6 Jun
2007
6 Jun
'07
1:17 p.m.
Out of interest (and to my shame, without googling first :-), did DEC (or a
third party) ever produce a reference listing of DEC "parts codes" against
function (e.g. RK05 = removable disk, KL11 = serial interface etc.)
I'm trying to sort out our documentation archives, and DEC seem very good at
just listing the codes as title ("DZ11-C technical manual" etc.) on a lot of
their docs - meaning I have to skim pages to get a handle on what the thing
actually is)
cheers
Jules
6 Jun
6 Jun
1:43 p.m.
On 6/6/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Out of interest (and to my shame, without googling first :-), did DEC (or
a
third party) ever produce a reference listing of DEC "parts codes" against
function (e.g. RK05 = removable disk, KL11 = serial interface etc.)
I'm trying to sort out our documentation archives, and DEC seem very good
at
just listing the codes as title ("DZ11-C technical manual" etc.) on a lot
of
their docs - meaning I have to skim pages to get a handle on what the
thing
actually is)
cheers
Jules
I've never seen one... From memory,
R"x" -- Rotating Memory Device or Controller (RA, RB, RC, RD, RF, RK, RL,
RM, RP, RS, RX,
T"x" -- Tape drive (either Reel-to-Reel or cassette or dectape dvc or
controller) TA, TC, TD, TM, TU, TE, TS,
D"x" -- Communication or other interconnect device -- DL, DU, DM, DN, DS,
K"b" -- CPU component or functional part KA, KB, KC,
DD followed by something is a backplane option
--
--
d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
pechter-at-gmail.com
2:07 p.m.
Bill Pechter wrote:
On 6/6/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I think the closest you'll find are the various peripheral handbooks.
--
TTFN - Guy
Out of interest (and to my shame, without googling first :-), did DEC
(or
a
third party) ever produce a reference listing of DEC "parts codes"
against
function (e.g. RK05 = removable disk, KL11 = serial interface etc.)
I'm trying to sort out our documentation archives, and DEC seem very
good
at
just listing the codes as title ("DZ11-C technical manual" etc.) on a
lot
of
their docs - meaning I have to skim pages to get a handle on what the
thing
actually is)
cheers
Jules
I've never seen one... From memory,
R"x" -- Rotating Memory Device or Controller (RA, RB, RC, RD, RF,
RK, RL,
RM, RP, RS, RX,
T"x" -- Tape drive (either Reel-to-Reel or cassette or dectape dvc or
controller) TA, TC, TD, TM, TU, TE, TS,
D"x" -- Communication or other interconnect device -- DL, DU, DM, DN,
DS,
K"b" -- CPU component or functional part KA, KB, KC,
DD followed by something is a backplane option
2:39 p.m.
On 6/6/07, Bill Pechter <pechter at gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/6/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> ... did DEC... ever produce a reference listing of DEC "parts codes"
against
> function (e.g. RK05 = removable disk, KL11 = serial interface etc.)
I've never seen one... From memory,
R"x" -- Rotating Memory Device or Controller (RA, RB, RC, RD, RF, RK, RL,
RM, RP, RS, RX,
T"x" -- Tape drive (either Reel-to-Reel or cassette or dectape dvc or
controller) TA, TC, TD, TM, TU, TE, TS,
D"x" -- Communication or other interconnect device -- DL, DU, DM, DN, DS,
K"b" -- CPU component or functional part KA, KB, KC,
DD followed by something is a backplane option
More so with interfaces than external periperals (which might work on
multiple types of CPUs), there's Q or V for Qbus (RQDX3), U for Unibus
(UDA50), B for VAXBI (DWBUA, KDB50), 8 for PDP-8 (RL8A), 11 for PDP-11
(DUP11), 10 for PDP-10, etc., but there are plenty of oddball devices
that don't exactly follow the pattern (KDA50 for Qbus, for example, or
DMF32 which doesn't trumpet that it's for the Unibus, but then many
Unibus devices lack a "U" when there's no Qbus equivalent to
disambiguate it from).
It doesn't help you to decipher exactly what goes with what, or what
capacities, etc. (as in, an RK05 is a disk (R) with removable platters
(K and others), and 5th in a line (from the RK01 through the RK07.
You wouldn't know from that breakdown that RK05 and RK06 disk packs
have different numbers of platters (vs, say, the RL01 and RL02 which
are identical in shape, but differ only in low-level format), but you
can at least tell something about the device. To continue, the RK05
might attach to your CPU with an RK11C, or RK11D or RKV11D or an
RK8E... each of those _does_ tell you something about what sort of
machine they attach to.
So there is a pattern, but it's not absolute, nor does it do more than
convey gross, general characteristics of the device. Still, I suppose
it's better than a random 4-digit number (*ducks the bricks being
thrown by the IBM crowd* ;-)
-ethan
5 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
So there is a pattern, but it's not absolute, nor
does it do more than
convey gross, general characteristics of the device.
That's precisely my problem - I was spotting vague patterns earlier, but then
something would come along that just didn't fit in, and having a few
exceptions makes the whole idea of sifting things based on part code alone
rather redundant :-)
5:28 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
That's precisely my problem - I was spotting vague
patterns earlier,
but then something would come along that just didn't fit in, and
having a few exceptions makes the whole idea of sifting things based
on part code alone rather redundant :-)
DEC produced "stuff" for (just) over 40 years; naming consistency over
that period is a tad tough :-)
Someone sent me a copy of an Options and Modules CD set from the
mid 1990s ... I think I sent it to Manx but I'm not sure how
easy it would be to make available over the net. (It's not the
amount of data, it's more how to present it).
Antonio
7 Jun
7 Jun
6:42 a.m.
Antonio Carlini wrote:
Someone sent me a copy of an Options and Modules CD set from the
mid 1990s ... I think I sent it to Manx but I'm not sure how
easy it would be to make available over the net. (It's not the
amount of data, it's more how to present it).
A lot of the fields were the names of various managers responsible for
design, production and maintenance of the parts, so Manx only shows the
part number and description fields at the moment.
http://vt100.net/manx/part
This draft Parts section of Manx only contains DEC information so far.
--
Paul
6 Jun
6 Jun
6:06 p.m.
Jules,
Such an index was?called a "salesman". ;-)
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 1:17 pm
Subject: DEC parts code reference?
Out of interest (and to my shame, without googling first :-), did DEC (or a third party)
ever produce a reference listing of DEC "parts codes" against function (e.g.
RK05 = removable disk, KL11 = serial interface etc.)?
?
I'm trying to sort out our documentation archives, and DEC seem very good at just
listing the codes as title ("DZ11-C technical manual" etc.) on a lot of their
docs - meaning I have to skim pages to get a handle on what the thing actually is)?
?
cheers?
?
Jules?
?
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participants (7)
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arcarlini＠iee.org -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
ggs＠shiresoft.com -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
paul＠frixxon.co.uk -
pechter＠gmail.com -
scheefj＠aim.com