27 Nov
2022
27 Nov
'22
12:12 p.m.
Hi!
Probably the best way to get an 11 going is to take it by big steps
first, then when that fails switch to one small step at a time and
change as few things as possible between steps.
That said you might want to start by making sure the RL02's come up
first. Open them up, make sure they are clean, the filters pass air and
are not destroyed by mice, unpark the heads by dropping the head lock,
things like that. Disconnect the power supply from the board, turn them
on, make sure the supplies are putting out the right voltage and the
fans come up. Plug things back in and see if the fault and ready lights
come on when you power it up.
Small simple steps. Check the pack to make sure it's not dinged or
damaged, check the heads with a mirror to see if they have streaks of
oxide on them or are bent, stuff like that.
Cable them up (remember the terminator), plug in the card, make sure the
ribbon cable is inserted the right way so pin 1 on the card goes to pin
1 in the drive, then turn on the computer then the drive. The fault
light should be out which means the drives are talking to the controller.
Stuff like that. Where are you located?
On 11/27/2022 12:48 PM, Devin D via cctalk wrote:
Greetings,
Been a while since i have posted here. I have several PDP11 systems and
peripherals. I picked the original lot of a system 34 and related tech
in Miami FL a couple years back, and have since found several more pdp
11/34 machines, and a pdp 11/05, 11/85, and others.
It has been a goal to get the original PDP 11/34 system up and running,
however my job schedule kept getting in the way of my repair efforts,
making it easy to loose track of where i was at with the repair
progress. Thankfully i no longer work in a datacenter in a 10 hour
overnight shift, so it should be much easier to devote my time to this
repair.
I am looking for advice to get the 11/34 system up and running. I have
started to put together a site to document my progress, to stay on track
with the repair effort. The system has 2 rl02 drives, and an attached 9
track tape drive. I had worked to repair a power supply issue at first,
there was a problem with the main transformer, as well as one of the
smaller voltage "bricks". Thankfully i have many systems and i was just
able to swap in the needed working parts.
So this is about as far as I got, I had a minimal config of the 11/34
machine running, with not much more than the cpu, and a serial card to
talk to attached terminal. Power supply works, and i was able to toggle
in programs from the front panel to output characters to the attached
terminal.
I believe the next logical step was to try and attach the rl02
controllers, and see if the disk packs still have working installs of
RSX installed. I am not sure how to proceed with this though.
I have mainly been following the advice of Paul Anderson, who has been a
godsend in regard to advice and guidance with getting these old systems
fixed up. I hope that if i keep a log of the repair effort on my site,
it will allow me to pick up where i leave off with the repair much more
easily.
So that is the present condition of the machine. Good power supply, can
toggle in simple programs to print to the attached terminal. Any advice
on how to proceed is much appreciated. I Need to get an itemized list
of what hardware and cards i have on hand, and post that here so its
understood what i have.
Thanks,
Devin D.