ISO: VAXBI hardware

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote: I think I came upon one of those many years ago and never managed to get the cabling working (the module shows up). I'd love to hear about any resolution on this. I have a couple of broken T1010 boards - the damage was obvious - something messed up with the cabling caused some sort of high-current fault that cracked a specific DEC IC and fried the trace going to the part. If you have one that "doesn't work", it depends on what's really going on as to how "fixable" it is. I now have a good set of cables, a good T1010 module, a good DD11-DK, and three bad M9313 UET boards. I know they are bad because I can follow what docs _are_ out there, bang on some BI registers and see that it's failing self-test in a specific way that means "I can't talk to the UET". If you can talk to the BI chip on your T1010 board (the state of the yellow LED is not indicative of that), then you might be able to learn something about what's failing. If you can't talk to the BIIC, they are socketed and you could try swapping it with one from another board. There are a couple of revs of the BIIC. I've never known that it makes much practical difference, but just be aware there are stamped revision letters on the chip. As mentioned, besides the T1010, you'll need 4x 30-pin cables, and a paddle card to the front of a DD11, and the DD11 itself - mine is in a BA11-K next to the cabinet with the 8250 BA32, but I know that there were also some BA32 with one BI cage and one DD11-DK. I do not know how those are powered or wired in. You'll also need a working M9313. That's the specific reason I'm trying to get a Unibus PDP-11 working right now - to test my M9313 cards and verify any repairs. I still owe you a list and/or picture from my external SDI<->ESDI box, but, yeah, SDI drives aren't getting more abundant. ISTR back in the day, new, a VAXBI SCSI board was $10,000. I have never seen one in person. -ethan