RL02 meets BSD

[Beastly Wolf]

For various reasons I can not give you the hardware config of the
first system (Okay okay! I DO not want to crawl back in behind it 
under all the cabling and short out the house again because I did 
something aggravating to the power outlet in the process the last time
I was in there) but the only thing I did to that one was to add the RLV12 at 
the bottom. The system worked before with all devices and did so afterwards 
too except for the RLV-controller.

The second system looks like this:
  A	  B	  C	  D
1 CPU-----CPU-----CPU-----CPU
2 MEM-----MEM-----MEM-----MEM
3 RLV12---RLV12---RLV12---RLV12
4 TKQ50---TKQ50   DQNA----DQNA
5 SI------SI------SI------SI
GLUED BACKPLANE FROM HERE AND DOWN
(this used to be a VAX-station II.
Remember them and cringe!)

SI is a quad ESDI controller for one or two external drives from System 
Industries.
On the other system I have a dual SI controller for RA81 clones (Eagle).
There I DO have an RQDX-3 above the RLV12 but not so here.
Grant chain on the uVAX bus looks like this:
1AB-2AB-3AB-4AB-4CD-5CD-5AB(and so on).
The first three slots are "granted" only in the AB pair.
The RLV12 does work with grants only on the AB pair however.
It works fine in my three button 9 slot 22 bit backplane (classical
PDP11 vintage rack mount cab) and there the grant chain goes ONLY
on the AB side stright down (BA11-N and H9273).
So, no, I do not think we have a grant problem.

However, does the RLV12 handle drive interrupt like the RL11 does?
It could be that ULTRIX only supports the UNIBUS controller and
not the Qbus.. And if so, is there a fix for this out there?
And if not, how do I get hold of enough NetBSD to get a uVAX up
enough to have the config above, being able to network and being able
to reach both the SI controller and the RLV12?
Come to think of it, most of the no nonsense hard hat industry type
PDP11's I've seen (and especially the OEM-ed ones) got some sort
of winchester emulating one or several RL02s. Often combined with some
sort of QIC-type tape recorder with secret density.
To get ANYTHING on those rigs, I think you HAVE to do it the dd way
after having moved the controller to a bigger system....

Amazing how things can turn...
I used to spend a lot of time in trying to get away from the 16 bit
operating systems into the wonderful world of 32 bit. Now I am struggling
even harder to get back in there again. =)
Fun is not always bigger, faster better!
/Lars

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Tim Shoppa wrote:

> > The only other things I can think of are bus grant problems
> > &c.
> 
> This certainly seems likely to me, too.  What cards are in the
> machine, and in which slots?  What are the switches on the RLV12
> set to?
> 
> > If you're using an RQDX3 in the same machine, bear in mind
> > that it doesn't pass the grants, and so should be the last 
> > device on the bus. 
> 
> I think you're thinking of the RQDX1/2 here.
> 
> Tim.
> 

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