24 Nov
1999
24 Nov
'99
1:55 a.m.
Then, so far, so good. As I said, it runs basic ops.
The inchworm program
is about as far as I can get without custom-crafting diag routines until I
get a TTY online to read MAINDEC tapes. At the moment, all I have in the
-8/e is the CPU, an MS8-C and an M8650. I toggled in an ASCII printing
routine from the 1973 -8/e handbook (page 4-4, IIRC) and I didn't see anything
appear on the terminal nor the RS-232 traffic light. If you happen to have
a handy TTY test loop up your sleeve, then I'd love to see it. It makes it
much harder to debug hardware when you have to debug your own diagnostic
software at the same time.
No I don't. First off make sure the "tty" is configured correctly. Real
TTYs are wired with keyboard bit 7 high and all 8 reader bits active.
This is hard to duplicate with terminal programs. The closest is 7bits
with stick parity but that will not load tapes!
I'd still love to hear why a KK8A isn't happy
with the -8/e frontpanel. I
would have thought that they were compatible. The OMNIBUS isn't all that
complex. There's not a lot of room for variations.
They are not compatable at the control level not the bus level. The KK8a
was not designed with a "peripheral" reaching into it's registers and data
paths. I'd bet if the kk8a runs in the 8e box the FP can display but only
limited things.
Here's the problem... I can only test so much of
the -8/e with only the
front panel and the docs I have (I don't have a sheaf of toggle-in diags
to try or I would). Once I put the KK8E in the -8/a box, _all_ I can do
is hit the boot switch. It doesn't boot. The KK8A sort-of boots.
There isn't a sheet of diags. You do it by readuing and writing single
locations and running small programs like the accumulator inchworm.
A secondary question: when WPS throws up the
"ABC" at the start of the boot
sequence, what happens between the letters? I have one disk that only shows
the "A" and the CPU locks up. What might that suggest?
No idea, maybe it's looking for a device?
Allison