This machine sounds as though it's full of bad
connections, alas. Have
you cleaned _all_ the edge fingers on all the boards? Have you cleaned
(and tightened if necessary) the PSU connectors. Have you cleaned the
backplane slots?
I cleaned the edge fingers before even turning it on, though I think I'll
clean them again. I'll have to take a look at the PSU connectors. I blew
out the backplane slots with canned air, how can you do a better job of
cleaning them?
I just vacuumed my backplane, but most of the gunk in my pdp8/e appears to
be a result of deteriorating foam. I forgot, what was generally
considered the best compound to use for cleaning pdp8/e edge connectors?
I think it had 'gold' in its name...
I used what I thought was a good quality contact cleaner once on some Terak
boards (LSI-11 based computer) and though it worked, the boards sort of
glued themselves into the backplane or something, making it extremely
difficult to pull the boards at a later date. Obviously I wouldnt want
to repeat this problem on a PDP8/e, it was bad enough with only a 4-slot
quad backplane...
-Lawrence LeMay