[Info-vax] Attaching an actual 3.5" floppy drive to SIMH-VAX RXV21 device?

[Steven Schweda]

> Are you sure it was a VAXStation? [...]

   Did I say "VAXstation"?  Oops.  More likely a MicroVAX I.
(Not that it matters much here.)  It was a BA23 box.

> [...] We are talking VAXStation here.  That's a desktop
> pizza box. Not a QBUS system.  No where to put an
> RQDX-anything and no room for a drive the size of the RX50.

   No.  "VAXstation" is not equivalent to "VAXstation 31xx".
There were several different Q-bus VAXstation system types.
(Roughly one per MicroVAX system type.)

> The smalled disk I rememeber seeing on a VAX was an RD-54.

   RD53 was common (and worked with an RQDX2).

> [...] wether [...] smalled [...] loose [...]

   Yow.  Note, too, that DEC didn't hyphenate RDxx or RXxx.


> As I understand it, the RX33 drives were a specific Teac
> drive with a special jumper configuration.  I to not think
> that you could just plug in any 1.2 M floppy drive and use
> it.

   I added a 5.25-inch floppy drive (not an official RX33)
externally to a VAXstation 2000.  I believe that it was some
Teac drive.  There was some particular jumper configuration,
which I found in some discussion archive which was floating
around on the 'Net many years ago.  I assumed that in those
days, setting some jumpers was not unusual.  There were all
those jumpers to set, after all.  Nowadays -- well, later --
many 3.5-inch floppy drives don't have even a drive select
jumper, so you need to use the twisted/mangled cable
technique to fiddle with that.