The 6341 Tape Transport has recently arrived from the USA, it was found in an abandoned furniture factory along with a MV/2000DC and a number of Zebra packs and Nova PCB’s. I suspect it was only ever used to facilitate application and data transfer from the Nova to the MV/2000 which replaced it.
The unit is in fact a 6125 at the front with a modified 6125 PSU at the rear and an additional Interface PCB which converts SCSI to the NOVA interface signalling to and from the F/C/S PCB on the 6125 transport.
This unit is younger than the 6125 I have however because it has been abandoned for such a long period in an uncontrolled environment is has not aged as well with signs of rusting on chassis screws and motor cases. Luckily due to the enclosed nature of the chassis no rodents or such like have ventured in!
Here are some pictures post delivery:
On arrival in the UK I was interested to see how DG provided a SCSI interface to the MV/2000 which at that time was a relatively new interface standard. They achieved this by mounting an additional PCB ‘MBX Tape Controller’ on the side of the chassis. One side of the PCB presents itself to the outside via two DB50 connectors and the other side presents a 50pin IDC ribbon connection to the 6125 F/C/S PCB. DG utilised an Adaptec AIC300C SCSI to TTL IC along with an AMD 8031 microcontroller and code in a 2764 EPROM to perform the translation between the vastly different interfaces.
The PSU has been modified (from the 6125) to provide an addition power source for the Interface PCB.
Lots more to follow……