TK50 emulator

[jmdhuse]

Hello All,

I've been working with a couple of TK50 tape drives, and I have them working with my PDP-11/53. I can read, write, and delete files, and I can make backups of the hard drives. The things that are hard to come by are actual tape cartridges with useful data on them. So, I am wondering, has anyone built a TK50 emulator that would hold files on a microSD card and would interface to the M7546 controller module? If such a thing does exist, I haven't been able to find it... if it does not exist, I'm thinking it would be a very interesting project to take on.

I'm picturing a small PCB with not much more than a microSD card socket, voltage regulation, a set of differential drivers and receivers, and a microcontroller. The communications protocol between the controller and the drive are explained in some detail in the TK50 technical manual, although I am sure there are some missing pieces that I would have to discover. I also suspect that it would not be terribly hard to extend the functionality to that of a TK70.

What do you think? Does anyone in the community feel this would be a useful tool? I have seen a few TK50 tape archives around, and there might be more to be found.

Cheers, Jon.

 

[Roland Huisman]

I think the Qbone or unibone is suitable to emulate such a drive and controller at once. But someone has to make the driver for it. Maybe someone is already working on that?

I haven't heard of a drive only emulator.

Regards, Roland

 

[daver2]

Neither have I (a drive only emulator).

The QBUS SCSI emulators have tape emulation capability. This would be the way to go to make life easier. The CMD controllers support either SCSI disk, SCSI tape or both (depending upon the firmware fitted).

Dave

 

[Joerg Hoppe]

Josh Dersch made the QUniBone MSCP driver ... eternal thanks again! He planned for an TMSCP too ... but this seems to be more difficult, badly documented and not of such importance.

 

[AK6DN]

Hello All,

I've been working with a couple of TK50 tape drives, and I have them working with my PDP-11/53. I can read, write, and delete files, and I can make backups of the hard drives. The things that are hard to come by are actual tape cartridges with useful data on them. So, I am wondering, has anyone built a TK50 emulator that would hold files on a microSD card and would interface to the M7546 controller module? If such a thing does exist, I haven't been able to find it... if it does not exist, I'm thinking it would be a very interesting project to take on.

I'm picturing a small PCB with not much more than a microSD card socket, voltage regulation, a set of differential drivers and receivers, and a microcontroller. The communications protocol between the controller and the drive are explained in some detail in the TK50 technical manual, although I am sure there are some missing pieces that I would have to discover. I also suspect that it would not be terribly hard to extend the functionality to that of a TK70.

What do you think? Does anyone in the community feel this would be a useful tool? I have seen a few TK50 tape archives around, and there might be more to be found.

Cheers, Jon.

Someone could certainly develop a new microcode file for the ZuluSCSI (or even SCSI2SD I guess) and you could just drop a new SCSI tape emulator .bin fine on the SD card and away you go.

The full sources are here: https://github.com/ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware for the SCSI disk support. Just needs a "minor update" for SCSI tape support.