[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Brad Parker]

Hi,

I asked this on the classic computer list and I thought I'd ask here
also...

Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
board which is an IDE controller?

I have 4-6 layer boards fabbed regularly and use modern CPLD's & VHDL on
a regular basis, so the building part looks easy.

I've never looked at unibus controlleqr schematic, but plan to.  I'm
assuming much of the old ttl can be sucked into something like a Xilinx
coolrunner CPLD...

I also assume it's reasonably straightforward TTL, and at (by today's
standards) slow speed... true?

Any hints, or gotcha's as far as fabrication or interface?  Has anyone
done this (in the modern day, that is :-)

My plan would be to build a 4 layer board of suitable thickness with
gold fingers, using an existing board for reference (any physical size
specs I could read?)

I'm well aware of the foolishness of this on one level, but there's a
side of me that really enjoys this sort of thing...  perhaps medication
would help :-)

-brad

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Johnny Billquist]

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Brad Parker wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I asked this on the classic computer list and I thought I'd ask here
> also...
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
> board which is an IDE controller?

Probably not hard at all, from a hardware point of view. The Unibus is
well documented, and as you noted, slow.

The only possible gotcha is that you better make sure you give enough
power for the signals. A unibus can be several meters long.

	Johnny

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

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Michael Davidson]

----- Original Message -----
From: Brad Parker <brad@heeltoe.com>
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
> board which is an IDE controller?

It should be very simple.

Several people have built IDE controllers for the QBUS.

ftp://digital.dp.ua/DEC/ata/README.txt

http://www.chd.dyndns.org/qbus_ide/

A unibus controller will be very similar except for the obvious
differences in the bus interface.

> I've never looked at unibus controlleqr schematic, but plan to.  I'm
> assuming much of the old ttl can be sucked into something like a Xilinx
> coolrunner CPLD...

Yes, but assuming that you are only implementing programmed i/o
there will be so little logic involved that you might as well just use
discrete TTL.

In fact, DEC used to make single height modules which did address
selection and interrupt control (M105 and M7821). If you could find
a pair of those, your work would be almost completely done for you.

> I also assume it's reasonably straightforward TTL, and at (by today's
> standards) slow speed... true?

Yes - very straightforward.

>
> Any hints, or gotcha's as far as fabrication or interface?  Has anyone
> done this (in the modern day, that is :-)

Yes, make sure that you use appropriate bus transceivers, In particular,
make sure that your bus drivers conform to the unibus spec, can sink
sufficient current, and do not have rise times that faster than the spec
allows.

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Ian King]

BTW, there's a company called Douglas Electronics (http://www.douglas.com) that
sells DEC-style breadboards; I've purchased a couple of extenders from them, and
they were of good quality and promptly shipped.  -- Ian

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Davidson" <michael_davidson@pacbell.net>
To: "Brad Parker" <brad at heeltoe.com>; <pups at minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: [pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?


----- Original Message -----
From: Brad Parker <brad@heeltoe.com>
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
> board which is an IDE controller?

It should be very simple.

Several people have built IDE controllers for the QBUS.

ftp://digital.dp.ua/DEC/ata/README.txt

http://www.chd.dyndns.org/qbus_ide/

A unibus controller will be very similar except for the obvious
differences in the bus interface.

> I've never looked at unibus controlleqr schematic, but plan to.  I'm
> assuming much of the old ttl can be sucked into something like a Xilinx
> coolrunner CPLD...

Yes, but assuming that you are only implementing programmed i/o
there will be so little logic involved that you might as well just use
discrete TTL.

In fact, DEC used to make single height modules which did address
selection and interrupt control (M105 and M7821). If you could find
a pair of those, your work would be almost completely done for you.

> I also assume it's reasonably straightforward TTL, and at (by today's
> standards) slow speed... true?

Yes - very straightforward.

>
> Any hints, or gotcha's as far as fabrication or interface?  Has anyone
> done this (in the modern day, that is :-)

Yes, make sure that you use appropriate bus transceivers, In particular,
make sure that your bus drivers conform to the unibus spec, can sink
sufficient current, and do not have rise times that faster than the spec
allows.


_______________________________________________
PUPS mailing list
PUPS at minnie.tuhs.org
http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[David Evans]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 10:39:33PM -0800, Michael Davidson wrote:
> Several people have built IDE controllers for the QBUS.
> 
> ftp://digital.dp.ua/DEC/ata/README.txt
> 

  This one even claims to have a Unibus variant!

> Yes, but assuming that you are only implementing programmed i/o
> there will be so little logic involved that you might as well just use
> discrete TTL.
> 

  I think that's what the above gizmo does.  However, a DMA engine may not
be difficult with the appropriate FPGA.

-- 
David Evans                                         dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Jochen Kunz]

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On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 18:38:37 -0500
Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:

> Does anyone have any thoughts on how hard it would be to make a unibus
> board which is an IDE controller?
> 
> I have 4-6 layer boards fabbed regularly and use modern CPLD's & VHDL
> on a regular basis, so the building part looks easy.
I see two problems:
1. Bus transciever chips.
2. Software interface.

Most likely you want MSCP, but implementing a UDA50 clone is not quite
trivial. It is doable, but it would be quite some effort to write the
firmware for the controler processor. Maybe you can also implement other
emulations for RL02 or RK07 or ... That should be simpler then MSCP.
-- 


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

[pups] roll-your-own-unibus boards?

[Brad Parker]

Jochen Kunz wrote:
...
>I see two problems:
>1. Bus transciever chips.

Yes, this is the big one.  It turns out to be solvable, but not using
IC's.  National DS3862 would be good, but it just went out of production...

I'm looking into making a "trapzoidal driver" (i.e. controlled edges)
using a FET and RC on the gate.  Someone else suggested it and it
sounded like a good idea.  Certainly easy to model/simulate first.

-brad

[pups] Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

[Jochen Kunz]

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Hi.

I got a "Tektronix 8560 Multi-User Software Development Unit" together
with a Tektronix 8540 in system 68k CPU emulator. The 8560 is based on
the DEC M8186 PDP-11/23 CPU module but that card is the one and only DEC
part in the machine. Everything else is from Tektronix. There is a 35 MB
8" disk and a 8" floppy in the 8560 and it runs some flavor of UNIX
called TNIX. I am trying to break into it currently, as I have no
passwords. I can't get it to single user mode and I have no distribution
media nor no stand alone tools. 

Has someone heared from this machine bevore?
Has someone distribution media or stand alone tools?
-- 


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

[pups] Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

[Gregg C Levine]

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Hello from Gregg C Levine
Only indirectly. That because of the Tek4010 terminals that worked
with the PDP-11 families. There are speculations regarding the whole
hardware collection. Tell you what? Post photos, on notes on it, on
your website, in both English, and your native language, on your
website, and a link here, on this list to it. Also include your
progress. That because I'd love to have the chance to see your
collection.
-------------------
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Use the Force, Luke."  Obi-Wan Kenobi
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to General Obi-Wan Kenobi )
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to Master Yoda )



> -----Original Message-----
> From: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org]
On
> Behalf Of Jochen Kunz
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 5:17 PM
> To: pups at minnie.tuhs.org
> Subject: [pups] Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX
(UINX)
> 
> Hi.
> 
> I got a "Tektronix 8560 Multi-User Software Development Unit"
together
> with a Tektronix 8540 in system 68k CPU emulator. The 8560 is based
on
> the DEC M8186 PDP-11/23 CPU module but that card is the one and only
DEC
> part in the machine. Everything else is from Tektronix. There is a
35 MB
> 8" disk and a 8" floppy in the 8560 and it runs some flavor of UNIX
> called TNIX. I am trying to break into it currently, as I have no
> passwords. I can't get it to single user mode and I have no
distribution
> media nor no stand alone tools.
> 
> Has someone heared from this machine bevore?
> Has someone distribution media or stand alone tools?
> --
> 
> 
> tschüß,
>        Jochen
> 
> Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> PUPS mailing list
> PUPS at minnie.tuhs.org
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups

Sign on Imperial Storm Trooper during the battle of Endor. "Kick me!".

[pups] Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

[David W. Talmage]

>I got a "Tektronix 8560 Multi-User Software Development Unit" together
>with a Tektronix 8540 in system 68k CPU emulator. The 8560 is based on

I found this by Googling for "tnix single-user":

http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/1998-March/000027.html

[pups] Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

[Jochen Kunz]

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On 2003.05.08 23:03 David W. Talmage wrote:

> I found this by Googling for "tnix single-user":
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/1998-March/000027.html
Meanwhile I found out myself that I have to run syschk and that the
system asks for single or multi user mode after syschk. I was able to
remove the root passwd but didn't get much further. The file system
needs to be repaired and I have no stand alone utilities. But only the
stand alone syschk is able to repair the file system.

Interresting that the machine in the mail archive above has a /73 CPU. I
have a spare /73 CPU module so I may be able to upgrade my machine... 
--  


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/