[pups] AVIV vs. DigiData tape controller

[Gregory R. Travis]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Carl Lowenstein wrote:

> > Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:28:41 -0500 (EST)
> > From: "Gregory R. Travis" <greg at ciswired.com>
> > To: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au
> > Subject: [pups] AVIV vs. DigiData tape controller
> > 
> > It appears to support Pertec formatted tape drives.  It has two
> > cable interfaces, labeled Pertec P1 and Pertec P2.
> > 
> > I currently have a DigiData Pertec formatted 9-track drive plugged into a
> > DigiData controller on my QBUS 11/83.  Works fine.   Now I'd like to use
> > the drive to bootstrap the 11/44.
> > 
> > The DigiData drive's cables are both 49-pin ribbons.  Sure enough,
> > the DigiData controller's cable headers are also 49-pin (what a wonderful
> > world, eh?)
> > However, the AVIV controller's cable headers are 59-pin!
> 
> Are you sure those numbers aren't 50 and 60, respectively?

You're absolutely right.  I just read the pin #s off the boards
next to the connector.  They printed 49 and 59 but, of course, there's
the other row of pins.

> For what it's worth, there were two distinctly different "Pertec"
> interfaces.  They might be called Early Pertec and Late Pertec.
> For Early Pertec, the eventual cable breakout to the drives went
> to three connectors, Read data, Write data, and Control.  Possibly
> the AVIV controller was meant to be used with a custom cable set
> to match a "three-connector" drive.

I >THINK< I've got that covered.  The "early pertec", as I recall, are
also referred to as unformatted and consist, as you say, of three cables.
I've got a Western Digital UNIBUS TM11 controller that uses three
cables.

The later pertec are referred to as formatted and consist of just two cables.
My DigiData controllers use just two cables to my DigiData drive.

Now this AVIV controller has TWO connectors along its top.  That's for
sure.  But the connectors have each got more pins than the DigiData
controllers do.  As you say, I guess it's possible that the AVIV is
actually an unformatted controller that takes two "large" cables/connectors
and breaks them out later into three smaller cables/connectors.

But that would truly suck.

greg

Gregory Travis
Cornerstone Information Systems ATS
greg at ciswired.com
812 330 4361 ext. 18