DEC documentation - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Jul 2005

On Thu, 7 Jul 2005 William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> wrote:

...
   I don't
see how anything could be more documented than having the complete
 engineering drawings of the whole machine. And that's what you normally
 got on old DEC machines.
 That's what I have of the PDP-11/70. Full drawings of every curcuit in the
 machine. And then I have all the technical manuals for all subsystems that
 document things in a more text-like manner as well. 
 With IBM stuff, you get multiple drawings of every circuit of the machine.
 The basics are the ALDs (Automated Logic Drawings) - these are the printer
 generated, hard to read things that are the most detailed (all gates, all
 connections, all pins labelled). Then, to make thing easy, IBM had more
 traditional drawings, using nice art - still IBM specific, but much easier
 to read. Then there are (many) flow charts, timing diagrams, sometimes
 scope shots, and of course, warnings on where not to stick your tie. 
Hmm. I don't have any printer generated drawings, true. Not sure I'd want
to. The normal drawings are pretty big, and lots of paper. They contain
every wrire, every pin, and every connection. Also photographic layouts of
PCBs. There are also flow charts and timing diagrams in there.
In the service and maintenance manuals you have more descriptions,
including scope shots and other kind of service information. Lots of
trobule shooting information as well.

So I still can't see what more documentation there could exist.

But I admit that I don't have any experience of IBM hardware. I just can't
imagine what more information there could be than what I have. And that
was what was delivered with the machine.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol