7 Jul
2005
7 Jul
'05
8:38 p.m.
For the
pre-1978 (or so) machines, you can pretty much debug down to the
chip level. With the right Blue Binders, pretty much every last part is
detailed to a silly extent. WAY more detailed than DEC docs.
I don't see how anything could be more documented than having the complete
engineering drawings of the whole machine. And that's what you normally got on old DEC machines.
That's what I have of the PDP-11/70. Full drawings of every curcuit in the
machine. And then I have all the technical manuals for all subsystems that
document things in a more text-like manner as well.
You may be clever enough to be able to work everything out from the
schematics alone, but I find the technical manuals useful too. If you
want an interesting puzzle, try figuring out the floating point processor
(at least the 11/45 one, I guess the 11/70 is similar) from the ROM dumps
and schematics alone. It will take you quite a while I suspect.
I think that's what was meant by 'more detailed'. The DEC docs are in one
sense complete, but you may have to think quite hard to udnerstand them.
IBM docs, from what I've heard, explain things really well, but they are
non-trivial to find.
But as usual: when in doubt, the drawings are the definitive authority.
Err, the _machine_ is the ultimate authority. There may be ECOs and FCOs
done to your PCB that are not in the docs.
-tony