Anyone have one available for a low and decent price, I prefer the front loaders and I need something with Quad Density as I've got varying tapes I currently have a Qualstar 3404s which only does 1600/3200, if anyone is interested in it or wants to do a trade plus $$$ I'd love an M4 9914 but I doubt anyone is willing to part with one cheap. Curt

Hello, everyone, I recently became the owner of a nice PDP 11/34A system. It has 248Kb of parity RAM, programmer's panel, RL11 w/1 RL01, RK11 w/3 RK05's, RX211 w/dual RX02 drives, EAE, DZ11, and standard console port w/RTC interrupt generator. I've got it so that it'll boot RT-11 V5.3 from one of the RL01 packs that I got with the machine. It appears that this pack also has the TSX-Plus (can't recall the version,.. 5.1A?) multi-user extension for RT-11 installed. Problem is, I can't login when I start up TSX-Plus because I don't know the PPN's or passwords. There's a file called ACCESS.TSX that appears to be the username/password database, but it appears to be stored in encoded form...I've tried dumping it in RAD50, as well as in HEX, OCTAL, and ASCII, and haven't been able to make heads nor tails of it. Does anyone know the structure of this file, and how it is encoded? I'd like to be able to get a few ports running on the DZ11 and see how it performs in a timeshared RT-11 environment. My long term goal is to get RSTS/E up and running on the machine. According to some of the docs, it's possible to run RSTS/E on an 11 with 1 RL01 and 2 RK05's, which I should be able to do, though I've not hooked up the RK11 (it has the RK11's backplane installed, but I've removed the UNIBUS jumper that connected the main backplane to the RK11's backplane and installed the terminator in its place) and RK05's as yet. Another issue I've got is that the machine gets unstable when I put the RX211 controller in. Sometimes the system behaves with it in place, other times, it doesn't. I have made sure that the NPG jumpers are removed on the backplane slots that the RL11 and RX211 are installed in (the last two slots on the 9 slot backplane). The UNIBUS is properly terminated. When the system behaves with the RX11 in place, I can intermittently read/write floppies, but, it's intermittent, and when it's not working, the whole machine gets pretty confused. The RX211 has its switches set to the standard settings as documented in the RX211 uuser's guide, and the interrupt priority header is the standard one also. I'm a little baffled. The backplane is full with the RX211 installed. The +5V power on the backplane is clean, and running at +4.98V. When I remove the RX211 and insert a NPG/Interrupt Grant jumper, the machine runs beautifully. Is this a sign of a sick RX211, or some kind of bus loading problem? Any help that all you DEC fans can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

In response to problems that I'd mention regarding getting the RL11 controller to happily co-exist with the RX11 Ethan Dicks said: cards were either BR4 or > BR5. Remember that an interrupting device breaks the grant chain for all peripherals to the at the same BR level as the front, then test. No > reason to leave it there permenently - it should be a robust enough device to go anywhere in the an RQDX1 is involved, but So, I followed this advice, and greatly so, everything worked fine. However, I later found that the position wasn't really the issue. The problem was that the BR selection header on the RX211 controller really squeezez the tolerance in terms of inter-board spacing. What was happening is that with the RX211 behind the RL11 controller, the BR selection header on the RX211 was apparently shorting some connections on the back of the RL11 controller. So, *that's* what that fully looking piece of semi-transparent orangish-material that I found in the base of the cabinet when cleaning things up...apparently it was some kind of insulator placed on top of the header to prevent just such shorts. Fortunately, the shorts didn't cause any damage. When I swapped the boards' positions, the interference didn't exist anymore, and everything works like a champ. The RL01 drive works flawlessly, and both the RX02 drives also work great. Here's another question for you DEC folks: The system has the main backplane (closest to the front panel), then there's the RK11 backplane, which is connected to the main bus by a bus jumper, and from the last slot (A&B) of the RK11 backplane, is another jumper which conncts to a 9-slot expansion backplane. Question is: Is this correct? Should the RK11 backplane (4 slots in which the RK11 4-board RK11 controller plugs into) be situated BETWEEN the main bus and the expansion bus, or should it be located at the end? Next question, back on the TSX-Plus password hacking part of the thread; On one of the floppies I was given, I found a program called TSAUTH.SAV. This program runs from RT-11, and appears to be a tool to manage the ACCESS.TSX and CREDIT.TSX files. The CREDIT file appears to be a structured text file, which contains PPN's, "user names", and privilege information for each account. The ACCESS file appears to be where the passwords are strored in some encrypted form. The TSAUTH program has just gives the normal "*" prompt when run. I tried all kinds of combinations of characters for commands, and found that it responds to "A", "L", "P", "E", and "K". E exits the program. The other commands result in a "PPN:" prompt. By looking through the CREDIT.TSX file, I could find out PPN's, so I tried entering one of the PPN's listed in the CREDIT file after typing the "K" command (which I assumed means "KILL"), figuring that would wipe out the user's entry. It didn't. Using BINCOM, I backup copies of the CREDIT and ACCESS files with the actual files, and there was no change. If I moved the ACCESS.TSX and CHARGE.TSX files to different names and ran the TSAUTH program, it complained that it couldn't find the ACCESS file, so I know the program is somehow supposed to manipulate this stuff. DUMPing the TSAUTH.SAV file results in some text clues that make it clear that the program is an administrative tool. Messages such as one asking the user if they wish to make a new authorization file, and how many entries to reserve for users should be created. I tinkered with the program for quite a while, and couldn't get it to emit those messages no matter what I did. The "E" command is used to exit the program -- the only command that I could really tell that did anything. Does anyone have any TSX-Plus Version 5 manuals that they could look up this command and let me know how it works? Many thanks to all, Rick

--- Rick Bensene <rickb(a)bensene.com> wrote: Cards that use the circuit-board-based jumper plugs frequently do. Indeed it is. I must confess that the possibility hadn't occurred to me (novice vs. expert expectations and what not). Yes. There's supposed to be an insulator on the top of the BR selection PCB. The adhesive does frequently dry out and fall off. Very late model Unibus boards have a BR selector that looks like a DIP resistor (yellow body, no exposed conductors). In many cases, though, newer designs just didn't have a selector. The BR level was fixed. Frequently the case with DEC stuff... short that cause damage tend to show it right away (with magic smoke heralding the event!) Given the boards in question, an admirable solution. It can be a problem when you are trying to load out a DD11-DK and want to use the SPC slot next to the terminator - I have tended to put things like LP11s there. Congrats. It kinda depends on what else is in there. There are some peripherals that want to be very close to the CPU because they can't buffer operations and would starve if some other device were in front of them. The RL11 should have a "silo" (the RL8A does, I'm pretty sure) that allows it to be somewhat patient about initiating transfers. I would expect the RK11 to be less sophisticated, and more sensitive to timing issues. Ethernet cards and streaming tape controllers are other classes of devices that tend to want to be near the front. Terminal cards and line printer controllers tend to be more tolerant, owing to the relative slowness of the I/O (compared to disk and network). So... if it's there right now, I'd probably leave it, unless you run across a comment in a DEC handbook that suggests that it needs to be somewhere else. Unless you are getting data errors with peripherals behind it, it's probably not hurting anything. -ethan The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

Hello, all, I've been working for about the past three weeks on getting the PDP 11/34a up and running under RSTS/E. As a recap, the machine has 2 RX02 floppy drives, 1 RL01 drive, and 2 RK05j drives, 256Kb of parity RAM, programmer's panel, DZ11 8-port serial mux, console serial w/line clock, and EAE. There were lots of fits and starts on getting all of the peripherals working. Most of the problems were due to my ignorance of the characteristics of the UNIBUS. After getting some tutorials from a number of folks on and off the list, I learned the magic of grant continuity and NPG jumpers. In conjunction with lots of time with simh, and the wonderful program vtserver, I now have RSTS/E V7 running successfully on the machine. Right now it's only got a single terminal, as I have to remove an NPG jumper to install the DZ11, but the system is SYSGENed to recognize the DZ11 when it is installed. Learning the ins and out of SYSGEN was quite an experience, but in retrospect, it's an amazingly robust and (once the concepts are understood) relatively straightforward process. As many indicated would occur, it's a little slow, but very usable. The main reason for the slowness is that I have to add extra swap on the RK05's, which aren't the fastest drives in the world. The rack really shakes when running a big program as the RK05's thrash. Unfortunately, I don't have any RSTS documentation other than the HELP system, and a few tidbits that I've found on the web. Someone needs to scan at least the BASIC PLUS manual and put it up on the Web for reference. A few questions for the knowledgable out there: 1) Are RX floppy devices not file-structured devices under RSTS? I've tried using the standalone utility DSKINIT program to format one, and it won't regognize DX0:. The DX0: device shows up in the HARDWARE list. I can write a BASIC-PLUS program that opens DX0: and can write data out to it, but it just acts like one 'file', not a file-structured device. Is there any way to make the floppy drives under RSTS 7 file-structured devices? 2) I see references to BASIC-PLUS-2? What are the differences between BASIC-PLUS and BASIC-PLUS-2? I don't have any bits for BASIC-PLUS-2, but am curious about it. 3) Does anyone know if there was a FOCAL run-time system ever built for RSTS/E? 4) Can I take RT-11 (V4 or V5.3) .SAV programs and use them under the RT-11 runtime system under RSTS/E? an MACRO be used to assemble/link programs written for RT-11 to run in the RT11 runtime systme under RSTS/E? I suspect not, but am not sure. 5) Is there a version of KERMIT for RSTS/E V7? Anyone know where I can get it? 6) My 11/34a doesn't have the floating point hardware option. I had to SYSGEN RSTS with software-based 16-bit floating point. This certainly slows things down. However, I've heard that the FP11 significantly slows with the overall operation of the 11/34a. Would it be worthwhile for me to find and install an FP11, or not? 7) I have a 16-port backpanel for the DZ11. It takes two ribbon cables, one cable for each of two DZ11's that can connect up to it. I've got the right ribbon cable for connecting the one DZ11 that I have up to the backpanel to get 8 RS-232 ports. Anyone know the pinout for the DB-25 EIA connectors on the backpanel? I can probably figure it out with a breakout box, but it someone has it, all the easier. I'm hoping to hook the 8 ports up to a Xylogics Annex terminal server, and be able to TELNET to it. That way I can play with the machine (which is out in the shop) from my office in the house. This has been a great adventure, and a lot of fun. Thanks to the CC'ers who've helped me out along the way! Best to all, Rick Bensene http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

Rick Bensene wrote: [snip] As others may have told you http://elvira.stacken.kth.se/ but it has documentation for V8 and V9, but not V7. V7 is quite old, and, as I understand it, anything up to V9.6 may be used under hobbyest license. Sorry, don't know which is the best version for a 34, but many improvements were made on the way to 9.6. Were there 8 inch floppies really available to PDP11's in the V7 timeframe? Apparently they are recognized at some level, but I think you needed to use a program ('fit'?) to do anything with them. I think you may just need a newer version of RSTS to get more support. Basic-Plus is an interperture[sp], Basic+2 is a compiler. Basic+2 also gives you access to RMS data files, and many other enhancements, like speed and more memory available for your program, and the ability to use modules ompiled in other languages. Probably someone did one. Look to the DECUS archives. Hopefully someone has recovered a atpe. Depends on the program. RSTS/E only implements a subset of the RT11 system, but many programs should work. Should be available. Look on http://www.columbia.edu/kermit Depends on how much floating point you do. Adding floating point processor should allow you to reduce the size of the monitor/compilers. (by losing the floating point emulation) Should be standard RS-232. Shouldn't be anything special about them. Should only need pins 2,3,7 to get things started to work (assuming the server can handle Xon/Xoff). Ad more wires as you need additional features.