I've been looking at various documentation and have come up lacking in
understanding.
Can some one clue me in on the source, behaviour, and routing of the ACLO
DCLO signals on the 11/45 - with expansion boxes? In my digging in the
documentation I seem to be finding contradictions between various printed
sources and advice from people as well. Likely they are all right and I just
don't "get it".
From what I can gather, it appears that ACLO originates
in the H742 power
supply. Actually, it appears that both the upper and lower
H742's produce
ACLO and DCLO. I think Tony was saying that ACLO and DCLO on the lower H742
shouldn't be used because they are referenced to -15v instead of ground. But
from what I can gather, the only signals on the lower
H742 which should not
be used because of the 15v to ground change, are LTC and +8v.
The lower H742
produces both ACLO and DCLO, and does route them out for use in several
places.
It appears that ACLO originates only in the power supply, and both the cpu
and cards on the unibus monitor it to know if "death is coming". I would
imagine that the cpu uses it to trap to a powerfail routine, and peripheral
interfaces use it to do things like an emergency head unload on a disc
drive, etc. So, what about when the unibus has been extended into an
expansion box like the KB11-F with a DD11-DK, which has it's own supplies
and thus it's own ACLO? Is the ACLO failure in the external expansion box
given to the cpu chassis box and vice versa or are they entirely separate?
DCLO also confuses me. Some things I read (and advice from some people)
indicate it originates in the power supplies, and other devices only monitor
that signal. However, the unibus interfacing manual states clearly that ANY
device on the unibus can assert the DCLO signal. This would mean not just
the power supply, but a controller like an RX02 interface (M8256) could tell
the rest of the system "hey, I'm losing power".
This gets back to my "RL02 faulting upon spinup only if the RX02 is turned
on" problem. Tony suggested checking ACLO and/or DCLO. Note that my RL02 and
RX02 controllers are in the expansion BA11-K, not the cpu box. To do this, I
need to know exactly what pins to look at on the backplane. I figured I
could track this down myself, but in going through all the documentation I
am left very unclear as to exactly where the ACLO & DCLO signals go after
they hit the power distribution board (J2-J10 I think it is) at the top of
the system unit backplane. Since it is a unibus signal, I would think it
would enter the DD11-K in the expansion box at the "unibus in" (slot 1AB). I
would also guess that since (apparently) SPC cards are capable of monitoring
ACLO/DCLO (and perhaps asserting DCLO? See above?) that those two signals
would be wire wrapped from somewhere on 1AB to each of the SPC slots (C-F).
Some documentation showed ACLO and DCLO on row C (some docs show only one of
those is present) of an SPC slot. If that is the case, should I not see some
wire wrapping on my DD11-K that shows ACLO/DCLO (supposedly on B01F1 and
B01F2) getting wrapped to somewhere on row C, and daisychaining to all the
SPC slots on that same pin so they can monitor it? I do not see that wire
wrap on the DD11-DK.
So someone could just tell me what pin to check, to see if ACLO or DCLO is
acting funny around my RX02 controller. But I'd really prefer to understand
the bigger picture with it as to all places that originate these two
signals, what devices can assert them, and most importantly, how those two
signals are routed exactly from power supply to the cpu, to the expansion
box (which has it's own ACLO/DCLO), all the way to the final M9312. Then not
only could I take the measurement, but better understand what I'm seeing.
Any education is most appreciated!
Jay West