The Idea:

Maintenance of the software from the years 1980 - 1990

The Need:

Porting the old disk technology to new technology

The Execution:

Simulation of Disk Drives based on FPGA

Overview
JULY 2019: The latest projects: DEC RL01/RL02 Emulator and MFM-Disk Emulator

Status , April 2021
Both products for RL01/RL02-Disk and MFM-Disk are now able to operate as Emulator in Slave-Mode and as Reader/Cloner in Master mode.However, a separate interface board is currently still required for each product.
Another goal was a complete PDP-11 system emulation. In my opinion, the effort to keep a real system such as a PDP-11/40 running is not in relation to the time required. My idea: I wanted to add a DE10-Nano board with my interface boards to an existing PDP-11/40 . Based on the SIMH emulator, I also wanted to control the front panel and, with my development, the external I / O devices, such as RL02 disks, MFM disks and serial interfaces. An interesting alternative project would be based on the PiDP-11 system, if the Raspberry Pi is replaced by the DE10 nano board. However, there is still a lot to be done here, including in the SIMH project. I cannot do this alone, cooperation would be necessary. It would also be important:
Merge of both interface boards:
This leaves a complete PIO with 40 pins. Then, it could be used for additional projects as described above Unfortunately there was/is no feedback and since the development of a PCB board is relatively expensive I refrain from continuing with the development of the new PCB board. This is very frustrating because there is no cooperation at all. I have published my developments complete with all sources and documentation at GitHub and on my homepage . I was only concerned with the preservation of the old software and I think that I succeeded. I am now a pensioner and in the rest of my life other things have become much more important and the further development of my projects is no longer in my primary focus and is disappearing more and more.