Big IBM vacuum-column tapes drives on Ebay

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> writes:

 >> 
 >> 
 >> Paul Koning wrote:
 >> >
 >> >With the controller included, it would presumably hook up to
 >> anything >that knows an IBM channel interface.  So if you have a
 >> DX11 you could >hook it up to your Unibus PDP11;
 >> 
 >> wow - bus & tag?  I've never seen a dx11.  I assume VMS had
 >> support for that
 Tony> Yes, bus and tag. Be warnded that the DX11 is 8 rows of
 Tony> flip-chip cards in a 12U high backplane + a PSU + a power
 Tony> interlock panel + a lights panel + a connecotr panel. In other
 Tony> words it takes up half a 6' rack at least (I have 2 of them,
 Tony> and the prints).

 Tony> I also believe it's a 'slave' device only. It'll sit on the IBM
 Tony> channel from your system/360 (or with a few mods a system/370),
 Tony> but I don't think you can use it to link up IBM peripherals to
 Tony> a PDP11.

 Tony> No idea what OSes supported it, but I've never heard of one on
 Tony> a VAX.

Then again, strange things sometimes happened... consider the DECtape
(real DECtape, not TU58) support that magically appeared in VMS at
some point.  It even supported overlapped seek, just like TOPS-10.

     paul