8 Oct
2007
8 Oct
'07
3:59 p.m.
Rod Smallwood wrote:
Hi
Fear not all is not lost. There's tons of modules around but not that
many cabs.
Yes, you are absolutely correct! The more I think about it, the more
glad I am to have even this empty chassis. Definitely harder to come by
than the modules that are missing.
A few good souls have already stepped forward offering some help with
the boards, so this revival might be less difficult than I anticipated
at first.
In the picture of the Qbus board it appears to be
sitting on the module
config diagram.
As it is pre printed and not filled in by hand its probably a standard
system.
That will give you a list of the boards.
Yup, I went through that last night. There is another label that was
inside one of the front cover plates that does show a list of modules
penciled in. So I believe I now know what the original configuration of
this system was.
I've come up with a minimum list of boards, and a wish-list of the
boards that were originally included. Looks like the the mass storage
was hung off of a UDA50, and some tape devices on the SI 9700 board
(which I still am completely ignorant of).
I have a couple of Fuji SuperEagles and an RA81, so I'll be on the
lookout for SDI and SMD interfaces for the rebuild. I just hope the
Fujis and RA81 are functional when the time comes!
Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power
supplies will need
some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics.
Roger that! I'm a firm believer in a full chassis cleanup, capacitor
reform, and separate PS checkout before every hitting the big switch on
the front! ;-)
Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending machine'
power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a fairly standard
key?
The case will clean up well and you can start off by
getting the PSU's
working and getting the list of modules together. Disk drives would have
been in another rack I think.
This looks like it'll be a more lengthy revival than any that I've done
up until now, which have been mostly qbus PDPs and uVAXen. A great
winter project!
- Jared