Bob wrote...
Be careful!
It looks like you have a MEM board installed in I/O slot 10. This is bad.
The MEM belongs near the top of the front card cage, its not an I/O
board and should never be in the rear (I/O) blackplane.
Don't power it up like this.
Nah, don't worry a bit. The board you have in the I/O card cage in slot 10
isn't a MEM board. It's a FEM board (the red extractor handle is a hint {you
can't always trust that though} but the jumper at the back is a dead
giveaway). MEM boards (memory expansion module) go in the front card cage
and are used if you need to address more than 32kw of memory. FEM (firmware
expansion module) is a board that goes in slot 10 (theres some exceptions
here) in the rear card cage and holds microcode chips. A FEM board is just
like a FAB board that mounts under the cpu board (functionally anyways). I
vastly prefer the FEM board. Some say FEM is a negative over FAB, because it
takes up an I/O slot and FAB doesn't. I disagree - perhaps because most all
my E's are 2113's and thus I/O slots don't need to be rationed. It's far
easier to change microcode - either by pulling the board and replacing chips
or by swapping FEM boards - than it is to try and pull the FAB board from
the bottom.
About FAB boards... (and M series microcode daughterboards too)... it
appears that it's not totally rare for the mounting posts to electroplate to
the pads on the daughterboards or FAB boards. Since the mounting posts
actually DO carry current to the daughterboards be careful when removing
them. The pads are plated through, so pulling some of the plate off is damn
near irreversable damage.
Now more curious... the FAB board in your box isn't connected to the cpu
board with a shielded ribbon cable. This effectively disconnects the FAB
board - it's microcode isn't available to the cpu. Note you can't use a
regular ribbon cable stub to connect the two, it has to be a shielded one.
You'll definitely want that.
Oh, another FEM advantage... it provides more capacity than the FAB, and
more flexible addressing options.
Jay West