It's time to restore the 11/45.

[Jacob Ritorto]

  I've been reading through the 11/45 manuals and it seems these machines
are far more complex than I had imagined.  Can anyone understand and
explain the unibus a / unibus b concept?

 Should I eliminate all this fancy bipolar and core memory and just use an
m7891?  If I did, would it be on the fastbus, unibus a or unibus b and
would it even matter?



On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 2:45 AM, Paul Anderson <useddec at gmail.com> wrote:

> You mentioned a G401, which I think is bipolar memory. There could be 4 of
> these and 2 control boards. These are not needed and you might want to pull
> them to make trouble  shooting easier.
>
> Also I would be careful with them. They used to be expensive if you needed
> to replace them.
>
> The 45 and 70 share some boards, and there are 2 different backplanes/
> board sets for each.
>
> It sounds like you have the power supplies covered.
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >   Having gotten the 11/34 rig up to a good spec, I'm sufficiently excited
> > to tackle the 11/45.  It's been powered off since 2004, when I briefly
> > turned it on only to find a wild jumble of lights and that none of the
> > front panel switches or knobs did anything to the lights.  Couldn't get
> it
> > to run or deposit values or *anything*.  I therefore assumed it was badly
> > broken and so left it until now.  It has stayed perfectly high and dry
> but
> > has gone to extremes in temperature as the storage isn't climate
> controlled
> > (this is in western Pennsylvania).  And there's a lot of dust.
> >
> >   I'm not going for museum perfection, but want it to be very presentable
> > (lobbying to keep it as my 'art' in the living room long term if it's
> > presentable enough :) and functional.
> >
> > So I'm looking for tips on how to go about it?  I was thinking:
> >
> > 1) Truck machine to living room, note positions of all wires / boards.
> > Photograph, remove and clean dust from them.  Place on antistatic bench.
> >
> > 2) Thoroughly blow out dust and debris, vacuum backplane and wipe down
> > chassis and wires with damp cloth.
> >
> > 3) Map out desired hardware config: I have available two Fujitsu 160
> disks,
> > three Fujitsu M2333K disks and two Fujitsu M2372K disks.  I need to
> decide
> > how to rack and cable at least two, possibly up to four of them as the 8"
> > ones have no mounting hardware.  Operational status on all is
> "hopeful."  I
> > have two Emulex SC21s and an SC41 as well as an unmarked Xylogics Unibus
> > SMD board.  I'm also tempted to mount an RX02 drive as I have a
> controller
> > and quite a mountain of floppies supposedly containing weird old stuff.
> I
> > need to source an ethernet board and whatever cabling / bulkhead stuff
> > follows.  DZ11, its dist panel and a Diablo 630 printer would be nice,
> too.
> >
> > 4) This would also be a good time to broach the subject of whether or not
> > the capacitors need special love, or if that just adds more risk of
> > destroying something.  Those familiar, please chime in as the archive is
> > currently missing so I can't refer to the recent threads on this subject.
> > Datapoint: I didn't mess at all with power supply / caps on my 11/34,
> which
> > was stored right beside the '45 for the same timespan and it's running
> > great now.  Datapoint 2: with my amateur electronics skills / status,
> > there's admittedly some risk just having me poking around in there,
> > "learning" things :-\   Plus, I'm afraid of death from esoteric high
> > voltages that I hear are present in these old power supplies.  Is the
> 11/45
> > one of them?  In a nutshell, this analog / power stuff is FAR FROM my
> > forte; some hand-holding here would be most appreciated.
> >
> > 5) Insert an expendable Unibus module and power up; check & tune power.
> I
> > need direction on how to go about this.  Also, the bottom H742A power
> > chassis isn't completely populated.  Not sure if that's acceptable, on
> > purpose or bad.
> >
> >
> > 6)  Reassemble, tidying up issues like missing / loose screws, rubbing
> > cables, etc. along the way.
> >
> >
> > 7) rt, 2.11BSD, rsx, rsts/e!   (mostly via vtserver -  I have a tu10
> that I
> > could get in on this deal, but its roller rubber has turned into goo and
> > two cabinets in the living room is more than "pushing it."  Later date on
> > that puppy. )
> >
> > Current module config starting from front of cabinet (yes, there are some
> > gaps and M9200 jumpers I don't mention, too):
> > M9301 + M787
> > M8114
> > M8115
> > M8112
> > M8113
> > M8100
> > M8101
> > M8102
> > M8103
> > M8104
> > M8105
> > M8106
> > M8108
> > M8107
> > M8109
> > M8110
> > g401
> > M7800 + M9200 jumper
> > H214
> > G231
> > G110
> > H214
> > G231
> > G110
> > H214
> > G231
> > G110
> > Unibus cable runs out to third party external memory chassis, "Monolithic
> > Systems Corp" Type MO v11/PDP11 P/N 300-0058-000, which is three quarters
> > populated.  If this memory is broken, I'm planning to use an M7891
> instead
> > (is that OK?).
> > No Unibus termination after that.  Is that weird / bad?
> >
> > Does this current config seem sound?  Is there a problem obvious just
> from
> > this description that would account for the unresponsive front panel?
> >
> > Here's the power supply situation: There are two H742A power chassis.
> Top
> > contains h744, h744, h744, h744, h745.  Bottom contains H745, H746, open,
> > H744, open.
> >
> > big thx!
> > jake
> >
>