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Diablo Series 30 connectors

BitWiz said:
Well, I guess I will have to rely on George and the rest of you to come up with some kind of adapter or substitute.
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Have designed an adapter to convert from Diablo pins or sockets to the RK8-E dual 40-pin flat cable interface. The PCBs are predicted to arrive today.

BitWiz said:
Did anyone figure out the differences in the terminators?
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  • Looked at the terminators. 11175 family has socket pins on the terminator, 11174 has pins on the terminator.
  • I made a table in Excel that can be sorted a bunch of different ways. This was quite handy to check that the table was correct. Can't upload an Excel file here, but it's on github: https://github.com/G-Wiley/RK05_Emu...lo_Adapters/Diablo Terminator Tables v00.xlsx
  • Took the liberty of adding leading zeros to "TRACK ADDR BIT" and "SECTOR BIT" signals so they sort well. It's interesting to see how specific groups of signals are terminated and have the pullup/pulldown resistors installed or not installed.
  • A resistor not installed is in light gray and strikethrough font.
The table was based on three terminators:
  1. Al's photo of the 11174-03 linked in this post: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/diablo-series-30-connectors.1247923/post-1385618
  2. @1944GPW 's photo of an 11175-03 in this post: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/diablo-series-30-connectors.1247923/post-1386965
  3. an actual 11175-04 on loan to my from @BitWiz (it's been extremely helpful as a reference for the adapter design, BTW)
I'm note sure what type of terminator should be built. It would be possible to combine the Diablo Adapter boards (without the headers) and the Diablo 11174 for "S" or 11175 for "P" to create a terminator. Is there really interest in a terminator though?

For me, I would just have an adapter to the Diablo Model 31, then connect an RK05 emulator as a second drive and put an M930 terminator in the emulator. Basically, avoid the Winchester/Diablo domain as much as possible, just adapt to it when necessary.
 

Attachments

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Oh, almost forgot, one more thing about the Diablo terminators... there are a couple of mistakes in the schematics. There's a resistor with an incorrect reference designator on each schematic. I checked all versions of the maintenance manuals in this folder:
and the mistakes are on all versions.

The corrected schematics are attached.
 

Attachments

This is awesome work George, it just keeps getting better!
An idea for MRAC14 workalike power connectors: in the same fashion as your MRAC42 PCBs you showed earlier, could you possibly add one, two or three 14-pin PCB segments as pre-drilled snap-off pieces on the side of those boards? I can't imagine it would be any extra complication for the board fab house.
 
gwiley said:
I'm note sure what type of terminator should be built.
Click to expand...

I had suggested just eliminating the outgoing connectors on the last board in the chain and replacing it with a piggyback terminator.
You eliminate the need for an MRAC for the termination that way, but you'd have to bring over a source for +5v power to the piggyback board

14 pin MRAC connectors are more common than 42 and you'd use solder socket pins for a power cable
www.ebay.com

WINCHESTER CONNECTOR MALE FEMALE HOUSING MRE MRAC 14 21 PIN 50 M F | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for WINCHESTER CONNECTOR MALE FEMALE HOUSING MRE MRAC 14 21 PIN 50 M F at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
 
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Al Kossow said:
I had suggested just eliminating the outgoing connectors on the last board in the chain and replacing it with a piggyback terminator.
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True. This could be done, so a terminator with a dual 40-pin socket connector could do the job.

There are a number of different Diablo variants though, I suppose people could populate whichever resistors they feel are necessary. I don't know enough to provide guidance for that. e.g. when to use the electrical equivalent of the 11175-03 vs the 11175-04.

Al Kossow said:
You eliminate the need for an MRAC for the termination that way, but you'd have to bring over a source for +5v power to the piggyback board
Click to expand...
Fortunately, Diablo solved this problem. There's a pin on the MRAC42 that supplies power to the terminator.

Al Kossow said:
14 pin MRAC connectors are more common than 42 and you'd use solder socket pins for a power cable
www.ebay.com

WINCHESTER CONNECTOR MALE FEMALE HOUSING MRE MRAC 14 21 PIN 50 M F | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for WINCHESTER CONNECTOR MALE FEMALE HOUSING MRE MRAC 14 21 PIN 50 M F at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
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So, I'm still looking for an MRAC14S to be able to power the Diablo drive.

In the ebay link above, there are 5 different Winchester connectors. The last one in the pick list is a 14 pin socket connector but it's an MRE14S. The MRE series uses smaller pins than the MRAC which uses 0.062" pins, so an MRE14S (0.040" sockets) won't fit onto an MRAC14P (0.062" pins).

Thought about buying another MRACxxS where xx is some number of pins, and using those socket pins in an MRAC14 "shell-only" or "body-only" connector.

It may be that opening up the back of the drive and connecting three AWG 14 wires is a good temporary solution.
 
thunter0512 said:
Thanks @1944GPW and @jdreesen for the photos.
These Diablo terminators and the cabling look surprisingly complex and expensive. DEC chose a more sensible and cheaper path with the RK05 terminators and cabling.
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The MRAC was a surprisingly popular connector "back in the day". For example, it was used on the Dataproducts 2200-series drum printers, many of which showed up as DEC LPxx printers.

Also, consider the original cost of the disk options for the PDP-8/-11. Connectors and cables were a tiny part of that price.
 
the connector attached to the board is for a Model 40
I'm not quite sure what the flip chip and Model 30 cable is for
 
NeXT said:
I"m going to bump this thread because gwiley has pulled through and released an amazing set of adapters and terminators to his GitHub.

github.com

RK05_Emulator_Tester_System_v2/Diablo_Adapters at main · G-Wiley/RK05_Emulator_Tester_System_v2

Contribute to G-Wiley/RK05_Emulator_Tester_System_v2 development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Well done!
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Thanks for the kind words and for mentioning the updated adapter material.

I should mention that these are yet to be tested but it seemed like it might be useful to anyone with Diablo drives.

I put these in the emulator repository but the adapters can be used without the emulator
 
Hello, I am also trying to setup my Series 30 Diablo to my PDP-11. Does anyone here know if a Dilog DQ200 can be made to interface to a Series 30? It seems to be compatible with the RK05. Does anyone have a manual for the DQ200?
 
JohnDelano said:
According to the field service guide, it emulates extended RK11/RK05. I figured it was worth a try. It is also supposed to be compatible with the CDC 9448-96
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I have been unable to locate a DQ100 controller or anything else compatible with the Diablo Series 30.
 
The 9448 is indeed going to be an SMD interface device, so yes it would be compatible with the DQ200.
Diablo stuff and DEC wasn't entirely common per-say. They briefly used it for the RK02/03 before they came out with the RK05 which turned out to be far more popular in DECland and never looked back.
 
@JohnDelano I am in the same situation as you regarding hooking up a Diablo 31 and have been looking for a DQ100 for some years without success.
I too looked long and hard at the DQ200 that was on eBay, intrigued by 'emulates extended RK11/RK05' but after perusing the DQ215 manual on Bitsavers - a near identical board to the DQ200, AFAIK just ROM changes - there is not a single mention about RK03, RK05 or RK11 in it so I gave it a miss. I presume you snagged that board so I hope you find something more about it and letting us know.
 
It's too bad nobody has made a bridge from the Diablo Series 30 to something like MFM or SCSI using a arduino, or something more powerful.
 
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