Historical development

The BeMicro CV board based project of the RL01/RL02 Emulator is completed
BUT
The BeMicro CV board is (currently?) not available (Sep. 2016)


The new design ony needs +5Volt and is based on the chips AM26LS32(RX) and AM26LS31(TX)
Download the project from my homepage: BeMicro_RL02_DISK_EMULATOR_V4.zip
There are all informations and sources included.

The operation of the RL01/RL02 Emulator is best viewed with a VIDEO via YouTube, however, in the first version, based on the DE1-Board.



A PCB board has been also developed. Here is a view of the prototyp:


This board has been developed in cooperation with the Computer Museum Muenchen (CMM).
In addition, a software wrapper is still needed.
For more information, plaese contact the
Computer Museum Muenchen



STATUS
The project initially is stopped because the BeMicro CV board no longer is available.
That's too bad
BUT
The project will be continued based on the DE0-Nano-SoC board



Info & project history

The new version of the RL01/RL02 Emulator is based on the BeMicro CV Baord and has the following improvements and enhancements:

Supports simultaneously 4 RL drives ( DL0 bis DL3 )
Serial Interface and/or WLAN support with ESP8266
Micro SD Card support
Many FW/SW improvements and enhancements
Using level-Converter(74LVC(8T)245) instead resistor network

STATUS:
The Prototyp shown in the picture is fully up and running . Currently, a PCB board is developed
OPEN:
The required RL-Bus receiver/transmitter Chips ( 75107/75113) are hardly available and also a power of -5Volt is needed. An attempt is made to replace these chips by newer chips and the PCB board be adapted accordingly.













**** Project-Flow ****

After more than 2 years of development work I have completed the project.
Nobody could believe it but I just did it
DEC RL02 disk drive from 1980 compared to the DE1 board of 2012



FPGA based DEC RL01 DISK-DRIVE Emulator
Basically, the design of my DEC RL01 disk drive Emulator works like a
Solid-State-Drive(SSD), interfacing the DEC RL01 serial bus signals (1980) to the current FPGA technology (2012). The Emulator is based on the DE1 Development and Education Board with Altera Cyclone® II EP2C20F484 FPGA. The DE1 board is configured with 8 MB SD-RAM only. This limitation means that only a RL01 disk-drive can be simulated with a standard DE1-board(Except, the 8MB-RAM will be replaced by 16MB). An additional interface board is necessary to be able to connect the DEC RL01/02 disk-bus to the FPGA board, because the DEC RL01/02 disk-bus design was based on +/- 5Volt differential bus driver/receiver.
A detailed technical description can be found here (
new V.2.01 ): README
A
VIDEO is also available via YouTube.
In only
5 minutes your DE1 Board is a RL01 disk drive Emulator! Download flash.zip and follow the instruction in the README:TXT file.
Download project :
DE1_RL01_Emulator_V2_01.zip

FPGA based DEC RL02/RL01 DISK-DRIVE Emulator
Next generation of this project is based on the DE0-Nano Development and Education Board with Altera Cyclone® IV 4C22 FPGA and 32MB SD-RAM ( left part of the picture ). It is now possible to simulate a RL02 disk-drive ( 10.4 MB). The project was developed with Quartus version 11.1 and QSYS with full flash support and FAT32 support. It is now possible to exchange all the RL data worldwide. The disadvantage is, that more effort for the interface board is required because the DE0-Nano board is equipped with no SD-card and no serial-line interface.
A detailed technical description can be found here (
new V.3.04 ): README
In only 5 minutes your DE0-Nano Board is a RL02/RL01 disk drive Emulator!
Download
flash.zip and follow the instruction in the README:TXT file.
Download project : DE0_RL02_Emulator_V304.zip
Project contains a bootable RT-11XM (S) V05.04 C system with RT-11 BASIC , based on FAT32 file

Version V.3.03 : README Download flash.zip and follow the instruction in the README:TXT file.
Download project :
DE0_RL02_Emulator_V3_03.zip

The entire project is open source. It consists of a kit (zip file) and contains among others, like the entire source code in the form of Verilog-programs, C-programs and schematics. Everything is set up ready to use in an Altera Quartus environment. If the direct download does not work, please send me an e-mail: Reinhard.Heuberger@pdp11gy.com . You will receive an invitation from my online center and so, you can start immediately the download. The entire project lives or dies by the feedback I get from You. I can not do everything alone. Cooperation and exchange of views is very important to me.