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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <1af53a2f-3626-4d8e-9e0c-fdd6a5d67427 at 13g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>,
	Steven Schweda <sms.antinode at gmail.com> writes:
>> 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.)

Probably confusion on my part.  I thought VAXStation was the desktop
and MicroVAX was the pedestal/QBUS boxes.

> 
>> The smalled disk I rememeber seeing on a VAX was an RD-54.
> 
>    RD53 was common (and worked with an RQDX2).

Oh, I have seen disks as small as the RD51 but never on a production
VAX.

> 
>> [...] wether [...] smalled [...] loose [...]
> 
>    Yow.  Note, too, that DEC didn't hyphenate RDxx or RXxx.

Hey, I never claimed to be an english expert.  And, I was typing much
faster than my brain works anymore (retirement does that to you.)  And
I don't know about DEC but a search og the web shows them both ways.
Who am I to argue with the web.  We all know if it's on the web it must
be true.

> 
> 
>> 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.

Yeah, both 5.25" and 8" drives had lots of jumpers and there was
quite a science to making them work on various systems.  The TEAC
FD55-GFR has jumpers for things like rotational speed.  That is
what makes it usable as an RX50.  Slow speed but 80 tracks.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>