Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Grant Taylor via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 10:38 AM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:
If the Adaptec 2940 BIOS seems to detect the disk I wonder what would 
happen if DOS was set up on the system and ASPI8DOS.SYS was loaded. 
Would the Adaptec 2940 and ASPI driver respect the BIOS parity setting 
and interact with the ACB4000 bridge well enough for a fairly simple 
DOS program to be able to use the ASPI interface to send READ CDBs 
to read the sectors from the device? If I had such a device myself 
to experiment with I'd probably give that a try to see if it works.


If it would work, I wonder if you could then use something like Ghost to 
copy the drive to an image or another more standard drive that could 
then more easily be worked with.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Tektronix PDP-11 Signal Processing System BASIC 1980

[Boris Gimbarzevsky via cctalk]

This may be unrelated, but seems that a Tektronix disk controller 
board I found when going through my shop might be related to the 
graphics terminal.  Hadn't found Tektronix section on bitsavers prior 
to this post and drew a blank searching internet.


Manufacturing dates on chips are 1980 and it's a Disk Controller 
J6928-01.  It has 8 EPROM's which have labels that range from 
160-0956 to 160-0963 where it appears that last 2 digits indicate bit 
position stored in the EPROM.  Has NEC D765C chip which is a floppy 
disk controller and suspect that I knew this 35 years ago as was in 
proximity to an 8" floppy drive that bought.  Have no idea what piece 
of Tektronix equipment it came from but it's available to a good home 
if anyone in need of it.


Hadn't looked at old Tektronix test equipment for decades and 
remember seeing a lot of it in labs but generally beyond our research 
budget althought it was very well made and worked for decades.



Just recovered these RX01 diskettes today ca. 1980

http://bitsavers.org/bits/Tektronix/SPS_BASIC

manuals
http://bitsavers.org/test_equipment/tektronix/wdi

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Glen Slick via cctalk]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 11:51 AM Michael Engel via cctech
 wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> still working on backing up the Tektronix 440x disks. My current problem
> is that the ACB4000 SCSI-to-MFM adapter doesn´t support SCSI parity.
>
> I finally managed to find a PCI SCSI controller (Adaptec 2940) and a
> Pentium 4 PC with PCI slots and installed OpenBSD 6.7. I disabled parity
> checking in the Adaptec BIOS config and it detects a disk at ID 0 with
> no name. So far, so good.
>

If the Adaptec 2940 BIOS seems to detect the disk I wonder what would
happen if DOS was set up on the system and ASPI8DOS.SYS was loaded.
Would the Adaptec 2940 and ASPI driver respect the BIOS parity setting
and interact with the ACB4000 bridge well enough for a fairly simple
DOS program to be able to use the ASPI interface to send READ CDBs to
read the sectors from the device? If I had such a device myself to
experiment with I'd probably give that a try to see if it works.

Tektronix PDP-11 Signal Processing System BASIC 1980

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

Just recovered these RX01 diskettes today ca. 1980

http://bitsavers.org/bits/Tektronix/SPS_BASIC

manuals
http://bitsavers.org/test_equipment/tektronix/wdi

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Jules Richardson via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 12:31 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 9/25/20 10:08 AM, Plamen Mihaylov wrote:

I was able to dump Torch Triple X System V, Release 1 Version 1.2
If anyone is interested I can share the image.


I have a Torch Quad X CPU prototype CPU, missing the ASIC


Interesting. I had a couple of Quad-X systems; one went off to the Centre 
for Computing History when I moved to the US, but the other I parked at 
TNMoC and can hopefully get back at some stage (post-pandemic). I don't 
know how many QX systems were made, but I don't think it was many - and 
they're probably significantly rare in the US.


I do have some Quad-X source/design bits and pieces, I believe - I 
inherited a pile of Torch corporate hardware ~15 years ago, and among that 
were a couple of drives which had come from one of the company servers.


cheers

Jules

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 10:31 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 9/25/20 10:08 AM, Plamen Mihaylov wrote:

I was able to dump Torch Triple X System V, Release 1 Version 1.2
If anyone is interested I can share the image.


I have a Torch Quad X CPU prototype CPU, missing the ASIC



did the ever scan all the manuals?
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1031/Torch-Triple-X/

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 10:08 AM, Plamen Mihaylov wrote:

I was able to dump Torch Triple X System V, Release 1 Version 1.2
If anyone is interested I can share the image.


I have a Torch Quad X CPU prototype CPU, missing the ASIC

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Plamen Mihaylov via cctalk]

I was able to dump Torch Triple X System V, Release 1 Version 1.2
If anyone is interested I can share the image.

Best regards,
Plamen

On Friday, September 25, 2020, Al Kossow via cctalk 
wrote:

> On 9/25/20 5:24 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
>
>> On 9/25/20 1:49 AM, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:
>>
>>> Gentles,
>>> As its really an MFM Disk why not read it with an MFM adaptor?
>>>
>>
>> That was what I was wondering as well.
>>
>>
>>
> You really want one of Dave's boards if you need to do any sort of oddball
> mfm hd recovery. I just recovered the data yesterday from a ETH Ceres 32016
> workstation with one.
>
>

TRS-80 Trash Talk Live #7

[Peter Cetinski via cctalk]

We’re having another TRS-80 Trash Talk online gathering tomorrow.  Everyone is 
welcome to join us!

https://www.trs80trashtalk.com/2020/08/trs-80-trash-talk-live-7-is-coming-on.html
 


Thanks,
Pete

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 5:24 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 9/25/20 1:49 AM, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:

Gentles,
As its really an MFM Disk why not read it with an MFM adaptor?


That was what I was wondering as well.




You really want one of Dave's boards if you need to do any sort of oddball
mfm hd recovery. I just recovered the data yesterday from a ETH Ceres 32016
workstation with one.

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 9/25/20 1:49 AM, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:

Gentles,
As its really an MFM Disk why not read it with an MFM adaptor?


That was what I was wondering as well.

RE: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

[Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk]

Gentles,
As its really an MFM Disk why not read it with an MFM adaptor? Something like:-

https://www.pdp8.net/mfm/mfm.shtml

which will read and image MFM disks and replace them. Expensive perhaps, but 
perhaps some one can lend you one to get an image...
... or if the SCSI <=> MFM adaptor supports two disks the use a DREM

https://www.drem.info/tech-info

and perhaps DD to copy the data. 

Dave 
G4UGM

> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk  On Behalf Of Grant Taylor via
> cctalk
> Sent: 25 September 2020 04:11
> To: cct...@classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-
> SCSI adapter?
> 
> On 9/24/20 12:15 PM, Jules Richardson via cctech wrote:
> > the Linux kernel at least has depended on it for a very long time
> 
> Do you have any idea how far back one might need to go to get a kernel that
> didn't depend on SCSI Inquiry?
> 
> I wonder if a retro computer with a really old kernel and a SCSI card that it
> supported might be a viable option.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die