Okay, I've been working with my SCSI tape stuff and I'd like someone to
check a .TAP image on a VAX VMS SIMH setup. Less than a meg, but
verification would mean that I've got things right (or wrong).
Tape image (zipped) linked via Box.
--Chuck
I've linked 1 file to this email:
* sample.zip (345 KB) hosted on Box:
https://app.box.com/s/dy51vto78437bjciaaec
So there is a National Semiconfuctor 256KB QBUS memory card which has a
number of examples floating around for sale (e.g. eBay #370953707487), but
which has heretofore been un-identified: the only numbers/names/etc on it are
"PWB 551103882" and "PWA 980103882", which is what one usually finds them
listed under.
Well, it turns out that it's called an "NS23M", and a manual and print set
for it, previously un-available online, are now available here:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/NS23M.pdf
Can people who maintain repositories (e.g. BitSavers) please include this in
their sites?
Sorry about the size of the file; the original scans were 300 dpi, which in
retrospect was probably a bit more than needed, but rather than throw away
resolution, I've left them in like that; repository maintainers may wish to
reduce the page images in resolution somewhat, to make the file a bit smaller.
And a very big 'Thank You' to Mr. Steve Burgess, who was nice enough to make
scans of a manual in his possession, and send them to me. If anyone finds this
manual useful, please make a small donation to a local animal charity!
Noel
On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 03:49:03AM -0600, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
> Your membership in the mailing list cctalk has been disabled due to excessive
> bounces The last bounce received from you was dated 14-Dec-2014. You will
> not get any more messages from this list until you re-enable your membership.
> You will receive 3 more reminders like this before your membership in the
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Is anybody else getting these messages? I've had a furkle through the mail
server logs and see no evidence of cctalk bounces.
I do hoever see bounces to *cctech*. I never subscribed to that list, the list
server ignores unsubscription requests, and so I instituted the reject policy
in a hope that the bounces would eventually cause unsubscription in the manner
described above and thus achieve the desired effect without further fuss.
Unfortunately, it wants to unsubscribe me from cctalk instead!
Jay, would you like me to take a look at your mail server configuration to find
out how the two lists have become intertwined in this broken manner? It's
probably just a trivial cut-and-paste error or dodgy symlink somewhere.
> From: John Rollins
> it doesn't appear to transmit data from the console port on the back. I
> have tried ... every conceivable switch setting on the PDP with nothing
> ...
> So when I power up, the LED display on the front counts down through
> the numbers and stops at 4. As near as I can tell, this is something of a
> good sign.
Should be; my User's+Maint Guide says that means "Dialog Mode: Waiting for
input".
> Short of spending an entire day disassembling half the machine and
> tracing every wire hoping to find something out of place, does anyone
> have any ideas on what may be happening here, or what to look for?
I asssume you've tried setting the baud rate with the switches on the CPU
card (in case the cable to the back panel is damaged - or, more likely, the
rotary baud select switch has a bad contact due to corrosion over time)?
If you have the parts, fabricating a substitute serial interface cable would
also be something to try.
The next step would normally be to disable the on-board serial interface, and
provide a substitute console interface, out on the bus. _Alas_, as far as I
can tell from reading the KDB11-B User's Guide (EK-KDJ1B-UG-001), there is no
way to disable the on-board serial interface.
AFAIK, the prints for the 11/84 (MP-02536/MP-01955) don't seem to be online.
I can't locate prints for the 11/83 (uses the same CPU board, I think)
either. So I can't check to make sure that it is in fact impossible to
disable the on-board serial interface.
And the other next step, to look at the serial output and see if it looks OK,
will be a little tricky without prints, although the KDB11-B User's Guide
does contain something about it, on pp. 5-38 to 5-41 (165-168 of the PDF).
Noel
So in function checking the PDP-11 now that the Series/1 is out of the basement and I have room to move the unit around and plug it in, I have discovered that it doesn't appear to transmit data from the console port on the back. I have tried two terminals(WY99) and two different PC's(Windows laptop with hardware serial port and a Mac with a USB adapter) with various software, a half dozen different cables, and every conceivable switch setting on the PDP with nothing to show for it aside from a lot of time spent the last couple of weekends.
So when I power up, the LED display on the front counts down through the numbers and stops at 4. As near as I can tell, this is something of a good sign. But nothing ever comes up on a connected terminal. Sometimes pressing keys on the terminal results in the RUN light turning off, other times it does nothing. This would seem to indicate that the PDP knows that something is trying to talk to it, but it is not sending data out.
Short of spending an entire day disassembling half the machine and tracing every wire hoping to find something out of place, does anyone have any ideas on what may be happening here, or what to look for?
------------
John Rollins | KD7BCY | http://www.kd7bcy.com
Ham-Mac mailing list http://mailman.qth.net
------------
I've been playing around with some SCSI tape drives and noticed
something peculiar--or not intuitive. Perhaps someone can explain it.
I'm doing a READ_6 (6 byte CDB) with the fixed bit 0 and a 65KB buffer.
So the sense data coming back returns the residual byte count, as it
should with the ILI bit set in the sense key.
So far, so good.
Now, when I come to a filenark, I'm expecting that the filemark bit (bit
7) will be set in the sense key. It doesn't happen, the result just
comes back as 0 bytes read and a normal (NO_SENSE) sense result. The
additional sense code and sense qualifier bytes are also 0.
Is this normal behavior? I'dve thought that the filemark bit would be
set in every case of a filemark being read. My X3T9 documents don't
mention this behavior, but maybe I missed something.
--Chuck
When I put my DEC Correspondent in storage, I'm sure it had all its keys.
When I pulled it out today, I found that it's missing the key in the far
bottom left. Does anyone have a wrecked Correspondent from which that key
can be extracted?
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 17:10:07 +0000 (WET)
> From: Peter Coghlan <cctalk at beyondthepale.ie>
<...>
> Many years after performing this somewhat less than useful task, my advice
> is:
> don't write your word processor in FORTRAN IV on an IBM S/370.
One of my earlier programming projects as a "professional" was to port the
WordMARC scientific word processing system to Apollo workstations (before
they were acquired by HP). This was all done in Fortran-77, which was
reasonably well supported on those systems, and included fairly
easy-to-access hooks to get at graphical functions. Because of the
software's heritage and fundamental design, though, it still ended up
looking like a fixed-font terminal application, although running in sizable
windows at least.
~~
Mark Moulding
> From: Pete Turnbull
> Actually, setting switch 1 (in the pack at E83, beside the LEDs) on
> should disable the console ... I can't remember if that's a hardware
> issue or a ROM function.
The manual (Section 2.2.2.4, EK-KDJ1B-UG-001 - thanks for the tip about that
section, Glen :-) sure makes it sound like it's in software: "Any input from
the console results in an error message to inform the user that the console
is disabled" - I doubt that functionality is implemented in the UART... :-)
Noel
