Re: KA410 Boot Failure With TKZ-50

[Dave McGuire <mcguire%neurotica.com@localhost>]

On 6/14/20 2:33 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> The KA410 (or RD disk formatting unit as it was also known :). It was
>> indeed easy to confuse a uVAX 2000 with its tape box from the right
>> angle.
> 
> Right. Since low level disk formatting was not always easy to accomplish
> (DEC wasn't exactly sharing the tools freely), the uVAX 2000 was a good
> choice for that task, since it had the capability built into the boot
> monitor, and was even able to do various different non-standard
> formatting runs.

  The only problem with using a '2000 as a disk formatter for
RQDX3-based systems is that the formatting, while otherwise compatible,
is done with a higher interleave factor, so when moved to the RQDX3 the
data transfer rates aren't quite as high as they could be.

> Yes. And I also know that there was someone on the internet who created
> a different set of boot roms for the 2000, so that you could boot from a
> SCSI disk (or atleast my brain says I remember such a thing).

  Yes, I remember it too, I think I have a copy of that code somewhere.
 Someone else, or possibly the same person, wrote a driver for VMS that
allowed the use of disks on that SCSI bus.

               -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA