Introduction and RK05J Drive cabling

Joshua Stetson saburwulf at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 16:00:54 CST 2016


Hi there, long time viewer, first time poster. First an introduction:

My name is Joshua Stetson and I'm a software engineer by trade. My earliest
memories have always involved computers starting with a DOS based Zenith
8088 where I played some of my first games.

My first foray into "classic" computing was on a Commodore 64 which my
Uncle gave me while I was still in Jr. High. I'd already been introduced to
programming at an early age, so this machine was an absolute treat to me at
the time as it was my first step into assembly language. As time
progressed, my interests turned older and I began a collection of S-100
gear including an IMSAI 8080 and a SOL-20.

Over the past couple of years, I've managed to work back even further,
piecing together a PDP-8/e system from various parts collected over the
past 4 years and now I have a fully working 8/e including 32kw of core and
an RK05E card set. I've been running the system using Kyle Owen's
os8diskserver and David Gesswein's sendtape utilities which both work
absolutely wonderfully. It was amazing to be able to run Adventure on a
native system!

I'd like to send a shout out to Kyle for the os8diskserver, that is some
pretty awesome work there. David for his software and archive of DEC
documentation which was indispensable for helping me debug a few boards and
get everything running and tested. I also want to thank Vincent Slyngstad
for his help and support on some questions.

Now to my ask:

Recently I've found a pair of RK05J drives and a few disk packs. One of my
drives seems to be in fully working order, the other the blower is not
working, so I'm working on fixing that right now.

I'm currently missing cabling for connect these drives to the RK05E board
set. If anyone happens to have an extra cable set they'd be willing to part
with so I can bring these beasts back to life, I'd appreciate it!

Ideally I would like to find the following:
7009026 Cable which is two ribbon cables with a M933B or C flip chip on the
other end
The interface cable between the two drives: BC11A
The terminator card M930

At minimum, I'm pretty sure I'd only need the first cable to run one of the
drives, but I'd appreciate any help from those who have more experience.

Also, I don't have a rack for this equipment yet, so I'm running it all
tabletop, but I'm in the market for a rack + rails (I only have the rails
for the equipment, but not the ones that mount to the rack itself. Any
leads on more 16-sector packs would also be appreciated! Also, still hoping
to get the extended arithmetic boards, RTC, and possibly a TSC8 Timesharing
option as I have 4 SLUs and would love to try out some timesharing.

On a side note, I'm looking to perhaps sell or trade my SOL-20 sometime
soon. It's 100% working as I restored it about 3 years ago. It works great,
but I'm looking to part with all of my S-100 equipment to focus more on DEC.

Thanks!


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