PDP-11/45

Good luck!. My first 'serious' minicomputer was an 11/45, and it took me several months to get it going. Now, there were many reasons for this : 1) I had little experience of such machines, I was learning a lot all the time (which was good!). 2) I take things slowly and carefully 3) I had the printset, an instruction set listing, and not a lot else. Figuring out things like grant continuity from those alone took some work! 4) I didn't have this list to turn to :-) 5) I am somewhat stupid! Personally, I'd check the PSUs first (seriously, there are over 1000 chips in the the processor alone, you don't want to wipe them all out in one go!). Then run a minimal configuration (you cna pull the floating point processor boards without problem, don't pull the KW11-L line time clock, since there's a grant link you'd have to wire-wrap back again, also you can't pull the MMU unless you have the address buffer board that goes in place of one of the MMU boards). But run the processor, MMU (if you have it), some memory, and nothing else. Toggle in a simple program on the panel, get it to run that. Then add more memory and peripherals. Keep checking the PSU voltages -- I've had all sorts of problems caused by one of them being low. A few more things. Unless you're doing something seriously weird, you want a M9200 jumper (it's electrtically an M920, but thinner!) between slots 26AB and 27AB of the CPU backplane. Connectors C-F of slots 26, 27, 28 are normal SPC slots, you should put grant continuity cards in there if you don't have peripherals. Slot 28AB is the Unibus out (of course), put a terminator in there if you have no more backplanes. The front terminator goes in 1AB. Slot 1E and 1F are for KM11 maintenance boards. You need at least one of these IMHO! The 'proper' semiconductor RAM that goes in the CPU backplane is hard to find!. I put a normal MUD RAM card in an expansion backplane. Works fine Adding the RL11 is no problem at all. -tony