19 Oct
2010
19 Oct
'10
9:53 p.m.
Nick Allen wrote:
I noticed the cursor is a hardware cursor, does this
mean if I get the
display board working (and if only the display card is working) will
it output the cursor to the CRT?
No. The microcode has to be running to get the
display board to do
anything.
If so, this is great news as I can focus on
repairing a single
board. If not, do you know which boards I need to get working at a
MINIMUM to get ANY display on the CRT (either the hardware cursor, or
some sort of diagnostic boot code to output to the CRT)?
Nearly all of them,
unfortunately. You could get by with only partial
memory. It's been a while since I looked at the microcode listing, but
I don't think you'll get anything but a blank raster until you get some
code booted and running. You need either the Ethernet or the disk
controller to do that. Since you probably don't have any other 3 Mbps
Ethernet hosts that can serve the boot protocol, you'll need the disk
controller, drive, and a bootable pack.
Eric