Tape Subsystem
The Unix software distributions for the PDP-11 come in the format of tape images. Because of this, I wanted to add some sort of tape emulator.
The Q-bus machines used TSV05 and TMSCP compatible drives, with the TSV05 being bootable from the MXV11-B2 boot PROMs I have in my system. The TSV05 was a 9-track tape drive, with a built-in formatter, that had a Pertec compatible interface. The drive came with the M7196 TSV05 tape coupler, for Q-bus machines.
The M7196 is still available, but it happens to be a quad width module, and I expect to be short on backplane real estate. Therefore, I selected the Emulex QT13 tape coupler instead. The QT13 is a dual width module, with a Pertec interface, that can emulate a TSV05, or a TMSCP tape system. It supports tape block sizes of up to 64 KB, comes with block mode DMA and is rated at 2 MB/s (1 MW/s).
The QT13 is shown below.
My intent is to build a Pertec emulator that accepts MMC, or SD Cards. The cards would use the FAT file system, so it would be compatible with other machines. I designed the drive emulator a couple months back, and the circuit board has been fabricated, but I still need to gather the parts for the board. I plan to post more information, once I get further along.
References
- QT13 Tape Coupler Technical Manual, Revision J, August 1990, Emulex Corporation (QT1351001-01)
