M7264 Troubleshooting

[allison]

On 06/08/2019 12:07 PM, Mister PDP via cctalk wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 7:35 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> PS: Might be useful to check that the DLV11-J works; having a stock of
>> known-good
>> boards you can swap in is such a tool for QBUS debugging.
> 
> 
> Tried that one out too, and it works. In fact, unlike my M8017, it will
> actually respond to my inputs on my terminal. I'm pretty sure I may just
> have the card configured incorrectly, but I'm not going to worry about that
> for now. Right now I am working on getting a TU58 emulator set up. You
> wouldn't happen to know where  I could find detailed instructions
> (Address/Vector, Bootstrap, etc..) on how to do this would you?
> 

LSI-11 (or PDP-11) Microcomputer handbook there were many versions
over the years earlier maybe more useful to LSI-11 users.

First you really want the DLV11J as you need the ports.
Configure it with the standard address for DD(TU58) and its vector.
There is a list in the various Qbus LSI/PDP11 manuals.

Note to boot anything from TU58 you will need a boot program
and unless you add a MRV11 (eprom card) that means hand entry
via ODT.  See
http://retrocmp.com/tools/tu58fs/265-tu58fs-pdp-11-boot-loader-operation
for details.

Also you will want not less that 16Kbytes of memory more its very
desirable the upper limits is about 28K words as the upper 4K words
is reserved mostly for boot (ep)roms and device addresses.

Most common easily loaded OS is RT-11 V3 though 5.4.

The most common devices:
RX01 floppy
LP11 Parallel printer, this can also be a port on the DLV11 for
a serial printer.
And of course the console  VT52 or VT100 were the time frame for
LSI-11 but any of the later VT2xx,3xx and later terminals work well.
LSI-11 Boot, terminator card (there are variants depending on the
bootable devices.

ONE LAST REMINDER:  LSI-11 was first of its kind and while Qbus did
become a standard it did not remain completely in the original
format.  There is Q16, Q18, and Q22 and that specified both level
of change and the address bus width.  Not all cards work right in
LSI-11 level bus with LSI-11 cpu and some of the older cards
common to LSI-11 do not in the newer buses with 11/23 or later
cpus.  Some of the backplanes did specific incompatible things
with the CD portion of the connector chain and in some cases
had a EF connector (HEX width).  Use care, read up, and have fun.


Allison