20 Nov
2014
20 Nov
'14
12:54 p.m.
On Nov 20, 2014, at 2:31 PM, Jacob Ritorto
<jacob.ritorto at gmail.com> wrote:
Hey all,
I've been getting the bug worse and worse to start working on a real
pdp11. The Raspberry Pi / simh emulation is fantastic, but my hunger for
authenticity is becoming rampant. I haven't run the youngest in my fleet
of pdp11s, the 11/73, since circa 2002 and if I recall correctly, it was
becoming flaky and popping out to ODT inexplicably from time to time back
then (I think this is the one with the notoriously combustible power supply
wires that probably haven't been ECO'd yet -- need to get to that too).
It's been lying in a warehouse in western Pennsylvania with no heat and a
lot of dust. So, worst case, we're talking temperature transients around
110 F and -20 F with no protection. It did stay quite dry.
Think it'd be bad to simply blow the dust off and fire it up?
There has been a lot of talk about reforming capacitors lately. I do not subscribe to it,
mostly because the electronics guru I know (Gary Gough) doesn't.
I would remove all the boards, blow it out, insert the minimum board set, (CPU, memory, DL
console, maybe bus terminator depending on backplane) and just turn it on.
Your mileage may vary...
thx
jake