect that there are no more PCBs available (unless another
run is done) but I think all the schematics and layouts are
available so you can make your own. (Which reminds me, I need
to get around to figuring out which parts I don't have lying around
and then get around to ordering them otherwise I'll never built it!).

Antonio
 
-- 

---------------

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:23:35 2003

> Quite an unconventional system...

Neat.  I also have a DW11-B (and the DDV11B backplane to go with it).
When I got it, it only had an IBV11 in it.  I haven't bothered to use
something like an RLV11 with it because I have more than one RL11.

I don't know what I'd call my "main" PDP-11 system at the moment.  The
one I have spent the most accumulated time on is a PDP-11/23 in a
(modified) BA-11N, with 512KB of RAM, an RLV11, LPV11, RXV21 and
a third-party 512x512 graphic board.  I used it to earn my living in
1986 and 1987, writing software under RT-11 for an customer whose
target machine was a 4MB PDP-11/73 w/Fuji Eagle, greyscale electrostatic
printer and GE motion controller that was used to inspect industrial
diamonds in an ultrasonic tank.  Big fun!  350K (output) of MACRO-11
code.

The other -11 that I've put some time and effort into is an 11/24
w/KT-24, a few megs of RAM, RL11, that I've installed 2.9BSD onto.

> 'exotic' controllers for that bus.. 

True.  Me, too... disk, tape, DEC comms, abundant COMBOARDs, etc.

> > ...my SBC-6120 w/IOB-6120 fits the bill... 
> 

It's also not cheap... End-to-end, it cost more than nearly all of my
"real" PDP-8s (15 years ago, I did spend over $1,000 on an RL8A, RL01,
VT52, KT8A and MSC8DJ to attach to a *free* PDP-8/a, just to play
around; fortunately for me, most of the peripherals were lying around
to attach to the aforementioned PDP-11/23).  There are side benefits,
though; I'm getting plenty of SMT practice assembling the IOB-6120.

-ethan

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:24:10 2003

> Neat.  I also have a DW11-B (and the DDV11B backplane to go with it).

I haev the 2 halves in separate cabinets. The Unibus (quad height) board 
is in the 11/45's BA11-F, the Qbus (dual height) board is in the 
backplane of the MINC chassis, with a couple of 40 way ribbon cables 
linking them. Works fine (but then it's DEC, so it would :-))

> something like an RLV11 with it because I have more than one RL11.

When I started puitting this machine together, I didn't have an RL11. The 
RLV11 and RL01s came with the MINC, and one reason for this set-up was to 
get RL drives on the 11/45. Now I have a couple of real RL11s. I really 
should reconfigure it one day...

Incidentally, I once repaired a DEC gamma-11, which is a medical imaging 
display system. It's an 11/34 with a VS60 in it, and lots of custom I/O 
cards. Some of those are Q-bus. There was a 5.25" expanison box with 2 
quad backplanes in it. One was Unibus, the other Qbus, and there was a 
DW11-B linking them. Made me do a double-take when I first pulled it out!

> a third-party 512x512 graphic board.  I used it to earn my living in

That reminds me. I must get the I2S displays running again (512*512*30 
bits (or 24 bits), with some local intellegence...)

> w/KT-24, a few megs of RAM, RL11, that I've installed 2.9BSD onto.

I never much cared for the 11/24. Having the CPU in a few custom LSI 
chips spoils the fun. I must have another go with the 11/44, though...

> True.  Me, too... disk, tape, DEC comms, abundant COMBOARDs, etc.

I got a boatload of comms cards in a clearout. DUP11s, DMC11s, DMR11s, a 
KMC11, etc. Even a couple of DX11s (not, that's not a typo for RX11). 
Pity I've not nothing to connect the latter to.

> It's also not cheap... End-to-end, it cost more than nearly all of my

Ah....

[...]

> though; I'm getting plenty of SMT practice assembling the IOB-6120.

SMT assemnly/rework has never really bothered me. The first chip I did 
was a bit nerve-wracking, but I soon got used to it...

-tony

---

From: Peter Turnbull <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:25:01 2003

> Pity I've not nothing to connect the latter to.

Last time I saw a DX11, it was a whole rack, not just one card.  I
think I know where to find something to connect it to, though :-)

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:26:12 2003

> Last time I saw a DX11, it was a whole rack, not just one card.  I

Yes. 8 rows of flip-chip cards (almost all slots used) + a PSU, a lights 
panel, and a power interlock IIRC.

> think I know where to find something to connect it to, though :-)

Which, presumably, is even bigger than my 11/45 system :-)

-tony

---

From: Peter Turnbull <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:26:37 2003

> Which, presumably, is even bigger than my 11/45 system :-)

A bit :-)  The pile of cables is probably bigger than your 11/45.  It's
an IBM belonging to Jim Austin, who lives not far from me:
http://www.austinfs.fsnet.co.uk/

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York

---

From: Mike Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Jun 6 14:27:23 2003

>times), service docs and spares for PC motherboards are somewhat rarer

A quick look on www.pricegrabber.com turned up 38 current motherboards with 
isa slots.