I thought it might be nice to have a DEC based graphics work station.
I had the Alpha, a high res monitor and the Hobbyist Media CD for
ALPHAVMS 8,3. (yes the system supports 8.3)
SFSG .. So CD in the drive and switch on. First a nice colour graphics
demo/test.
Then the nomal system level stuff. >>> prompt, enter SHO DEV and our CD
drive shows as DKA400 just where it should be.
So Boot DKA400: and off we go. After a while a menu appears from which
you can load layered products you need.
It gets part way through the load and falls over with a data error. The
cd is a real bought and paid for Media CD and is not a copy.
Before I do a lot of tedious emaling (HP have taken the Hobbyist program
in house) has anybody successfully loaded an Alpha with ALPHA VMS 8.3?
Regards
Rod
OK, so I finally got set up to scan manuals, with a scanner with a document
feeder, so I don't have to sit there and feed the beast! So now I can scan in
a number of 'missing' (online, at least) PDP-11 manuals which I happen to
have.
The first thing through the machine was the DZV11 Technical Manual (which
Paul Anderson was gracious enough to loan out, to enable it to be put online
- thanks Paul!), now available here:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-DZV11-TM-001_Jun78.pdf
(as always, please download/distribute/replicate to other repositories).
I also did the 11/34 cache board user manual, now here:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-KK11A-UG-001_Oct78.pdf
I have also gone through my set of manuals and prepared a list of all the
ones which aren't online. I will slowly be scanning these in, but if anyone
has a particular need for any of these, please let me know, and I'll move it
to the top of the queue. They are:
EK-881PC-UG-003 881 Power Controller User Guide
EK-H9646-UG-002 H9646-AH/AJ Cabinet System User Guide
DEC-11-H40SA-B-D PDP-11/40, -11/35 (21 Inch Chassis) System Manual
EK-FP11C-OP-001 FP11-C Floating Point Processor User's Manual
EK-1184A-TM-PR4 11/84 Technical Reference (Preliminary)
EK-1184E-TM-001 PDP-11/84 System Technical and Reference Manual
EK-1184E-MG PDP-11/84-E User's and Maintenance Guide
EK-DHU11-TM-001 DHU11 Technical Manual
(although IIRC that last is in a glued binding, so it's not really amenable
to being auto-fed unless I rip it apart, which I am loathe to do). I also
have:
DEC-11-HR6B-D PDP-11 Conventions Manual
but that's in print format (i.e. large pages), and I'd have to hand-feed that
one through my A3 scanner.
The auto-feed scanner I have is an older Epson, which I got on eBay for not
very much. I'm using just the Twain driver from Epson; I'm doing my scanning
>from IrfanView (a _very_ useful image tool, which if you don't have it,
download it, it's free) which spits out the CCITT4 TIFF's directly - and can
even number the output files backwards - incredibly useful when scanning
hunks of double-sided pages on a single-sided scanner!
If anyone wants to get set up to scan manuals, and wants to copy what I did,
let me know, and I'll provide details.
Noel
Hi all,
I have a PDP-11/55 for sale (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Bids open
until 2015 09 15, buyer to arrange shipping, I will have it wrapped
and ready to go.
Please visit:
www.krten.com/~rk/museum/index.html
For pictures, detailed inventory and contact info. Sealed bids via
eamil please. Winner will be notified 2015 09 16, machine will be
ready to ship same day. Must be shipped / picked up no later than
2015 10 09.
Sold AS-IS / where is, untested, unpowered since received.
Comes with H960 rack and 2 side panels.
Cheers,
-RK
--
Robert Krten
Visit me at http://www.ironkrten.com
While checking my repaired KDJ11-A M8192 Board with xxdp I get
the following error:
BOOTING UP XXDP-XM EXTENDED MONITOR
XXDP-XM EXTENDED MONITOR - XXDP V2.5
REVISION: F0
BOOTED FROM DL3
124KW OF MEMORY
NON-UNIBUS SYSTEM
RESTART ADDRESS: 152000
TYPE "H" FOR HELP !
.R ZKDJB2.BIC
ZKDJB2.BIC
ERROR WHILE TESTING BOARD FUNCTIONS
ERROR # =001166
ERROR PC =040662
043632
@
The Board is working flawlessly otherwise.
Can please someone with such a CPU can do a similar test and what does this
error mean? I get this error with two different J11 Chips.
In the Docs
( http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/xxdp/PDP11_DiagnosticHandb…)
is shown thatthe test should ask for a Switch Register setting, in my case
it doesn't. Is the test defective?
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
May be he's a fisherman :) They tend to oversize everything :D
-------- Messaggio originale --------
Da: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
Data:15/09/2015 14:01 (GMT+01:00)
A: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Oggetto: Re: 12" Floppy Disks
On Tue, 15 Sep 2015, Adrian Graham wrote:
> Morning folks,
> I've been contacted by a teacher who's looking for any information about
> 12" floppies. Am I imagining that they really existed? I'm sure I've seen
> one or seen adverts for them, maybe at Bletchley Park. Others he's
> contacted think he's getting confused with 12" laser discs but I'm not so
> sure.
> Anyone?
First, how old is he?
If he is under 50, then he may be looking for the EARLY_PERCEPTION 12"
floppy.? "Man, those things were HUGE! ENORMOUS! When my elementary
school teacher brought one into class, it was bigger than my foot!"
What he is misremembering is an 8" disk.
If he is over 50, then he may be looking for the FADED_MEMORIES 12"
floppy.? "Man, those things were HUGE! ENORMOUS!"
What he is misremembering is an 8" disk.
Or, he may be looking for the CREATIVE_MARKETING 12" floppy.
When TVs were round, the measurement was the diameter.? When they stopped
being round, the measurement was the diagonal, or largest length.? More
recently, they've started to round up.? And, now, I think that they are
measuring the diagonal of the box that it is shipped in.? The diagonal of
an 8" disk jacket is about 11", rounded up to 12"
Very large objects tend to be remembered as even larger.? I have a
[damaged] 24" platter from a hard disk.? When mentioned later, most people
remember it as being "three or four feet diameter!"
We have had numerous prior queries about the 12" floppies.? One tipoff is
that sometimes the person asking will remember that floppies had TWO
sizes, "five inch" and "twelve inch".? 3.5" will either be called "three
inch", or "hard disks"!? It is simply a misremembering of eight inch.
As Eric pointed out, floppies STARTED at 8", and went DOWN from there.
But, could we be wrong?
Of course.
But, I'm willing to bet $20 that nobody can send me a 12" floppy.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred???? cisin at xenosoft.com
More testing this evening.
Drive 1 ran for 8 ten-minute AJRLIA read-write passes before I stopped it,
with a single error flagged during pass 6:
WD1 0235
WD2 0000
ER 4001
CB 1117
indicating a Data CRC error and a Read header without CRC command. Not
completely unexpected, a lot of data is being read and written and there is
a soft error rate of 1 in 10^9 bits and hard error rate of 1 in 10^12, IIRC.
Meanwhile I keyed in the Oscillating Seek program from the RL01/02 Users
Guide manual (page C-6) and set it for 511 cylinders. It seeks without any
problems swinging the head from Track 0 to Track 511 and back, on both
drives. No Fault, no nothing except seeking. Perhaps I was overthinking the
"wrong command" theory.
I did reseat the 2708 EPROM (state machine) on the controller card.
One VERY interesting thing I learned from a close reading of the manual and
this test program though:
The controller reports Ready status *immediately* when a seek command is
given, even though the seek has not completed!! (pg. 5-15, para 5.3.4)
And that seek can take up to 100 ms for 511 tracks on an RL02. A long time
in computer terms, even at 1.6 us per instruction cycle...
Now I'm wondering if AJRLHA diagnostic doesn't wait long enough for the seek
to complete before trying something else. The Oscillating Seek does (by
calling for a dummy Read Header command).
Still don't understand the Write error that shouldn't have been there from
that diagnostic... Not happening tonight though.
I can run RL2FMT on either drive, boot OS/8 with no problems (other than the
brief flash of both Fault lights), PIP files from one drive to the other.
Could OS/8 do its initial Seek without waiting long enough for it to
complete, too?
Would love to hear from any experts on the internal workings of OS/8
especially relating to RL02's.
-Charles
Recall that the other day, I was seeing this on running AJRLHA.DG:
STATE NOT 5 AFTER SEEK WITH 0 DIFFERENCE (this error and register dump
prints twice in succession. State 5 = Lock-on, keeping on track).
WD1 0317 (lower head, heads not out, spin-down)
WD2 0204 (write data error, write gate error). This one worries me. WDE is
"write gate on but no transitions on write data line". The drive should
never be trying to write when there is no data being sent, and this
diagnostic program does not do any writes to disk! So a fault, head
retraction and shutdown is the proper response to this fatal error. I'll
have to put a logic analyzer on the appropriate bits and see why it thinks
it's supposed to be writing... or where the command came from.
ERROR FLAG SET
ER 2000 (Operation incomplete within 200 ms). Probably because the drive
shut down when the WDE error occurred.
CB 0003 (Seek)
Today the fault immediately on starting the test is still present (and yes,
Henk, it did occur to me that there might be something wrong with the
diagnostic because all the others work! Has anyone got the source code for
AJRLHA?)
However, there are different initial errors today!
Diagnostic starts
(Fault light comes on immediately):
Prints this block twice:
Error flag set
ER 2002 (Operation incomplete, Drive error)
CB 0103 (12-bit data mode, Seek state). <--- This seems to be OK, 8-bit mode
is required for Maintenance, Get Status or Read Header, but not Seek
command)
then Error flag set
ER 2000, CB 0103; (same as above but no Drive error)
Fault light goes off;
then ER not as expected but error flag not set:
WD1 0235 (Heads out, upper head locked on track)
WD2 0002 (volume check bit)
ER 0003 (Drive error; Drive ready);
WD1 0335 (same except lower head)
WD2 0002 (volume check bit)
ER 0003 (Drive error; Drive ready);
Per the user's manual, the Fault light only comes on with the following
errors:
1 Drive-select error,
2 Seek time-out error,
3 Write current in heads (during sector time) error,
4 Loss of system clock (this condition is not latched and not represented in
status word),
5 Write-protect error,
6 Write data error,
7 Spin error.
I am confident that the reported fault is not 1, 4, 5 or 7. The drive is
being selected properly, works except on initial test, the write protect
switch is not set, and the drive stays spinning with Ready light on when not
being accessed.
However, that still leaves a seek time-out (reported today) or a write error
(seen two days ago) when there shouldn't *be* any writes.
I really want to find out why the drive previously thought it was being told
to write, at the wrong time.
I just had a new idea:
What if a command register is being corrupted between the setting by the
program, and the drive electronics?
Say a Write Data command (CB xxx5) is erroneously received by the drive but
the proper registers for a write have not been set up. That would Fault the
drive and the diagnostic would report an error.
Another example: The diagnostic is issuing the proper Seek command (CB
xxx3), but the drive is actually receiving something else, so the expected
seek would time-out in the diagnostic, and depending on the command the
drive actually is reading, could light the Fault too .
When attempting to run Dumprest for RL during the previous session, I had to
add retries for seeking because the program would halt with a seek error
there too.
So I'm now suspicious of an intermittent or partial short (another whisker?)
between the command registers and the drive. Maybe it's not "hearing" the
controller properly! It's even got the correct expensive DEC cables between
the card and the drives, and a terminator on the farthest drive.
Jon wrote:
>I'm pretty far away from competence on PDP-8s anymore, but the symptoms
>sound like maybe the drive faults on LONG seeks, but as long as the seeks
>are short, it works OK. There might be a one-shot in the controller that
>allows so many ms for a seek to complete, and due to aging capacitors, the
>delay is now too short. But, that's a totally wild guess, there could be
>troubles in the drive seek electronics that only occur on longer seeks.
That's an interesting SWAG, thanks :)
I checked the 22 uf capacitor (and 39K resistor) that provide the timeout
delay. They are OK. If anything the 22 uf is well on the high side, thus
giving a longer delay.
Time to toggle in some more programs I guess.
What really bugs me is that this whole system was completely working for
years... up until it didn't :P
Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: Control Data 160 Ebay
I believe the eBay lister stated that it was a 160, not the -A. So no
return jump for you...
--Chuck
Which would make it even more scarce. There were only a little over a 100 of the 160 models made. And 40+ of them were rebranded as NCR machines.
There were 495 160-As made officially. (There were also a small number shipped without serial numbers to the good people at Langley.)
I know of at least 5x 160-As still in existence, besides my own. Which should be going to a museum this week if they can sort out shipping glitches. My system includes a 161-A Typewriter in lousy shape and a 167-2 Card Reader in perfect shape. Plus all manuals, software (with listings) and spare parts. Even the paper tape rewinder!
I did not know any 160 machines survived, so who ever bought it has a unique item.
I have looked for 15 years for an 8092 = the first true 8 bit computer. Haven't found even a hint or rumor of one.
I am working with Al Kossow, to see that this material is eventually in his archives.
Billy Pettit
> From: Holm Tiffe
> "Ensure that halt trap option is disabled (jumper W9 installed)."
Well, either that was transcribed incorrectly, or the person who wrote it
confused. On the M8192, per EK-KDJ1A-UG-002, pg. 2-1, W_5_ is the halt trap
option, and W9 is... BEVENT recognition. One removes W9 to enable the LTC
(using the QBUS BEVNT line).
Which kind of explains your results... :-)
Noel
PS: BTW, the M8190 (KDJ11-B) in similar - the onboard ROM diagostics barf if
the LTC isn't on (i.e. the switch on the chassis to enable BEVNT has to be
on).