[Simh] Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2017-12-10 11:12, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Rich. This is a nice thing. Thanks.
> 
> I have one question/wish, though.
> I don't know if you were aware of a device called the RM06. This was a 
> Massbus disk created by Shelby, which was varible size.

Slight correction of myself. It was manufactured by SETASI, but was 
called "Shelby" apparently. There is very little to be found on the 
internet about it, but it was essentially a PC with a Massbus interface, 
and it used an optival drive for the RM06, or potentially a normal 
winchester, at which point they apparently also called it a RP12.

Here is the basics from the wayback machine: 
http://web.archive.org/web/20010124161600/www.setasi.com/RM06.html

Anyway, I just sat and read through the device driver code for RSX, and 
it looks pretty straight forward to implement.

   Johnny

> It would be a really nice thing to emulate. I can probably reverse 
> engineer it from the RSX driver, and I don't know which systems ever 
> supported it. RSX for sure. Possibly also RSTS/E, but beyond that is 
> more uncertain. Most people and systems had moved on from Massbus before 
> this drive came out.
> But it is a much nicer solution than emulating eight RP06 drives, when 
> you have some big disk in the backend.
> 
> Do you know what speeds this emulated massbus disk can achieve, by the way?
> 
>    Johnny
> 
> On 2017-12-10 09:45, Rich Alderson wrote:
>> Happy DEC-10 Day!
>>
>> It is my honor to announce that we at Living Computers: Museum + Labs
>> are releasing to the computing community our Massbus Disk Emulator
>> and all the associated software.  This device connects via Massbus
>> cables to the RH10 and RH20 interfaces on KI-10 and KL-10 systems, to
>> the RH11 interface on KS-10 and small PDP-11 systems (including the
>> front end 11/40 on the KL-10), and to the RH70 on the PDP-11/70.  The
>> MDE provides up to 8 emulated RP06 or RP07 disks (represented by disk
>> files in the format used by the SimH emulation of these systems).
>>
>> We expect that it will also work with the RH780 on the VAX-11/780 and
>> VAX-11/785 although we have not yet tested it in this configuration.
>>
>> The original MDE was designed by Keith Perez in 2005, and emulated up
>> to four RP06 drives connected to a KL-10.  The current generation was
>> a redesign by Bruce Sherry in conjunction with the restoration of our
>> DECsystem-1070 in 2012, and initially provided eight RP06 drives on
>> the RH10.  It has undergone continual development, with associated
>> software created for us by Bob Armstrong, and is now being opened up
>> for the use of the relevant communities.
>>
>> To this end, we have placed the design files for the hardware and the
>> source files for the software to interface with it, along with our
>> library of Universal Peripheral Emulator routines, on public access
>> repositories at Github.  The URLs for these repositories are
>>
>>          https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MDE2
>>
>>          https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MBS
>>
>>          https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/UPELIB
>>
>> These are released under a very liberal license which will allow for
>> free use of the MDE by any interested party.
>>
>> Happy Dec-10 Day!
>>
>>                                                                  Rich
>>
>>
>> Richard Alderson, Sr. Systems Engineer
>> Living Computers: Museum + Labs
>> 2245 1st Avenue S
>> Seattle, WA 98134
>>
>> http://www.livingcomputerss.org/
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>>
> 

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