-----Original Message----- From: Joan Sarah Touzet [mailto:joant@Cadence.COM] Sent: Friday, July 31, 1998 9:27 AM To: anthony.dellett(a)staples.com Subject: Forward for your mailing list Hi everyone! I'm sorry for my boyfriend's post lacking details on my PDP setup; he's not familiar with these systems, and was hoping there was a simple answer (and a simple configuration!) for dead PDP-11/23s. Unfortunately, no such thing ever exists... ;) (So I'm the QBus person, and he's the S-100 bus person. You can imagine the fights we have over dinner.) Anyway, all joking aside, this is a PDP-11/23 system. It's installed in a Charles River Data Systems backplane & enclosure, which contains 2 8" drives which I believe are double sided. (I'll open the case this weekend to confirm, and to CLEAN!) The system has been stripped down to only the essential modules: a KDF-11A (PDP-11/23 CPU with FPU installed, M8186), an MXV-11 multifunction serial/32K memory card with local refresh (M8047-CA), and a Charles River Data Systems FC-202 drive controller board. I currently have the backplane configured as such: M8186 M8047 FC202 With no documentation on the FC202, it's hard to know whether it is trying to share an interrupt with the M8047, but I've been told it's a dropin replacement for the MXV21, so I've placed it as such. FYI, the backplane is quad high, with 8 rows of slots. I have been trying to boot RT-11SJ v5 from drive 0 using the RX02 single and double density bootloaders, as well as the RX01 bootloader on the off-chance that these are single-sided drives. One of two things happens: 1) After RS/340, R7/1000, P the run light comes on, drive 0's busy light comes on (and it sounds like it seeks to Track 0) but the system hangs there. In this case, the RUN light stays lit until I send BREAK or front-panel toggle from ENBL to HLT. This happens in less than 1/2 a second. I don't hear any additional seeking from the drive. 2) After RS/340, R7/1000, P the run light comes on momentarily, drive 0's busy light comes on (and seeks to Track 0), the run light extinguishes, and I'm dumped to ODT somewhere around 1104. (The address can vary.) This happens in less than 1/2 a second. I am unconvinced that the drive is actually returning a media error this quickly. I've also let the system sit in state 1 for the approximate time I remember it took these systems to boot (30 seconds? It's been 18 years...) but no kumquat. I've also entered some of the diagnostic programs I've found in the Microcomputer & Memories books I've got floating around (1981, 1982 editions). Most of the tests pass. The ones that don't are tests like the "continuous stream of ASCII characters to the console prompt" and the "press a key, create an interrupt, and halt the program" ones. After trying multiple CPU and MXV11-CA modules, and still seeing the same erroneous behavior, I'm beginning to suspect that those programs don't quite work as indicated. I haven't gathered up the gumption to bother debugging them by hand yet. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I have the CPU module jumpered to power-on into ODT, and the MXV11-A module is pretty much at the factory defaults. Some of the MXV11-As that I have, have boot PROMs installed in them, and so the PROM address jumpers may be different than those listed as factory defaults, but everything else is "by the book." One final note -- this system and enclosure were working a few years ago in an expanded configuration (with 3rd party memory add-on modules I've since removed, as well as a bunch of Analog Devices-powered A/D boards, and an RGB Peritek video board) so I'm pretty sure that the bus is configured for a /23 already, instead of for an LSI/2 or something. Any ideas? My current plans for the weekend involve taking the enclosure apart and cleaning the drives within an inch of their lives, then trying to boot again using the RX02 bootloaders. I'm starting to run out of ideas. -Joan Touzet (go ahead and reply to the list, I can read it just fine through the archives page :P ) --- - Joan Sarah Touzet | So grey is not the color I expected - - joant(a)cadence.com | On someone who's so often touched by grace - - joyce.eng.yale.edu/~joant| But always she's the spectre of uncertainty - - I still love OS/2. | I first endured, then faded, then embraced... -