Re: 9-track tape interfaces

Tim Shoppa wrote: As long as this thread is red hot, how about these questions: I have an M4 Data 9914 tape drive with Pertec and SCSI interfaces. It will do 800, 1600, 6250. I want to set up and run 2.11BSD on a Q-Bus system. 1) I'd rather not spend a lot to get a SCSI interface. I now have Emulex TC02 and Dilog DQ130 Q-Bus controllers. Is there any way these controllers are going to enable 6250 BPI? 2) Is there another Q-Bus, Pertec controller that will do 6250? 3) If I had a Q-Bus SCSI controller, would it enable 6250? 4) (Already asked in thread) Supposing I get the hardware to work at 6250, will 2.11BSD handle it? Thanks, Dave Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id HAA15025 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 07:27:55 +1100 (EST) Received: from timaxp.trailing-edge.com (trailing-edge.wdn.com [198.232.144.27]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id HAA15020 for &lt;PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.adfa.edu.AU&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 07:27:28 +1100 (EST) Received: by timaxp.trailing-edge.com for PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.adfa.edu.AU; Mon, 7 Dec 1998 15:27:09 -0500 Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 15:27:09 -0500 From: Tim Shoppa &lt;SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com&gt; To: PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Message-Id: &lt;981207152709.2f0000e2(a)trailing-edge.com&gt; Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Sure - I use them at 6250 BPI all the time. The controller doesn't have to know what density the data is at - the formatter takes care of that. If you absoultely insist on the computer being able to switch the drive between 1600 and 6250 BPI modes, you won't be able to achieve this with a TC02 or DQ130 under 2.11BSD, but this is purely a frill as you can always select the mode from the drive's front panel. One thing you do have to worry about is data rate. Pertec formatted interfaces on "fast" buffered modern drives may want to suck or spew data at rates that are often too fast for a lowly TC02 or DQ130's capability to push data over the Q-bus. Most modern Pertec- formatted drives will let you throttle the rate to something reasonable. And some more modern Q-bus controllers - like the Dilog DQ152 - have internal buffers for handling such cases without having to throttle the drive itself. Absolutely. I use a Fuji 2444 and a Storagetek 2925 with a TC02 and 2.11BSD all the time in 6250 BPI mode. I had to throttle the data rates on both, but that's not such a big deal. On the other hand, my Storagetek 2920, which is pretty much a 2925 without the cache option, doesn't let me throttle the data rate at 6250 mode because there is no effective buffer. These don't work with my TC02 on a Q-bus machine, but they do work with a TC13 on a Unibus 11/44 or with a DQ152 on a Q-bus -11. Also keep in mind that some third-party controllers don't interact well with the fast polling that the most recent Q-bus CPU's can do. For example, my TC02 won't work at all with a loaned Mentec M100 (roughly comparable with a 11/93) that I have. I've never had this problem with 11/83's and slower CPU's. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927 Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id JAA15470 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 09:40:18 +1100 (EST) Received: from moe.2bsd.com (0(a)MOE.2BSD.COM [206.139.202.200]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA15465 for &lt;PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 09:40:09 +1100 (EST) Received: (from sms@localhost) by moe.2bsd.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) id OAA07800; Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:33:57 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:33:57 -0800 (PST) From: "Steven M. Schultz" &lt;sms(a)moe.2bsd.com&gt; Message-Id: &lt;199812072233.OAA07800(a)moe.2bsd.com&gt; To: PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au, SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Tim - Howdy. Indeed it does. However TMSCP only defines 800,1600 and 6250 so on the quad density drive I have the 3200 setting must be selected manually on the front panel of the tape drive. Also the 'enable cache' works fine and makes a dramatic difference on a TU81+ attached to an 11/44. The 'cache enabled' setting is sticky across open/close cycles so that you set it once manually when the first reel is loaded. This was done to avoid having to modify dump/restore/tar/etc Quite so. Eons ago the one Cipher drive supported 800/1600 operation but the controller (TM11 clone) did not - you just made sure to select the density on the front panel when loading the tape Steve Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA16643 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:49:04 +1100 (EST) Received: from swag.sw.oz.au (firewall-user(a)gw.softway.com.au [203.31.96.1]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA16638 for &lt;PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:48:47 +1100 (EST) Received: from swarm.sw.oz.au (swarm.sw.oz.au [192.41.203.66]) by swag.sw.oz.au (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA12733 for <@smtp.sw.oz.au:PUPS@minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au>; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:48:41 +1100 (EST) Received: (from peterc@localhost) by swarm.sw.oz.au (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) id OAA50560; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:48:27 +1100 (ADST) From: Peter Chubb &lt;peterc(a)softway.com.au&gt; MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: &lt;13932.41355.645423.303757(a)swarm.sw.oz.au&gt; Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:48:27 +1100 (ADST) To: PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: John Lions Comments: Hyperbole mail buttons accepted, v04.023. Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Associate Professor John Lions, who was instrumental in UNIX's acceptance in Australia, and in its popularity (through his two books) world wide, died last Saturday morning, after long illness. Peter C Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA16671 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:52:06 +1100 (EST) Received: from henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (henry.cs.adfa.oz.au [131.236.21.158]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA16665 for &lt;PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:51:59 +1100 (EST) Received: (from wkt@localhost) by henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA09118; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:54:59 +1100 (EST) From: Warren Toomey &lt;wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au&gt; Message-Id: &lt;199812080354.OAA09118(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au&gt; Subject: Re: John Lions To: peterc(a)softway.com.au (Peter Chubb) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:54:59 +1100 (EST) Cc: PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au In-Reply-To: &lt;13932.41355.645423.303757(a)swarm.sw.oz.au&gt; from Peter Chubb at "Dec 8, 98 02:48:27 pm" Reply-To: wkt(a)cs.adfa.oz.au X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk In article by Peter Chubb: Gee, that's very bad news. Thanks for the email, Peter. Warren Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id SAA17323 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:20:42 +1100 (EST) Received: from harrier.Uznet.NET (harrier.ml.org [193.220.92.194]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id SAA17317 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:20:24 +1100 (EST) Received: from dosdev (pm6-41.dial.qual.net [205.212.2.41]) by harrier.Uznet.NET (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA16509 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:19:42 +0500 Message-Id: &lt;199812080719.MAA16509(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; From: Michael Sokolov &lt;msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; Date: 8 Dec 1998 07:19:34 GMT To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Dear Tim, You write: Yes. A straight flat ribbon cable connects it to the bulkhead, which has a female 37-lead D-sub connector on the outside. I have just spent a couple of hours tracing the etches on this board, and here is what I have found out. One side of the 40-pin connector is all ground (well, that's pretty obvious). On other side we have the following. 4 pins are permanently connected to pull-up resistors, and one pin is permanently connected to a pull-down resistor. The other 15 pins are connected through jumpers so that the user can connect or disconnect them on an individual basis. Some of these go to different outputs of a 74S241 (dual 4-bit 3-state buffer), some go to a 7437 (unfamiliar with this IC), and some go to a missing IC. Both halves of the 74S241 are permanently enabled. All 8 outputs of this half are connected to different pins on the connector. 7 of them are connected in the obvious way, but one is also connected to a pull-up resistor (purpose non-understood, since the 3-state buffer is always enabled). The jumpers for all 8 are ON. Then there are 3 pins that go to the 7437. Although 3 pins of the connector are used for this, 4 pins of the 7437 are used. Two of the connector pins go through simple jumpers, and both are OFF. The third pin is connected to two different 7437 pins through different jumpers. One of them is ON and the other is OFF. Finally, there are 4 pins that connect to a missing IC. The jumpers for all 4 are OFF. Now, does this tell you anything? :-) The most recent dates are mid-1988. OK, from now on I'll only use the front panel switch for density selection. :-) Hmm, this is another big gap in my knowledge. What does streaming vs. non-streaming mean? How does it determine which one to use? Is there a switch on the board? Hmm, so then KLESI can do disk MSCP as well as TMSCP, right? Can it do both simultaneously or only one at a time? But they are all different CDC Keystones, right? This means that my Keystone may or may not support 6250 BPI, right? How can I tell? "Cute little"?!?! I mean, I'm still amazed how I was able to get it inside my apartment without knocking a couple walls down first! It's certainly huge compared to the REALLY cute little Cipher we had at CWRU. (I really miss that Cipher, BTW. Not only is it much smaller, according to what I have been able to glean from the docs, it's much easier to load tapes into than the Keystone. But then of course if this Keystone does 6250 BPI I will be much more than happy with it.) But hey, if the Keystone is a cute little baby, poor CSRG fellows! I think Kennedy 9300 was their primary machine, and I can just imagine what it is like if the Keystone is "cute little". Does the 9300 do 6250 BPI? Yet another gap in my knowledge. I remember seeing the term "vacuum columns" in the BSD documentation and having no idea what are they. Could you enlighten me? Just out of curiosity, what are they? Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Cellular phone: 216-217-2579 ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA17591 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:52:37 +1100 (EST) Received: from caveman.geac.com.au (caveman.geac.com.au [203.30.73.2]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id TAA17586 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:52:29 +1100 (EST) Received: (qmail 17458 invoked from network); 8 Dec 1998 08:00:32 -0000 Received: from brane.geac.com.au (202.6.67.115) by caveman.geac.com.au with SMTP; 8 Dec 1998 08:00:32 -0000 Received: from fgh.geac.com.au by brane.geac.com.au with smtp\n (Smail3.1.29.1 #3) id m0znIp4-0003mgC; Tue, 8 Dec 98 19:48 AEDT Received: from localhost (dave@localhost) by fgh.geac.com.au (SMI-8.X/SVR4) with ESMTP id TAA14339; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:49:40 +1100 Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:49:40 +1100 (EST) From: Dave Horsfall &lt;dave(a)fgh.geac.com.au&gt; X-Sender: dave@fgh To: Michael Sokolov &lt;msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; cc: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces In-Reply-To: &lt;199812080719.MAA16509(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9812081928170.14240-100000@fgh> X-No-Archive: Yes X-Witty-Saying: "Tesseract - Enter at own risk" X-Disclaimer: "Me, speak for us?" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk On 8 Dec 1998, Michael Sokolov wrote: Outputs are 3, 6, 8, 11. Corresponding inputs are 1/2, 4/5, 9/10, 12/13. Vcc is 14, GND is 7. Streaming means that data can be supplied to the tape (or read from) fast enough to keep it moving, as opposed stop/start (or more likely, stop backspace start). Requires double-buffering somewhere. ROTFL :-) Look at an old Sci-Fi movie some time, in particular the obligatory IBM tape drives spinning back and forth. The vacuum columns were buffers; columns into which bits of the tape were sucked so as to keep the tape moving past the heads at constant velocity (not sure how good the clock recovery was in those days) whilst the reels did their thing. The column has various pairs of pressure sensors, between which the tape was kept for that particular mode; if it crept past one hole, it upset the pressure differential, and the pumps came into play... Remember, folks; this real-time stuff was *before* micro-chips! I still remember looking at the old Cipher (I have the magic codes somewhere, that allowed it to load with the door open etc) aghast that it had no vacuum columns, but swing-arms instead... Big BIG tape drives - real Sci-Fi material :-) -- Dave Horsfall VK2KFU dave(a)geac.com.au Ph: +61 2 9978-7493 Fx: +61 2 9978-7422 Geac Computers P/L (FGH Division) 2/57 Christie St, St Leonards 2065, Australia Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA17635 for pups-liszt; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:06:48 +1100 (EST) Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA17630 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:06:39 +1100 (EST) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id TAA02406; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:36:35 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) id TAA29044; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:36:34 +1030 (CST) Message-ID: &lt;19981208193634.A29025(a)freebie.lemis.com&gt; Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:36:34 +1030 From: Greg Lehey &lt;grog(a)lemis.com&gt; To: Dave Horsfall &lt;dave(a)fgh.geac.com.au&gt;, Michael Sokolov &lt;msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; Cc: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces References: &lt;199812080719.MAA16509(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; <Pine.GSO.4.03.9812081928170.14240-100000@fgh> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9812081928170.14240-100000@fgh>; from Dave Horsfall on Tue, Dec 08, 1998 at 07:49:40PM +1100 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk On Tuesday, 8 December 1998 at 19:49:40 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: UniServo was UNIVAC's name for all its tape drives, at least as long as I was involved with them. They were all vacuum column jobs, but some were definitely ``cheap'' ones, such as the UniServo 6 and 12, which were intended for smaller machines. IIRC the latest ``big'' ones were the UniServo 16 and 20, at least when I was still involved with UNIVAC. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA18425 for pups-liszt; Wed, 9 Dec 1998 01:02:41 +1100 (EST) Received: from caveman.geac.com.au (caveman.geac.com.au [203.30.73.2]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id BAA18420 for &lt;PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Wed, 9 Dec 1998 01:02:33 +1100 (EST) Received: (qmail 18804 invoked from network); 8 Dec 1998 13:10:39 -0000 Received: from brane.geac.com.au (202.6.67.115) by caveman.geac.com.au with SMTP; 8 Dec 1998 13:10:39 -0000 Received: from fgh.geac.com.au by brane.geac.com.au with smtp\n (Smail3.1.29.1 #3) id m0znNf8-0003mmC; Wed, 9 Dec 98 00:58 AEDT Received: from localhost (dave@localhost) by fgh.geac.com.au (SMI-8.X/SVR4) with ESMTP id AAA28663 for &lt;PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Wed, 9 Dec 1998 00:59:54 +1100 Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 00:59:53 +1100 (EST) From: Dave Horsfall &lt;dave(a)fgh.geac.com.au&gt; X-Sender: dave@fgh cc: PUPS(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: John Lions In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9812081523440.10402-100000@fgh> Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.03.9812090031300.14240-100000@fgh> X-No-Archive: Yes X-Witty-Saying: "Tesseract - Enter at own risk" X-Disclaimer: "Me, speak for us?" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, Dave Horsfall wrote: Sic transit gloria mundi. Damn. John, why did you have to die? You taught me everything that I knew. Shit. -- Dave Horsfall VK2KFU dave(a)geac.com.au Ph: +61 2 9978-7493 Fx: +61 2 9978-7422 Geac Computers P/L (FGH Division) 2/57 Christie St, St Leonards 2065, Australia Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA18465 for pups-liszt; Wed, 9 Dec 1998 01:13:54 +1100 (EST) Received: from harrier.Uznet.NET (harrier.ml.org [193.220.92.194]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA18460 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Wed, 9 Dec 1998 01:13:41 +1100 (EST) Received: from dosdev (pm10-206.dial.qual.net [205.212.2.206]) by harrier.Uznet.NET (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id TAA16834 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:13:22 +0500 Message-Id: &lt;199812081413.TAA16834(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; From: Michael Sokolov &lt;msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET&gt; Date: 8 Dec 1998 14:13:08 GMT To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: 9-track tape interfaces Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Dave Horsfall &lt;dave(a)fgh.geac.com.au&gt; wrote: Looks trivial, except that the author of the digital design textbook I'm using has chosen to omit it. :-) Anyway, I have looked at the board again, and all pins that go to the connector are outputs. This means that at least in this form, with the U10 chip omitted, there are NO inputs on that connector, only outputs. That missing chip could very well have to do with inputs, though. Hmm, there are 4 lines going to that missing chip, and that sounds like the number of input lines in some flavor of Centronics. On the output side, 8 pins go to the 74S241 and 3 pins go to the 7437, again suggesting 8-bit output and some control signals. All this sounds very much like Centronics or some similar interface. Figuring out what the host interface is and what do those myriads of switches and jumpers mean would be harder, though. Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Cellular phone: 216-217-2579 ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET