8 Mar
1999
8 Mar
'99
12:08 p.m.
(Yet Another Update)
Thanks Megan! It turned out that when I removed the Viking tape card to
inspect it I re-inserted it backward (no ears on that one). That meant the
RQ11 wouldn't fit in slot 6 and that meant an empty slot.
Q1) So how badly does it toast things in the Q-bus to be backwards in slots
A-B ?
Q2) Do all empty slots need to have bus grant boards?
--Chuck
8 Mar
8 Mar
2:36 p.m.
Q1) So how badly does it toast things in the Q-bus to
be backwards in slots
A-B ?
Eep, good question.
Q2) Do all empty slots need to have bus grant boards?
No, you need them when you break the "Snake". As long as you have them in
the looping pattern anything after the last card can be blank. Of course
the trick is knowing how the pattern goes, and I can't remember. It varies
depending on the backplane you have. IIRC, you've got a BA123, and the
first three slots have to have either a Quad board, or only a double board
in the top, after that it starts snaking with the fourth slot. IIRC, the
fourth slot starts at the top.
Zane
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3:53 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Q2) Do all
empty slots need to have bus grant boards?
No, you need them when you break the
"Snake". As long as you have them in
the looping pattern anything after the last card can be blank. Of course
the trick is knowing how the pattern goes, and I can't remember. It varies
depending on the backplane you have. IIRC, you've got a BA123, and the
first three slots have to have either a Quad board, or only a double board
in the top, after that it starts snaking with the fourth slot. IIRC, the
fourth slot starts at the top.
4:28 p.m.
Great Explanation! cut to save bandwidth.
The BA23 is almost identical, except that there are
ONLY 3
A/B/C/D, and there are 5 more for a total of eight AND there
is a very different I/O distribution panel for RD5n.
Unless it's a VAXstation II/RC that hasn't had the backplane replaced. The
VAXstation II/RC thanks to a stupid marketing gimic has three slots filled
in with Rosen. That leaves you with just enough slots for the CPU, Memory,
disk and tape controller, video adapter, and Ethernet controller (I could
swear I'm missing a controller here). I've pulled the video adapter and
put an RL02 controller in mine.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
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4:35 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Great Explanation! cut to save bandwidth.
Jerome Fine replies:
Thank you!
I believe the box you refer to is a standard BA23 that DEC "modified"
and many distributors purchased at about HALF the price of a normal uVAX II.
The idea was to get out a VAXstation II ASAP (later DEC had another model)
or so I was told.
It was ONE of the great design achievements by DEC. Many dealers promptly
bought as many as possible PLUS they ordered space backplanes for a real
uVAX II (hopefully not on the same order - most distributors were not that dumb).
About a half hour of time was needed to replace the backplanes filled with resin
with the ones that were not - 3 spare slots available - and there was no restriction
by DEC as to how the VAXstation II could be used!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I there anyone from DEC who could confirm this bit of trivia?
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
RT-11/TSX-PLUS User/Addict
The BA23 is almost identical, except that
there are ONLY 3
A/B/C/D, and there are 5 more for a total of eight AND there
is a very different I/O distribution panel for RD5n.
Unless it's a VAXstation
II/RC that hasn't had the backplane replaced. The
VAXstation II/RC thanks to a stupid marketing gimic has three slots filled
in with Rosen. That leaves you with just enough slots for the CPU, Memory,
disk and tape controller, video adapter, and Ethernet controller (I could
swear I'm missing a controller here). I've pulled the video adapter and
put an RL02 controller in mine. 
5:31 p.m.
Cool, so if I want to "upgrade" my uVAX II with a M7555 (RQDX3) what do I
need (besides the board and some ribbon cables?)
--Chuck
7:39 p.m.
Cool, so if I want to "upgrade" my uVAX II
with a M7555 (RQDX3) what do I
need (besides the board and some ribbon cables?)
--Chuck
You are joking about wanting to "upgrade" aren't you? The only reason I
can think of to do that is to attach a RX50, since you've already got a
very good ESDI controller.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
9:08 p.m.
At 10:39 PM 3/8/99 -0800, Zane H. Healy wrote:
You are joking about wanting to "upgrade"
aren't you? The only reason I
can think of to do that is to attach a RX50, since you've already got a
very good ESDI controller.
Yes, the only reason I want to add the RQDX3 is to have a monitor prom
supported bootable device with removable media. One of the uVax has the
Exabyte on it (I don't know if the Viking will boot it or not) and the
other has no media at all (although it does have a TK50 controller so if I
could find a TK50 drive that would work.)
I'm going to try to net-boot NetBSD on it since I don't have any other
VAXen to cluster it with. If that is successful then perhaps it won't be
such a big deal, but I dislike computers that have a fairly high
infrastructure overhead before you can get them running.
--Chuck
6:07 p.m.
Cool, so if I want to "upgrade" my uVAX II
with a M7555 (RQDX3) what do I
need (besides the board and some ribbon cables?)
You'll need the RQDX3, an RQDXE (which plugs into a slot beyond
slot12 in the BA123), a cable to connect the two, cables to connect
the RQDXE to the RD series drives, and another cable (like the
one which connects a DLV11-J to a 4-line distribution panel) to
connect the RQDXE to the RD ready/writeprotect buttons on the
front of the BA123... (If you don't have these, you'll need them
as well)
Some judicious reordering of the backplane to adhere to the
module placement rules, and it should work...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
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