test-drb

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101090 discussions

by binarydinosaurs＠gmail.com

Hi folks, Has anyone ever replaced the PSU in a DEREP with a more modern equivalent? The PSU is an ASTEC but as usual doesn?t have any markings for ratings or pinouts. I found the tech ref online but for PSU problems it just says ?replace? as I?d expect. Test LEDs on the unit itself (and the fuses) show +5 and +12 at 2A. This one suffered a bad heat-based death at some point after the fan seized? Cheers, -- adrian/witchy Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection? t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs <http://facebook.com/binarydinosaurs> w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/>

8 years, 4 months

DEC 3000 (alpha) faultfinding

by cctalk＠beyondthepale.ie

I've got a DEC 3000 model 300 and a couple of DEC 3000 model 600 alphas which failed some time ago and the recent Alphaservers thread has rekindled my interest in getting them working again. A couple of years ago, there was another thread "AlphaStation 200 NVRAM Problem" where the Alpha SROM mini console and various items of useful documentation were mentioned. I have now made up an adapter (cable and MAX232 line driver / receiver) as described in that thread to allow me to to talk to the the SROM mini console in my alphas and I am please to find they are all responsive at this level. I also found: "DEC 3000 300/400/500/600/700/800/900 AXP Models System Programmer's Manual Order Number: EK-D3SYS-PM. B01" (d3syspmb.pdf) which describes some of the internals of the machines in question. The mini console commands available on the model 300 are very limited compared to those in the documentation which targets a much later machine. However, it does have mt (memory test) which is not present on the model 600 for some reason. Results from this suggests that all 6 SIMMs present are bad in pretty much all locations. This seems a bit unlikely to me. Perhaps there is a failure in logic which causes the memory not to be accessed at all? Unfortunately, the manual does not seem to give any leads on how to diagnose this further. The em (examine memory) and dm (deposit memory) commands only accept 32 bit addresses meaning they cannot to be used to access input/output areas which require at least 33 bit addresses. However, a little experimentation led me to the existance of ei and di commands which can do this on the DEC 3000 machines and I found I can use di to update the diagnostic LEDs on the machines. The DEC 3000 600 machines both (usually) count down to F0 on their diagnostic LEDs and hang without producting any output on the main console. They do however produce output on the mini console - for example: DEC 3000 - M600 SROM 6.1 Powerup Sequence ff.fd.fb.fa.f9.f8.f7.f6.f5.f4.f3.f2.f1.f0. sysROM 00000033.000006f1 ioROM 00000033.00000162 MCRstat 11111111.808011c0 bnkSize 00000300.00000c01 memSize 000000c0.000000c0 However, they do not provide the SROM> prompt or accept mini console commands unless a I engineer another fault condition such as by pulling out one of the memory risers. I wonder if there is a jumper to enable mini console commands to be accepted without doing this? Looking around the system board, I see a pair of jumper pins labelled J9 hidden under the I/O board which looks like it could do this. Unfortunately, while there is legend on the PCB indicating the function of all other jumpers, there is none for J9 and it is not mentioned in the manual either. On the I/O board, there is one three pin jumper labelled simply "Off" and "On" and it is jumpered to the "On" side. It is close to the SCSI connector so I suspect it is more likely to be something to do with termination or termpwr than the mini console. One of the model 600s sometimes generates a machine check, like this: DEC 3000 - M600 SROM 6.1 Powerup Sequence ff.fd.fb.fa.f9.20. MCHK exc_addr 00000000.00001484 biu_stat 00000000.000022d8 dc_stat 00000000.00000007 fill_adr 00000001.f0080050 fill_syn 00000000.00000000 DataExp aaaaaaaa.aaaaaaaa DataRec aaaaaaaa.aaaaaaaa MCRstat 11111111.808011c0 bnkSize 00000300.00000c01 memSize 000000c0.000000c0 SROM> While this can be useful because it gets me to the SROM> prompt, I can't find anything in the manual which helps me diagnose what might be causing this. The meaning of the contents of biu_stat might be a useful start. The 600 machines have a socketed 27C512 EPROM. I assume this must be the SROM (although I can't see what is serial about it) as the machines fail to update the diagnostic LEDs or write to the mini console if it is removed. I dumped the two EPROMs and compared them and they are identical. However, I can't see any ASCII strings in them. Perhaps the bits are not used in the standard order? The manual suggests that there are 8 different 8KB SROM images present and those other than the "standard" one may be used for testing and diagnostics by setting jumpers. Unfortunatly, there is no further information about these images. The manual hints that the System ROM (SYSROM) (actually an FEPROM) is located at 1 E000 0000 to 1 E003 FFFF, however, looking at the beginning of this area with ei suggests it is in fact the IOROM (also an FEPROM). Hunting around some more, it seems that setting bit 9 of the System Support Register at 1 E004 0100 brings in the SYSROM instead (although the manual suggests bit 7 is also involved which seems unlikely as this bit is one of the diagnostic LEDs). The format of the headers in the SYSROM and IOROM do not exactly match the format given in the manual but they are "close". I wonder if this might be my problem or if the manual is incorrect. If anyone else has a 3000 600, could they take a peek at their SYSROM and maybe we could compare notes? It may be possible to map the SYSROM from a running operating system but as none of my 3000 machines run right now, I am not in a position to try this myself. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

8 years, 4 months

RL01/RL02 emulator needed -- (was Many thanks to Glen's Vintage Computer Info)

by Flash688＠flying-disk.com

Several days ago I wrote about my joy of finding a TDL-12 disk controller, emulating four DEC RL02 drives and using a SCSI drive. Sadly, I discovered that the controller is a dead as a doornail. It doesn't respond to any bus address at all. So, I'm back to my original quest: I need a controller that emulates the DEC RLV11/RLV12 and RL01/RL02 drives. From my Google searching, I see a couple that use SD or similar solid state devices. Does anyone here have any direct experience (good or bad) with any of these emulators? I don't mind spending money for a good solution. Thanks, Alan Frisbie

8 years, 4 months

PATA hard disks, anyone?

by decguy＠songdog.eskimo.com

The new sysadmin at work is clearing out closets full of junk^H^H^H^H cool old stuff accumulated by the previous sysadmin. There's a big carton full of PATA hard disks. Most of them are in the 4.3 GB - 20 GB range, a few larger, a few smaller. Anyone have any use for these? You can have them for the cost of shipping, or free for local pickup in Bothell, WA. They're going to be recycled as scrap if I don't find a home for them.

8 years, 4 months

Instruction video on laserdisk

by ed＠groenenberg.net

Today I received a PDP-11 instruction video on a laser disk, part 3 & 4. The disk partno. is EY-5537E-V2-0001, the title says 'Introduction to the PDP-11, Internal use Only, (c) 1988' Besides that, no indication if the video stream is NTSC or PAL. Anybody have a clou? I want to have the disk read and put the video on youtube eventually. Ed -- Ik email, dus ik besta.

8 years, 4 months

Software for AN/UGC-144 Communications Terminal?

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I posted this originally on the ArmyRadios mailing list, but I think it's just computery enough that it may be of interest here, too. And maybe somebody here even has the answers to my questions! I just got an AN/UGC-144 communications terminal. It looks unused, and it came with cables and manuals (-12 and -30, but not including schematic diagrams or component-level details). It powers up, but fails to boot from its internal hard drive. The screen has some bad rows and columns, and the gas spring that supports the display needs to be replaced. I shared a bunch of pictures on Twitter today as I unpacked it and started playing with it, in this thread: https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/980174491673178112 Here are direct links to some of the more interesting pictures in that long thread: https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/980198067767947264 https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/980202029766230016 https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/980263764325941249 https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/980302909165338624 I haven't found very much about the terminal online yet, and I expect that I have a long road ahead of me as I try to fix the display and see if anything can be recovered from the hard drive. If the original software isn't present on the hard drive and recoverable, then this may be a great big doorstop! But it may also be a fun reverse-engineering project. I haven't dug into it deeply enough yet to determine whether it's built around an embedded PC-clone architecture or is something completely custom. In any case, I'll naturally want to try to dump and disassemble any ROMs I find inside of it. The CAGE code is for Sypris Electronics, and the boot screen shows a Honeywell copyright notice. I found that it tried to access a blank floppy diskette at boot time in the right drive, but I didn't have an MS-DOS boot diskette handy at the moment to see if it could boot from it. I'll give that a try when I have a chance... but probably after Easter. Have any software diskettes, programs, disk images, etc. for this terminal made it out into the wild? I presume that there were boot and installation diskettes that were used for hard drive formatting and software installation, and I would really love to get my hands on anything like that... especially if it turns out the the hard drive in my terminal is blank and/or dead. I'll be satisfied if I can use this rig as a dumb terminal for RTTY use, and even happier if I can do anything fancier with it. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

8 years, 4 months

DEC BA213 and BA213 S-boxes?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, Watching some of the recent traffic about what newer Qbus boards will and won't work with 2.11BSD, I've remembered a thing I was once looking for. Back when I did DEC hardware for a living, we stopped buying new stuff after we got a MicroVAX-II. As such, I have plenty of LSI-11 to KA630 parts but very little from after that era. I do happen to have 2-3 boards with S-box handles including a KDF-11 CPU and a SCSI card, a great start to a system. What I don't have is the enclosure. I have a BA123 "World Box" and it's great. I know a BA213 is roughly the same size, but I've never had one. The BA215 looks more interesting to me as a match for size and power requirements (1 PSU and 6 slots, half the BA213) but I've never even seen a BA215. Anyone here have much experience with the BA215? Any "gotchas"? So far, from my looking on eBay, I think I spotted one loaded as a VAX. I'm more interested in setting mine up as a PDP-11, so the VAX end of one is not exactly a selling point to me. An empty box would do just as nicely. I'd say 80% of my Qbus work has been with two boxes, the BA-11N and the BA-23, thus all the S-box questions. Thanks for any tips, tidbits and stories. -ethan

8 years, 4 months

DEC 3000 (alpha) faultfinding

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

According to the 21066 HRM, the processor loads its initial I-stream from the SROM. All Icache bits are loaded from the SROM, including the cache block metadata. The blocks are loaded in sequential order starting with block 0 and ending with block 255. For the 20166, the Icache is loaded LSB first filling from left to right (i.e. bit 0 of LW0 will be the first bit loaded). This is the resulting order of each cache block: BHT LW7 LW5 LW3 LW1 V ASM ASN TAG LW6 LW4 LW2 LW0 I thought I had some code do unmultiplex each bit stream from an SROM image and then reconstruct the resulting memory image, but I can't find it or I just thought about doing that.

8 years, 4 months

Looking for opinions...

by useddec＠gmail.com

There are probably no perfect answers to this problem. I am looking for opinions, not criticism. I do not want to start arguments, nor get anyone here, especially Jay, pissed off. I found a stack of DEC microfiche a few nights ago. It's probably about 12 inches tall, and contains PM Procedures, IPBs, Manuals, Tech Info, and several type of Logistics, BOMs, vendors, etc which I will deal with later. Most of it is "company confidential", not that it matters anymore. The bulk of my microfiche is still missing. Several months ago there was a discussion here about breaking up sets. this is not a "set". It is made up of bunches found in different places at different times. I'm guessing a "set" of this would be an inch or two thick. My short list of options for disposal are as follows in order of current preference are: 1 Sort to get several sizable sets, sell the rest as partials. A LOT of sorting 2 Take requests to cherry pick, and sell as few smaller sets. Still a LOT of sorting. 3 Call Al. Oh, he gets a crack at whatever he needs anyway. 4 Sell it as a lot 5 Sell on e-pay. 6 Put it back where I found it. The first 3 are going to take a lot of time. Thanks in advance, Paul

8 years, 4 months

Instruction video on laserdisk

by commodorejohn＠gmail.com

I don't know where you're located, but I'm in the US and have an NTSC Laserdisc player. If someone can hook me up with a video capture card, I'd be happy to copy the video for you.

8 years, 4 months

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