bobh@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Bob Hayes) (02/08/90)
Up Front: We have been gifted? with a 7970e and 7970b set of tapedrives. The techie ( me ) is an HP hardware infant ;-( The load point and fwd/rew circuitry all seems to function fine. Intentions: We wanna have 1600 bpi half inch tape drives, but have no HP machines to hook 'em on. Got VME bus, tho, you betcha. VME to hp controller in order?? Build it? buy it? Questions: 1) These drives are HOW OLD?? Chip dates from '83. 2) Where can I get hardware and interface manuals? Also absolutely acceptable are pinout descriptions, command codes, schematics etc. The read and write cards appear to be simple ( chip wise, no vlsi seen). 3) What interface might they be? each has 3 cables, to card-edge connectors, 48 contacts,each cable arranged 11-key slot-13 fingers each side. The 7970e has male edge adaptors soldered into the connector, the 7970b is female type. 4) based on the cables and the "options" ie. 7079e tag sez " options 007/051/150" 7079b " " 127/007/151 what formatter type(s) might they be? Or given the simple R/W cards is the formatter part of the controller? What kind of data/control signals are these boards expecting, then? 5) Thoughts, ideas, opinions and cautionary tales about adapting these to VME bus or ??? 6) Any donations of used HP computers to run these babies would be cheerfully accepted ;-) !! Thanks for response, e-mail will be fine, repost if interest. -- Bob Hayes < bob@arthur.wwu.edu > USnail follows: Western Washington University Computer Science Dept. Bond Hall 302, Bellingham, Washington 98225 Obbligato Disclaimer: Real programmers carry screwdrivers!