Tape drive talks to my P390, preparing cards for sale, and getting 240V outlet to run my IBM 1130 and Telex tape drives

CONNECTING DEC TAPE DRIVE TO P390 AND TESTING FROM A RUNNING 390 IMAGE

I intend to use the Digital TSZ-07 tape drive as a mainframe 3420 tape drive which can be accessed by mainframe software on my P390. One of the capabilities of the P390 system was the ability to map a SCSI tape drive to a 3420 inside the mainframe. 

I connected the SCSI cable from the TSZ-07 to my Adaptec SCSI card on the P390 (the xServer hosting it), booted and verified that Adaptec saw the drive. I then fired up OS/2 which hosts the P390 system, started a mainframe instance and from the configuration file discovered that drive 181 on the mainframe image was hooked to the SCSI tape drive.

I inserted by blank tape into the drive, loaded it, and made the tape drive go online. I then did an IPL of unit x181 which resulted in the tape spinning looking for data to transfer to mainframe memory. Since there was nothing written on this particular tape, it spun for a while and timed out. Still I take this as evidence that I now have a physical 9 track drive to use with MVS, VM and DOS.

SETTING UP BATCHES OF CARDS FOR SALE OR DONATION

I bought some mailer boxes that hold batches up about 1000 punched cards securely. I begin the process of loading up interesting collections of cards that I can offer for sale on eBay. For instance, I will have a DMS2 (the 1130 operating software) load deck, the various compiler load files, and several major applications ready for purchase. 

GETTING 240V OUTLET READY IN WORKSHOP

The workshop came with plenty of 120V 20A circuits but no 240V outlet. Both my IBM 1130 system and the Telex tape drives require 240V to operate. Both of them can operate using an L6-20 plug because their current demands are not very high. I am getting the L6-20 outlet hooked up and will soon be able to works on any machine in my shop.