new disk controllers for DEC platforms (was Re: Q-bus to CF)

[Jerome H. Fine]

 >Ethan Dicks wrote:

>>On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 07:18:51AM -0800, Bob Armstrong wrote:
>
>>All true, although it might not be as bad as it sounds.  There are a lot
>>of people on this list, and some of them used old DEC computers and
>>operating systems.  Some of them might already know how to write a driver
>>for one of these OSes - get a group of them together and you'll have all the
>>old OSes covered.
>>
>True, but there are a lot of dusty neurons to polish before much progress
>could be made.  I haven't written a device driver for DEC hardware in
>over 15 years (I've worked on Ultrix, and VMS 4.x and VMS 5.x, myself).
>  
>
Jerome Fine replies:

As I just stated, I am up and running for an RT-11 version of any device 
driver.

>>... the first thing you should do is
>>hack up simh to include emulation of your proposed new "RQATA" interface
>>card; then you could start writing drivers before the hardware was even
>>done, and simh is a great tool for debugging the driver software.
>>
>That's an excellent suggestion (and I say that having helped Bob Supnik
>debug one of _his_ drivers long ago).
>  
>
The suggestion I made was to include john Wilson's HD: device drive in 
SIMH.  Since I
already have produced most of the RT-11 device drivers that would be 
needed, an HD: in
SIMH would be off and running immediately.  Is anyone here capable of 
writing the
HD: code for SIMH?  I guess that if I had some help, the way to go would 
be to modify
the RK05 or the RL02 emulation.

By the way, does SIMH allow for an equivalent to the RAM: device that 
Ersatz-11 uses:
MOUNT  DU0:  RAM: /SIZE:65536 - which provides a 65536 block RAM: disk

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
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