DEC in the UK and Dilog

[Steven M. Schultz]

Hi -

> From: Kevin Murrell <kevin at xpuppy.demon.co.uk>

	Linebreaks please?  72-80 columns would be nice ;)

> Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. 

	Not sure if they're still in the DEC business but at one time they
	were one of the major 3rd party vendors making Qbus and Unibus
	controllers.

> Having acquired two Dilog machines they appear to actually both be PDP-11s.
> Dilog seemed to have produced DEC compatible hardware for the UK market.   

	I never heard of Dilog making entire systems.  You'd typically buy
	the box from DEC (but without any controllers or as few as you could
	order a system from DEC with) and then stuff it with Emulex or Dilog
	adaptors.

> In particular the smaller machine was known as a Vixen.

	Sounds like an OEM somewhere was buying bare systems from DEC and
	placing Dilog cards in them.

> This would appear to be a  PDP-11/73 with the DEC M8192 processor card.

	Indeed it is.

> Indeed the processor card is the only actual DEC product.
> Colleagues that used this machine described it as the portable PDP-11 - 
>however we are not talking laptop here :)

	What are the dimensions?  It likely is a BA-23 box.  "Transportable"
	would be appropriate - unless you've a *huge* (and sturdy) lap ;)

>  The 'Vixen' has a Dilog disk controller with a Seagate ST251 attached.
> The machine is currently running DSM-11 and recognises the drive as a RA81.
> I hope to produce a list relating the Dilog part numbers to original DEC 
> part numbers.

	It was/is common for controller cards to call anything over ~150mb
	an 'ra81' just to give the software a diskid it knew about.

	On the various Dilog cards you should find (either on the spine/handles
	or the card's front/back) a name.  Something like "DQ696" (a disk
	controller) or "DQ132" (tape controller).  If you can find any numbers
	at all let us know and we can probably id them for you.

	Steven Schultz
	sms at moe.2bsd.com


Received: (from major at localhost)
	by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA04178
	for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:52:45 +1000 (EST)