5 Dec
2006
5 Dec
'06
4:27 a.m.
On 12/6/06, Tore Sinding Bekkedal <toresbe at ifi.uio.no> wrote:
I don't know either... I've only ever used sleds with a BA23.
I haven't tried it myself, but it may be possible to fabricate
something close enough to work with ordinary shop tools and a sheet of
plexiglass/perspex. Has anyone on the list ever tried to make DEC
drive sleds from scratch?
I would think it's to boot the machine over DDCMP from a MOP server,
but I don't have any direct experience with it.
It's just unformatted parallel I/O with, ISTR, handshaking lines. You
might be able to hook a parallel printer to one, but there's a good
chance you'd need to invert one or more of the handshake lines, and
you'd probably have to write your own driver to emulate an LPV11, but
with DRV11-W I/O instructions.
They were commonly used for a wide channel CPU-to-CPU interface, or to
attach strange peripherals that had no Qbus interfaces. I don't
recall ever seeing them used as printer ports (the PIO-driven LPV11
being much cheaper at the time).
Viking and CMD controllers were also common, IIRC.
Unless you have a small quantity of ESDI drives, I'd suggest you be on
the lookout for a Qbus SCSI controller. They aren't usually under
$250 US, but even at that price (if it hasn't gone up recently), the
ability to use more modern drives is rather nice unless you are more
interested in a 100% vintage arrangement from before the time of SCSI
(by the time the 11/83 came around, SCSI drives weren't that rare on
DEC machines, but the controllers never were inexpensive).
2BSD is a nice choice if you want Unix. RT-11 was common for smaller
systems, and RSX-11/M and RSTS were common for larger configurations.
If you aren't married to Unix, RT-11 is simple enough to pick up
quickly, especially if you have much MS-DOS or CP/M experience. I
went the other way - RT-11 first, then CP/M... made learning to get
around on a Kaypro a snap.
There are lesser-known PDP-11 OSes, but between Unix and RT-11, you
should have plenty to play around with.
-ethan
On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 15:20 -0500, Curtis H. Wilbar
Jr. wrote:
Indeed - nicely loaded machine.
OK... so I'm now the new (proud :-) ) owner
of a PDP-11/83.
Congratulations!! Anyone got
any DEC drive sleds ? I could use 4.
In my BA123 the disks have been screwed into the sled slot, I don't know
if this is doable with the BA23. What is DDCMP
control ROM ? that my M8053-MA has ?
Something related to DECnet over serial ports, that's all I know about
that, though I could guess that it's used for network booting. What is a
DRV11-WA general purpose 18/22 bit parallel interface ? Can
this be used for a parallel printer ???
It is general purpose.. :) I think this is just 64 bidirectional I/O
ports which can be used for most things, I have two or three myself, but
I haven't toyed with them. Never tried putting a Centronics cable on it. As I'd
like to have larger storage on it at some point, I'd like to
locate a SCSI
(or possibly ESDI ?) controller. What should I be looking for, anyone have
one ?
The SCSI controllers are relatively hard to come by, but the Emulex DQ07
(iirc) seems to be one of the most common, and is the one I have. I'm
looking at running BSD (2.11 ?) and other PDP11 OSes... suggestions ?
2.11 will run happily on your machine, if you give it disk space enough.