14 Oct
2015
14 Oct
'15
3:40 p.m.
Hi Folks,
Does anyone have a electronic copy of the original Decmate Owner?s Guide (AA-K330C-TA)
that they could share?
Alternatively, can anyone describe what can be accomplished (if anything) from the initial
?Setup? prompt on a VT278 *without* any disks attached?
The situation is that Brent and I are trying to resurrect a Decmate ? we?ve plugged in a
VT100 keyboard (Thanks, Bill!):
- it boots to the ?Setup? prompt with the flashing cursor.
- the ?Power? light on the rear of the unit is steady and the ?CPU OK? light is blinking.
- the keyboard lights indicate ?online"
- pressing ?2? or ?PF3? cause ?Setup? to disappear. ?3? seems to cause it to perform some
self-test like procedure.
- most keys cause keyclicks, but ?space?, ?M?, and ?/' don?t. With an oscilloscope, we
can see data from the keyboard being sent for the ?silent? keys, however.
Without disks, what else should we able to do?
Eventually, we?d like to find or construct some solution for mass storage, but we?re still
at the point of checking out the VT278 itself.
Thanks,
Rob Ferguson
15 Oct
15 Oct
12:02 p.m.
On 2015-Oct-14, at 3:40 PM, Robert Ferguson wrote:
Hi Folks,
Does anyone have a electronic copy of the original Decmate Owner?s Guide (AA-K330C-TA)
that they could share?
Alternatively, can anyone describe what can be accomplished (if anything) from the
initial ?Setup? prompt on a VT278 *without* any disks attached?
The situation is that Brent and I are trying to resurrect a Decmate ? we?ve plugged in a
VT100 keyboard (Thanks, Bill!):
- it boots to the ?Setup? prompt with the flashing cursor.
- the ?Power? light on the rear of the unit is steady and the ?CPU OK? light is blinking.
- the keyboard lights indicate ?online"
- pressing ?2? or ?PF3? cause ?Setup? to disappear. ?3? seems to cause it to perform some
self-test like procedure.
- most keys cause keyclicks, but ?space?, ?M?, and ?/' don?t. With an oscilloscope,
we can see data from the keyboard being sent for the ?silent? keys, however.
Without disks, what else should we able to do?
Eventually, we?d like to find or construct some solution for mass storage, but we?re
still at the point of checking out the VT278 itself.
Whoops, my mistake, and apology: that should have been Thanks Jack (Rubin).
Found some more info about SETUP mode in the Decmate System Architecture manual. Between
the idiosyncrasies, I'm beginning to wonder if there's something funny going on in
the keyboard scanning sequence or keyboard management from the 278, we'll have to
investigate the keyboard communication in more detail.
16 Oct
16 Oct
4:14 p.m.
On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 12:02:26PM -0700, Brent Hilpert wrote:
On 2015-Oct-14, at 3:40 PM, Robert Ferguson wrote:
Eventually, we?d like to find or construct some
solution for
mass storage, but we?re still at the point of checking out the VT278 itself.
If you haven't seen them these may be of use.
http://www.chdickman.com/rx02/
(Doesn't have decmate support though shouldn't be too hard to get to
work with the printer port)
https://github.com/drovak/os8diskserver
Found some more info about SETUP mode in the Decmate
System
Architecture manual. Between the idiosyncrasies, I'm beginning to wonder
if there's something funny going on in the keyboard scanning sequence
or keyboard management from the 278, we'll have to investigate the
keyboard communication in more detail.
I pulled mine out and it seems to do the first couple things in that
manual. If you want me to do to specific tests I can.
9:40 p.m.
On 2015-Oct-16, at 4:14 PM, David Gesswein wrote:
On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 12:02:26PM -0700, Brent
Hilpert wrote:
Pressing 2 & 3 do something, 2 causes the system to go away - presumably looking for
the disks; 3 causes a flashing cursor/underbar across the screen - presumably the
'print screen' scan,
other operations don't work. Thanks, I don't think we need more specific tests
until we've investigated the keyboard communication.
I was looking at the VT100 tech manual (we're using a VT100 keyboard) and the keyboard
signalling is quite complex, there's a fair bit that might go wrong there on either
end that might subtly interfere with the keycodes, or the scan sequence might be messed up
in some idiosyncratic way.
Yes, Rob had found the chdickman RX02 emulator and if other things work out, I think the
plan will be to adapt it for the decmate.
On 2015-Oct-14, at 3:40 PM, Robert Ferguson
wrote:
Eventually, we?d like to find or construct some
solution for
mass storage, but we?re still at the point of checking out the VT278 itself.
If you haven't seen them these may be of use.
http://www.chdickman.com/rx02/
(Doesn't have decmate support though shouldn't be too hard to get to
work with the printer port)
https://github.com/drovak/os8diskserver
Found some more info about SETUP mode in the
Decmate System
Architecture manual. Between the idiosyncrasies, I'm beginning to wonder
if there's something funny going on in the keyboard scanning sequence
or keyboard management from the 278, we'll have to investigate the
keyboard communication in more detail.
I pulled mine out and it seems to do the first couple things in that
manual. If you want me to do to specific tests I can.
17 Oct
17 Oct
10:58 a.m.
On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 09:40:37PM -0700, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Pressing 2 & 3 do something, 2 causes the system to go away - presumably
looking for the disks; 3 causes a flashing cursor/underbar across the
screen - presumably the 'print screen' scan,
other operations don't work.
I take it 9 to enter local then the setup key to exit setup where you
then get local echo of keys on the CRT doesn't work.
11:54 a.m.
On 2015-Oct-17, at 10:58 AM, David Gesswein wrote:
On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 09:40:37PM -0700, Brent
Hilpert wrote:
IIRC pressing 9 does not switch the LEDs from ONLINE to LOCAL as the doc says it should.
We should try exiting setup at that point to see if we get local echo regardless (the
hardware is at Rob's place at the moment so I can't check immediately.)
Also IIRC, after pressing 2, "SETUP" disappears as it should, however there is
no boot message, but CTL-SETUP does get us back to SETUP mode.
The reason I want to check the keyboard communication/scanning is because is because in
addition to the above where some keys seem to do what is expected while others don't,
3 keys out of all of them (?, M & SPACE) do not produce keyclicks.
Pressing 2 & 3 do something, 2 causes the system to go away - presumably
looking for the disks; 3 causes a flashing cursor/underbar across the
screen - presumably the 'print screen' scan,
other operations don't work.
I take it 9 to enter local then the setup key to exit setup where you
then get local echo of keys on the CRT doesn't work.
3354
days inactive
3357
days old
5 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
djg＠pdp8online.com -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
rob＠bitscience.ca