[Info-vax] TK50 - this is annoying...

[John Wallace]

On Oct 8, 7:28 pm, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> In article <k4upul$8r... at iltempo.update.uu.se>,
>         Johnny Billquist <b... at softjar.se> writes:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 2012-10-08 13:28, "Roßert G. Schaffrath" wrote:
> >> On 10/7/2012 9:38 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> >>> On 10/5/2012 6:48 PM, Lee Gleason wrote:
> >>>>   I recall a VAX Magic session at a DECUS convention in the mid 80s or
> >>>> so, where someone came up on stage, and, without saying a word of
> >>>> explanation, set a TK50 tape drive down on the floor  and proceeded to
> >>>> smash it to pieces with a middle sized hammer. He got a standing
> >>>> ovation.
>
> >>> Just having tried booting from one of those is enough to sympathize
> >>> with that action.
>
> >> As bad as TK50's were, they were a definite improvement over the TU58. I
> >> recall much lost time waiting for an 11/730 bootstrapping microcode from
> >> one of those.
>
> > I don't entirely agree. While the TU58 was horrible as far as speed goes
> > (and capacity), it at least didn't have the weird error behavior of the
> > TK50.
>
> As long as we are talking TU58's here....
>
> Now that we have a suitable emulator for the TU58 has anyone ever tried
> "redefining" it so that it could be run at a higher baudrate and with
> greater capacity?  Compared to a real TU58 the emulator should scream
> as it has no physical movement and is pretty much a random access device.
>
> bill
> (always looking to push the envelope!!!)
> :-)
>
> --
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> billg... at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> University of Scranton   |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

Did that ages ago. Must have been before 1985 as that's when I left
there. A small collection of diskless VT103s with serial connections
to a central MicroPDP with a DZV or was it a DHV multiport serial
card. All running RT11. The VT103s were running odd test equipment.
Courtesy of the TU58 protocol, they thought they were booting off TU58
(except no seek time to speak of). A bit of software on the MicroPDP
served out blocks from separate RT11 disk images (via LD, if I
remember rightly, and a rather specialist DZ/DHdriver). There are disk
size limitations in the TU58 protocol but nothing to worry a setup of
this kind where the main goal was fast initial load of the application
program. Incidental benefits included being cheaper and smaller
(inches, watts) and bigger (MB of storage) and quieter than the
alternative VT103+RXV21+RX02, and easier file transfer to/from the
VT103s. No idea what happened to the software. Yes we did look briefly
at MRRT11 (memory resident RT11) but it seemed quite restricted
relative to booting ordinary RT11 from a fake TU58.