It's time to restore the 11/45 - progress!

[Tothwolf]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2015, tony duell wrote:

>> OK, please forgive my ignorance, here.  To give you some idea of my 
>> electronics expertise level, I'd like you to know that I just googled 
>> crowbar :D
>
> I do not want this to be taken the wrong way. I am not trying to insult 
> you, nor do I want to put you off restoring the 11/45 (which is a very 
> nice machine).
>
> FWIW, the 11/45 was the first PDP11 I ever restored and the first I ever 
> used. All I had was the printset (schematics and fortunately microcode 
> flowcharts). No technical or maintenance manual. No instruction set 
> listing. No web pages to look at. No bitsavers. No list like this one. I 
> managed it, and you can too.
>
> But the 11/45 is complicated, both in terms of the number of components 
> and way it was designed. There are quite a few non-obvious (at least to 
> me) bits of logic circuitry in there.
>
> I think you need to read some more general books on electronics too. I 
> am not sure what to recomend here (and of course suggestions are 
> welcome). I do like 'The Art of Electronics' by Horrowitz and Hill, it 
> does start from a basic level, but it may be rather heavy going at the 
> start. It's still a book to consider (and probably buy), since you won't 
> grow out of it. But there may be other inttoductory books to look at.

The two introductory books I tend to recommend are 'Getting Started in 
Electronics' and 'The Forrest Mims Engineer's Notebook', both by Forrest 
M. Mims III.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-Mims/dp/0945053282
http://www.amazon.com/Forrest-Mims-Engineers-Notebook/dp/1878707035

Back in the day, earlier versions of these books were sold in Radio Shack 
stores. 'Getting Started in Electronics' was a bright green book. The 
first 'Engineers Notebook' was blue, followed by a yellow 'Engineers 
Notebook II'. The two Engineers Notebook books were discontinued much 
earlier than 'Getting Started in Electronics', which I remember seeing in 
their stores even into the late 1990s.