TU58 EMULATOR FIRMWARE V1

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TU58 EMULATOR FIRMWARE V1.2 17-MAY-1996

Copyright (C) May 1996 Robert Armstrong, Milpitas CA
All rights reserved.

DESCRIPTION

This software is an emulator for a Digital Equipment TU58 DECtape II drive and runs on an 8051 based micro controller system specially designed for this application. In addition to the 8051 MPU and a serial interface, the hardware provides for up to 512K bytes of non-volatile battery backed up SRAM. This SRAM serves as the storage for one (256K) or two (512K) emulated TU58 tapes. All normal RSP messages are supported, including MRSP and bootstrap, and the current version has been tested with VMS and RT11.

SWITCH SETTINGS

The TU58 emulator contains a four position DIP switch, of which the software assigns switches 1 and 2 to write protect one or both logical units:

SW1

SW2

  
Open   Write enable unit 0
Closed   Write lock unit 0
  Open Write enable unit 1
  Closed Write lock unit 1

Switches 3 and 4 are used to select the RSP/MRSP baud rate:

SW3

SW4

Baud
Open Open 4.8 kBps
Open Closed 9.6 kBps
Closed Open 19.2 kBps
Closed Closed 38.4 kBps

DIAGNOSTICS

The TU58 emulator contains two LEDs on the front of the board.  These LEDs normally show drive activity in the same way as a real TU58, but immediately after power up these LEDs are used to show the results of the self test:

LED 0

LED 1

  
on  on  CPU, EPROM, HC373 or address/data bus failure
on  blink (slow) SRAM failure
blink (fast) blink (fast) backup battery failure (*)
off  off  self test pass 

(*) This state is a "soft" error. The drive will respond to the host and the LEDs will stop blinking and resume their normal drive activity indication as soon as RSP initialization is complete.

REVISION HISTORY

When

Who

What
6-May-96 RLA  finish original implementation
17-May-96 RLA  add support for MRSP (needed for VMS and RSX!)
zero fill writes which are not complete blocks
 

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