24 Aug
2005
24 Aug
'05
12:36 a.m.
I got a LSI-11 (11/03) the other day that is pretty much intact, but
will need some work.
Included with the chassis, backplane and power-supply, were the
following cards:
Top
LSI-11 CPU M7264 <----------><Quad>
M7940 <dual> | DSD 1140-AA floppy ctl <dual>
M7940 (aux1) | M7940 <dual> (aux 2)
M7941 <dual> | M7944 <dual> (5)
M7944 <dual> (1) | M7944 <dual> (2)
M7944 <dual> (3) | M7944 <dual> (4)
EMPTY | M7944 <dual> (bank)
<------------------<Quad> Mystery/Terminator??---->
Bottom
I do believe the mystery card at the bottom is in fact a
terminator/bootstrap?? (TEV11/REV11)
But there are no numbers on the handles or on the board.
The plastic handles are grey and are DEC branded. The board has a 40 pin
connector.
Having never seen a TEV11 or aa REV11 and finding little by googling,
I'm wonder if anybody out there
can enlighten me!!
I took a picture and excuse me for the size, but I wanted to include as
much detail as possible!
http://personal.riverusers.com/~dponsford/qbus.html
I also believe the DSD board is a floppy controller.However what looks
like the model # on the side of the board:
A/1140-6A a small ehite label on the 28 pin eeprom N82S 100I 7851. The
controller has a fifty pin connector.
Does this look familiar to anybody
Thanks in advance for any help!!
Tom
24 Aug
24 Aug
10:03 a.m.
>>>> "tom" == tom ponsford
<tponsford at theriver.com> writes:
tom> I got a LSI-11 (11/03) the other day that is pretty much intact,
tom> but will need some work. Included with the chassis, backplane
tom> and power-supply, were the following cards ...
tom> I do believe the mystery card at the bottom is in fact a
tom> terminator/bootstrap?? (TEV11/REV11) But there are no numbers on
tom> the handles or on the board. The plastic handles are grey and
tom> are DEC branded. The board has a 40 pin connector. Having never
tom> seen a TEV11 or aa REV11 and finding little by googling, I'm
tom> wonder if anybody out there can enlighten me!!
tom> I took a picture and excuse me for the size, but I wanted to
tom> include as much detail as possible!
tom> http://personal.riverusers.com/~dponsford/qbus.html
You have bad html (local filename reference for the photos); pasting
the name part into the rest of the URL gets the pictures.
That's definitely not a DEC board. For one thing, a Qbus board
wouldn't have gray handles, it would have maroon handles (that's what
the M in board part numbers refers to).
Second, the rats nest of wires on the back goes way beyond anything
that DEC would ship (far too many wires) and the "slap them anywhere"
routing is much sloppier than the rework I have seen coming out of
DEC. It's just barely possible you might see this in a prototype,
though almost always prototypes would be done a lot more cleanly than
that. But for sure you would not see that in a production board.
paul
12:57 p.m.
Paul Koning wrote:
> You have bad html (local filename reference for
the photos); pasting
> the name part into the rest of the URL gets the pictures.
Oops
Sorry a fixed url:
http://personal.riverusers.com/~dponsford/qbus/index.html
> That's definitely not a DEC board. For one
thing, a Qbus board
> wouldn't have gray handles, it would have maroon handles (that's what
> the M in board part numbers refers to).
Well this is a qbus board as it came out of a qbus chassis and the grey
handles do have DEC
on them! But I agree I think this may be a third party/prototype board!
However there is an
assembly number and other production artifacts that lead me to believe
this is not a
prototype board in the strict sense.
My first instinct with the mystery board was that it was a modified
production board rather than a prototype
There is a 24 pin gold-colored chip in the center of the board, labeled :
IM5200CJG
i 7608
and in the lower corner FPLA-1
The CPU board does have the 5th socket filled with the FIS/CIS (
23-003B5) option,
I believe some of the operation of the board has to be a sort of
termination like a TEV11, which
is required for the LSI-11 to operate, and the location, the last board
on the qbus, is the obvious
location for the termination board. Having no photo of the TEV11 or
REV11, I though this may be one!
> Second, the rats nest of wires on the back goes
way beyond anything
> that DEC would ship (far too many wires) and the "slap them anywhere"
> routing is much sloppier than the rework I have seen coming out of
> DEC. It's just barely possible you might see this in a prototype,
> though almost always prototypes would be done a lot more cleanly than
> that. But for sure you would not see that in a production board.
It could be a prototype board, but I do have a few circa 1974 DEC unibus
boards
that do have as much as (or more) wirewrapping!
As this computer was from the U of A, it might have been used in some
intructional/development program.
The chassis is not a DEC product, more of an OEM/ development project.
The front of the computer says:
LSI-11 MICROCOMPUTER
Microprocessor Development System
University of Arizona
with a few micro-toggle swirches (LTC on/off, Enable/Halt and
Initialize) as well as small lights (Running, halt, D.C. On,
Enable )
.
Cheers
Tom
1:34 p.m.
>>>> "tom" == tom ponsford
<tponsford at theriver.com> writes:
>> That's definitely not a DEC board. For one
thing, a Qbus board
>> wouldn't have gray handles, it would have maroon handles (that's
>> what the M in board part numbers refers to).
tom> Well this is a qbus board as it came out of a qbus chassis and
tom> the grey handles do have DEC on them! But I agree I think this
tom> may be a third party/prototype board! However there is an
tom> assembly number and other production artifacts that lead me to
tom> believe this is not a prototype board in the strict sense.
One possibility is that it's a third party board with handles
manufactured by DEC attached to them. DEC sold those handles
separately, and you could just attach them to your own board...
Something to check is whether there's a module number on them.
Standard DEC practice is to stamp the module number on the handle.
Module numbers are normally a letter plus 3 or 4 digits; the letter
matches the color: M-maroon, W-white, G-green, R-red, and probably
others. M were the later ones, with ICs on them (as opposed to R
which have either discrete transistors or, maybe, small scale TTL).
So the M series module codes includes large modules with cast metal
handles, as used in big VAXen. Those aren't actually maroon in color
(more like grayish metal), but they still have the ID on the handle.
Yet another thing to look for: DEC boards have a DEC logo ("digital"
in 7 blocks -- unless it's quite old) somewhere on the board, almost
certainly near the edge.
paul
2:38 p.m.
On 8/24/05, Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com> wrote:
One possibility is that it's a third party board
with handles
manufactured by DEC attached to them. DEC sold those handles
separately, and you could just attach them to your own board...
That was quite common with 3rd party boards. We used real DEC
stiffener/latches for our Unibus and Qbus products, but we never
stamped a number on them anywhere. You had to see the pattern of
lights to locate our board in the backplane (easy because we had 3
clusters of 4-LED DialLite assemblies). Out of the backplane, though,
we clearly marked our boards with model number and our address/phone
number (1-800-SRC-DATA)
Yet another thing to look for: DEC boards have a DEC
logo ("digital"
in 7 blocks -- unless it's quite old) somewhere on the board, almost
certainly near the edge.
That depends on your definition of "quite old". I don't recall ever
seeing a Digital logo on the boards that were hand-taped. Once DEC
moved to machine-routed boards with solder mask, _that_ era all had a
logo in copper. So... some time in the late 1970s to early 1980s
would be where I remember seeing logos (Rainbows, Professional 3xx...
that era). Older Qbus stuff may or may not have a logo (but I _think_
all the Qbus stuff was designed with CAD).
-ethan
P.S. - it _does_ look like Qbus to me - I think I see grant jumpers on
the right side fingers on the view of the solder side.
P.P.S. - just because there are lots of ECOs doesn't mean that the
board wasn't a production board... we shipped our first "COMBOARD-II"s
to customers with 14 component adds (mostly resistors), about 30 cuts
and about 50 jumps. OTOH, that doesn't look like DEC ECO practice
(nor does it have a DEC feel to me). I wouldn't start by looking for
any DEC identifiers - that's pretty clearly a 3rd party board.
6903
days inactive
6903
days old
4 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
pkoning＠equallogic.com -
tponsford＠theriver.com