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Stand-alone TU55 controller?

Hi All;
M-Thompson, "" We just received a donation of a DG Nova controller board for this tape drive. "" Which DG Controller Board did You get ??

THANK YOU Marty
 
Marty said:
Hi All;
MattisLind, Would You Please either post the circuit as you Now have it or send it to me.. I will see If it might help me with the problems that I had with my Alpha-Meca tape Reading.. Maybe it can or will do a better job than the circuit that I have..
"" Next step is to build the level converters for negative logic. "" I won't need that part of the circuit, but You can include them, so I know where to tap off..

THANK YOU Marty
Click to expand...

Sitting here with a nice Camden Pale Ale after a day of good skiing (pretty good weather and a few degrees minus) drawing the circuit that I used when testing the TU55 drive.

6A0FZFx.png


Maybe you should try different values for the C if the data rate is a lot different.
 
Status update

Status update

The project is not at all dead!

Anders has spent a lot of time creating a PCB design for both the dual board with the read/write signals and then also a single board for the control signals to the drive. Basically the dual board includes the read circuitry described above and also a completely new design for the write circuitry based on mosfets. To have everything fit on one dual board it had to use surface mount components. In principle it now implements five G888 boards, a AtMega32u4 processor and voltage regulators on this board.

up3RR5b.png


The connector to the right is to interface with the level converter board that is used to control the operation of the drive. It took quite some time to get all tiny components soldered in to place. The first test that Anders did on the new board indicated that the read part did its job well and that it was able to control the operation of the drive correctly. We now have to create the proper software for it.

This far we have only discovered on single deign flaw. Anyone able to spot it? The jumper wire is yet be soldered in the picture above.
 
Suddenly I feel like we are getting more and more closer to emulated machines like Oscar's emulated PDP-8/I, but with real peripherals all communicating with SIMH using these fancy USB interfaces, like that USB interfaced RL drive.
I like the idea. :D

Of course, now we have to only be able to afford TU55's. ;)
 
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