On 8/17/2014 1:45 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hi all --
As I mentioned a few days back, I recently picked up an 11/05 that's
in need of some troubleshooting. This weekend I've started getting
more acquainted with the details of the CPU set (reading through the
schematics and the various manuals (which are quite thorough,
fortunately.))
Before I start getting too deep with this, I figured I'd see if maybe
I'm overlooking something simple -- I'm relatively green with Unibus
systems.
So here's what I'm seeing:
- At power-up, the system comes up in a halted state and I can load
addresses from the front panel switches into the address register, and
these are correctly loaded -- no stuck bits, etc.
- Toggling "Start" causes the "Run" light to go on and the system
seems to be doing... something (the address/data lamps flicker).
Attempting to halt the machine at this point does not work, but if I
have the "Enable/Halt" switch set to "Halt" and hit "Start"
again the
machine does stop and the "Run" light goes out.
- Hitting "Exam" while halted has no effect (no data is loaded,
addresses are not incremented), and seems to lock the machine up -- I
can no longer load addresses via the front panel. Hitting "Start"
still puts the machine in the "Run" state outlined above, and once
halted again, "Load Addr" works again.
- Hitting "Cont" while halted puts the machine back in the "Run"
state
regardless of the state of the "Enable/Halt" switch.
So it definitely looks like the Run state control logic should be
looked at...
The machine's configuration is very basic: the CPU set (M7260/M7261),
an 8KW core board set (G110, G231, H215), and an M903C Unibus
terminator. I've verified that these are all in the correct slots.
Bus grant cards are in the D slot of all four Unibus slots (and
inserted in the correct orientation, I hate those things...)
Thus far I've tested the power supply and voltages are spot on with
acceptable ripple. AC LO L and DC LO L are correctly going high after
power on, so that shouldn't be causing issues. I've gone through and
cleaned everything including the edge connectors. (I left the core
plane undisturbed, it's already been banged around enough...) I
double-checked the backplane for bent pins that might be touching
other pins.
I've checked the processor clock, and it's running properly and at the
correct rate (310ns). I've run the machine with just the processor
set with the same behavior.
Any other simple things I should check before I get seriously involved
with this thing? Fortunately I have a set of KM-11 replicas I got
from Guy Sotomayor a few years back so that will help immensely in
debugging...
Thanks as always,
Josh
Okay! Replying to my own post since I made a couple of discoveries this
evening, and had fun doing it :). Got out my KM-11s and spent a bit of
time stepping through the microcode for the "Exam" front panel stuff.
The service manual makes this really easy, since it uses exactly this as
an example of microcode flow. It seemed to be executing correctly, but
after attempting a read from the Unibus both BBUSY and MSYN were
asserted and never got reset; according to the documentation on the
Unibus, the device being addressed is supposed to assert SSYN within a
short period or else the microcode should trap. (It won't trap while
being single stepped by the KM-11, however.)
Since SSYN was not being asserted, it seemed likely that the device
being addressed (the core memory) was not responding properly. I hadn't
previously attempted to read or write the processor registers (starting
at addresses 177700) so I gave that a try and reads and writes via the
front panel worked fine, so the CPU was running the microcode correctly.
I now suspected the memory system and started off checking whether the
address can be configured -- and it can: jumpers W2-W6 on the G110
board. And sure enough, mine had been configured to start 8KW into the
address space. I rejumpered it and now I can deposit and examine memory
starting at address 0. I've tested a handful of addresses and they
read/write without any stuck bits which is encouraging given how rough
the 8K core plane board looks.
Still a few issues left to resolve -- the address doesn't auto-increment
after an examine or a deposit, and nothing seems to execute correctly,
either by single stepping or normal execution.
A project for later this week, I think...
- Josh