[geeks] Re: WOOHOO!!

[Dave McGuire]

On Sunday, October 27, 2002, at 09:40 AM, Michael Thompson wrote:
>>   My PDP-11/70 just booted RT-11!!
>>
>>   For you weirdos who don't know what a PDP-11/70 is (though I'm sure
>> everyone here has at least heard of them), it's the biggest, baddest
>> PDP-11 ever built...the granddaddy of 'em all, circa 1974.
>
> The real test is getting RSTS/E running. You need the Quickware 
> replacement
> CPU board set and memory so it really will be the baddest PDP-11. ;-)

   Yeah, feel free to ship me one. ;)

   But even that wouldn't be the absolute fastest...Mentec is still 
making current-technology PDP-11 processors, you know.

> I hope that you have a TU16 tape with a TM02 Massbus interface not a 
> TE16.

   Nope, it's a TE16.  I haven't looked at the formatter.

> Now that you are an 11/70 expert you can visit Rhode Island and get 
> ours
> running. 768KB of core memory with room to grow to 1MB!
>
> http://ricm.museum.com/collections/pdp-11/11-70.html

   Oh man, that machine looks like it's been abused.  Do you have the 
original front panel to replace that diag panel?  As I recall, DEC 
field service usually left them on-site with the machine because they 
were technically customer property.  Putting them back in isn't very 
difficult, though it seems the NPG wire on the backplane gets removed 
with the installation of the remote diag panel, and when you replace 
that diag board with the regular DL11 console board, you're 
fucked...because DL11s (well at least most of them) don't connect pins 
CA1 and CB1, so you wind up with a broken NPG chain which hangs the 
Unibus.  It took me a fucking long time to figure that out, as I was 
thinking "nah, I don't need to check that NPG wire...the console board 
always goes in that slot and it's not a DMA device, so why would anyone 
have removed the NPG wire?"  ...ugh.

   Anyway, what problems are you having with it?  I'm far from an 11/70 
expert, but I do have a lot of general PDP experience, and I have a 
really good portable oscilloscope. :)

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                  "Mmmm, big."
St. Petersburg, FL                -Den