PDP-10s

[Guy Sotomayor]

On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 18:57 +0000, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On 12/22/05, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
> >
> > "Zane H. Healy" wrote:
> > >
> > >While the CPU's are showing up, how about Disk and Tape drives?  They're
> > >*one* of the reasons I've never looked into getting a real PDP-10, though
> > >space and power are about as important for me :^(
> >
> > I'm assuming one could run a KS-10 with a minimal unibus and say, kludge
> > up an RP06 style disk interface.
> 
> An interesting thought, but weren't the RP disks formatted to 18-bit
> words when used on 36-bit hosts?  If one kludged up an interface with
> some smarts, perhaps one could format a SCSI disk to something other
> than 512 8-bit-bytes per sector.  The RP20(?) emulator could then
> request a larger block, then repackage it and feed it up to the KS10
> as 36-bit words.
> 

I'm working on a generic disk emulator.  It started out as a massbus
device emulator but once I got into the design, it seemed that it would
be pretty easy to substitute a "unibus" personality in place of the
massbus interface and be able to emulate any unibus disk controller as
well.

For massbus, you'll be able to hook it up to an existing massbus
controller (RH11, RH70, RH20) and it'll look like the appropriate
devices (it also provides for dual ported drives).  When used for
unibus, take a BC11A cable and run it over to the emulator.

The emulator will emulate an entire "string" of 8 drives.  An IDE disk
will be used for the actual storage.  It uses a 520MHz XScale CPU for
the "smarts" (probably overkill but I'd really hate to get close and
realize I'm out of CPU).  It'll have ethernet to allow for
loading/saving disk images (which will be compatible with the various
emulators).

This is a fairly complex project and I'm just starting on the prototype.
The biggest problem has been how to deal with the surface mount
components so that the "average" person can build one up if they wish.
There *will* be multiple PCB's.  I'm trying to keep it somewhat modular
(CPU complex board, drive emulation logic, massbus I/F, unibus I/F).

I haven't worked up the packaging yet (I want to get at least the
prototype working first).

I started this for my own KL10 and 11/70s as the RP06s are big and
somewhat unreliable (and certified media is $$$'s).  It won't be
particularly inexpensive (I expect it to be in the range between 1-2
certified RP06 packs...$800-$1500).

Is anyone else interested in something like this?

-- 

TTFN - Guy