Heath QBUS diskette controller card

[Lee K. Gleason]

I just got an old QBUS enclosure. In amongst the cards it had in it was
one of the dual height diskette controller cards that Heathkit sold with
the H-11 version of the LSI-11 system.

Is this controller capable of driving diskette systems other than the
Heath one? Or does the Heath version of the dual RX-01 contain some
additional stuff in it that is needed to talk to this card?
--
Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
Control-G Consultants
***@comcast.net

[Bob Kaplow]

Post by Lee K. Gleason
I just got an old QBUS enclosure. In amongst the cards it had in it was
one of the dual height diskette controller cards that Heathkit sold with
the H-11 version of the LSI-11 system.
Is this controller capable of driving diskette systems other than the
Heath one? Or does the Heath version of the dual RX-01 contain some
additional stuff in it that is needed to talk to this card?

I had an H11 but got a real disk drive instead of the one from Heathkit. I
wish I kept the thing as a collectors item. IIRC there was a patch to the
HT-11 OS so that it would only work with the Heath controller, and not a
generic RX01, to prevent the OS from being used on "real" DEC gear. Don't
know if whatever was "special" about the drive / controller was sufficient
to keep it working with real RT-11.

And IIRC HT-11 was based on RT-11 V2C or whatever the predecessor of V3 was.
SJ monitor only, no FB.

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

... IIRC there was a patch to the
HT-11 OS so that it would only work with the Heath controller, and not a
generic RX01, to prevent the OS from being used on "real" DEC gear.

It is likely that the patch was needed simply because the drive/
controller didn't act exactly like a DEC RX01/RXV11.

[Bob Kaplow]

Post by Douglas A. Gwyn

... IIRC there was a patch to the
HT-11 OS so that it would only work with the Heath controller, and not a
generic RX01, to prevent the OS from being used on "real" DEC gear.

It is likely that the patch was needed simply because the drive/
controller didn't act exactly like a DEC RX01/RXV11.

No, the patch was so that the inexpensive HT-11 release wouldn't run on
"real" DEC hardware. I never tried it, but I understand that real RT-11
would run on the drive. It certainly ran on the H11 processor, because
that's what I ran.