MicroVAX II Console Garbling Characters

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 4:08 AM, Rob Jarratt
<robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> It turns out the problem was the cab kit. I replaced it with a spare and the
> machine worked great. On closer inspection I found some corrosion and
> possible evidence of a previous battery leak, so I am going to take it
> apart, check it and clean it up.

Ah.  Good to hear.  I'm in the middle of cleaning up battery damage on
a cab kit myself.  I have it apart and the obvious corrosion
neutralized and cleaned, but I need to go over the traces where the
damage is before I replace the DE9.  It's been a month of cleaning and
inspecting and repair (last night's project was a PDP-11/04)

> The other thing that made me suspect the cab kit is that the act of pulling
> the serial cable out (not unplugging the terminal) would cause the machine
> to reset. MicroVAX II does this if you switch off the console terminal while
> the terminal is connected.

Hmm... that is a peculiar symptom.  Glad it led to a solution.

Cheers,

-ethan