Azog-Thoth@cup.portal.com (William Thomas Daugustine) (08/05/90)
A friend of mine has recently gotten a PDP-11/23, with two RL02 drives only, no 'external' media (tape, flexible disk). Is there a board for the Q-Buss that will control RX50 drives? In a related question, the operating system is RT-11 (unknown version). Is the RX50 driver supplied? What is the name of it? DX and DY is for the 8" drives, and on my Pro DZ is the RX50. Billy D'Augustine Azog-Thoth@cup.portal.com
cts@dragon.uucp (Charles T. Smith, Jr.) (08/07/90)
> Yup. RQDX1/2/3 (M8639-YA/M8639-YB/M7555, respectively). However, > there's a catch: These boards have 50-pin connectors which go to a > distribution panel buried in the BA23 box. You'll have to make a > pretty contorted cable based on minimal information in order to use > the RQDXn. There is a distribution panel that comes in a BA123 box that you can connect up to the RQDX fairly easily. I've picked these up for about $50 used. You do have either plug it into a slot, or run power to it (all it uses from the qbus slot is power). > Also, RX50's are only 400K and are not formattable. I'd suggest > getting a 3rd-party floppy-only controller that emulates a DU and > provides RX50 and RX33 using a regular IBM AT-type high-density > drive. A number of vendors make these. Actually, you can format RX50 floppies with a special formatting device, known as a Rainbow. If you plan to make any use of an RX50 at all, having a Rainbow around to format your floppies (and double as a terminal) works out pretty well. I've got a couple rainbows sitting about that I grabbed just before they hit the garbage. I've also seen them sell for less than $100.
terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr) (08/08/90)
In article <203.26bdc96e@dragon.uucp>, cts@dragon.uucp (Charles T. Smith, Jr.) writes: > Actually, you can format RX50 floppies with a special formatting > device, known as a Rainbow. If you plan to make any use of an RX50 > at all, having a Rainbow around to format your floppies (and double as > a terminal) works out pretty well. I've got a couple rainbows sitting > about that I grabbed just before they hit the garbage. I've also > seen them sell for less than $100. True. But they're still 400K. Actually, I can format disks to the RX50 format on my PC (with a Central Point board). However, both your solution and mine are probably silly when one can get an RX33 and use 1.2 Mb media. Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US terry@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381