On 7/31/2017 2:09 AM, Don North via cctalk wrote: > On 7/30/2017 7:47 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote: >> So, I have lately been using PDP11GUI to retrieve images of RK05 disk >> packs and to write images to these packs on a PDP-11. This is >> awesome, but its a bit frustrating that it takes a couple hours to >> read or write an image this way. >> >> I do, however, have a couple of DR11-C parallel interface cards. It >> occurred to me that it might be pretty straightforward to interface >> one of these to an FPGA eval card, and this would give me a much >> higher-bandwidth way to move data on and off the PDP-11 (in fact, the >> RK11 could even be run in non-increment-address-mode pointed at the >> DR11-C, which would be pretty speedy.) >> >> Another approach might be to interface the DR11 directly to a >> 1284-to-USB adapter. This would only be eight bits wide, so you >> couldn't use the direct RK11/DR11 NPR hack, but it would still be a >> lot faster than 9600 baud serial. >> >> Before I put too much thought into either of these, I thought I'd ping >> here to see if anybody else has already interfaced a DR11 in either of >> these two ways? >> >> cheers, >> --FritzM. > > Or interface the DR11-C parallel port to an Arduino (I like the Mega2560 > boards myself) that has an SDcard shield. > > Then just write a bit of Arduino code to interface to the DR11-C port > and write data to the SDcard using the SDfat library. > > When done, just sneakernet the SDcard over to your PC and copy the files. > > On the PDP-11 side just write a little macro11 program that reads all > blocks of the disk and dumps them to the DR11-C, with appropriate > handshaking, of course. > > Don > >
I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple (in my case, perl, program to talk to the final destination device. I have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA) to the Arduino. The PDP-11 program I wrote allows one to specify a device or file via the Command String Interpreter (CSI). I can post all the code to my Google Drive if someone is interested. It isn't very elegant, and sometimes one has to restart one side or the other to get the handshaking off on the right foot (there is no timeout in the code), but once it starts, the transfer has always been error-free, as determined by checksums after the fact. JRJ
