[rescue] New to me PDP-11/23+

[John Hudak]

A nice system - Congrats.  This should keep you entertained for hours.
The bulkheads for console SLU differed according to what the machine was
(Qbus, Unibus) and they varied within the backplane family.
Without having my notes in front of me, the information on this wikipedia
page is very helpful.  From what I can remember, this looks to be correct:
https://gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_asynchronous_serial_line_pinout
The pinouts on the various bulkheads show what pins on SLU connector/CPU
board to connect to.

Back in the day, I designed and built my own SLU interface/bulkheads for
our lab machines. If I can find my notes, I'll update the info.
If you haven't already, you should check out bitsavers for some very useful
documentation on the KDJ11-B. Specifically the KDJ11-B CPU Module Users
Guide EK-KDJ1B-UG-001
and
KDJ11-B CPU system Maintenance EK-247AA-MG-001

Useful information on how to configure the jumpers on the board, and set
the baud rate for the SLU.  The joys of ODT are well explained in the
second manual.  The User Guide does a good overview but the System Maint
manual has more detail

You can configure the CPU board to use the onboard SLU as the console or
another asynchronous serial card such as the DLV11-J. Not sure what config
you have. The manual for the DLV11-J is also on bitsavers.

Software - I can't help much here as my machines use RL02 and I have actual
packs for RT11 and RSX11.  OS's can be loaded using SIMH in at least a
couple of ways.  There is a TU-58 emulator via a serial line interface.  As
you mentioned, you need to get the SLU working to use it.  IIRC, there are
RT and RSX-11M versions (documents and compressed images , RL01 format I
think). I think you will need to know the disk type emulation the cpu is
expecting to boot from.  This info is contained in the boot proms and
configured via the onboard jumpers.
Not sure how to get the images onto the zip drive.
IIRC, the 11/23 could only run UNIX v5, V6.  To run BSD 2.x requires
separate I&D space and the usual upgrade was to exchange the 11/23 cpu
board for a 11/73 board.
Good luck
J









On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 7:01 PM Steve Hatle <steve.hatle at gmail.com> wrote:

> I recently came into an 11/23+ machine. It has a KDJ11-B CPU board, a
> MSV11-Q memory board, a SCSI board that was driving a SCSI Zip drive for
> boot media, and two cards that were used to control a laser cutter.
>
> First issue is that there is no "bulkhead" to bring out the console
> connection, so I need to figure out how to get a terminal connected to
> the J1 SLU connector. This is 9 pins, but I can't seem to find
> definitive info on what the pin assignments are here, and exactly which
> pin is #1. Once I know these things, I'm sure I can make a cable with
> TX/RX/GND to get a console going. Anyone have pointers? I found a set of
> schematics but what I think is showing J1 doesn't make sense to me.
>
> Then, I need to figure out how to get software set up to run the thing.
> I didn't receive any of the Zip media previously used, or any
> documentation for the machine. I'm guessing I can use SIMH and perhaps
> build a bootable Zip or other SCSI drive, but that will need to wait
> until I can at least talk to the thing. Lacking any other serial ports,
> I don't think I'll be able to take advantage fo the TU58 emulator or
> other solutions.
>
> Looking forward to getting this guy up and running!
>
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>
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