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Re: KA410 Boot Failure With TKZ-50



On 2020-06-14 19:02, Rhialto wrote:
Sorry if I am confusin things here, but...

On Sat 13 Jun 2020 at 22:15:32 -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
The TK50 hardware implemented neither TMSCP nor SCSI.  It implemented a
very minimal proprietary protocol over a very, very slow serial connection
(200Kbit/sec) to one of two possible controller cards: the SCSI TKZ50 or
the QBus TQK50.  An 80186 (I think; might have been an 8085) on the
controller card interfaced to one of the two possible host buses.

I have (packed away) a TK-50 drive and a TKZ-50 drive. I also have a
uVAX 2000 (KA410) and a uVAX 3100 (and also a VAXstation 3100). One type
of drive came with the one VAX, and the other with the other.

In my recollection, which may of course be off, it was the TK-50 (not
SCSI, but cabling etc looks the same) that came with the 2000, and the
TKZ-50 (SCSI) came with the 3100.

So perhaps $SUBJECT occurs because it is the wrong type of tape drive?

No, I'm pretty sure the TKZ-50 was explicitly made for the uVAX2000. That machine only have an MFM interface for disks, and a SCSI controller, who's only purpose was to connect to the tape drive. There were nothing else in it.

Also, the form factor of the TKZ-50 case is identical to the uVAX2000, and they were stacked on top of each other, if I remember right.

  Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


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