I would love to see that Verilog, as I have a Digilent Nexys2 (Xilinx Spartan 3E) and a Pertec drive I could play with.
On 8/6/2015 11:19 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 08/06/2015 08:35 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > >> Formatted Pertec is a fairly simple interface. Chuck has talked in >> the past of designing one, and some of the gotchas with the >> interface. >> >> Qualstar built two different styles of Pertec-SCSI adapter for the >> 1054. I'll see about putting board pics and rom dumps up, but as has >> been discussed, SCSI has problems when talking to tapes. >> >> I think Pertec - Ethernet is the way to go, and not mess around with >> SCSI or USB. > > I've got the Verilog for an XC95128 CPLD checked out--and have tested > the programming on one in a testbed lashup. The interface is basically > "wishbone", via a single 8-bit port and 3 address lines. All of the > detail, such as parity generation, error latching, etc. is handled by > the CPLD. Done that way mostly to create a generic interface without a > lot of SSI packages. I can talk to it directly from a PC parallel port. > > Rolling your own is easy. The interface is basically unidirectional > open-collector. You could probably do it, if you weren't too fussy, > with an 8255 or two. > > For me, that "last mile" is a bit of a problem. > > Is the goal simply to grab all the data from a tape and save it? Then > an interface to, say, an SD Card is both cheap and affords plenty of > space. Or is something wanted that gives immediate control over the > tape drive--that is, something like SCSI? USB and Ethernet are both > attractive, but you'll have to work out the host-side driver software. > > Does anyone still *write* tapes any more, save for the occasional > copying task? > > Lots of questions with no clear answers. > > --Chuck > > >
