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

Wed Oct 12 10:59:03 EDT 2022

I was coming to the same conclusion that this could/should be considered 
an 11/73, since the KDJ11-B always seems to referred to as the board in 
an 11/73. Totally likely that it was upgraded in the "original" 11/23+ 
chassis some time in the past.

I will pull out one of the cards for the laser cutter and get pics up 
soon. Since I'll be in there, I'll take photos of the Zip interface card 
as well.

> Dave McGuire <mailto:mcguire at neurotica.com>
> October 11, 2022 at 10:56 PM
> On 10/11/22 13:35, John Hudak wrote:
>> Thanks for the clarification Dave.B  About the bulkhead, I was not 
>> referring to the on-board connectors on the KDJ11-B. When the OP 
>> mentioned 'bulkhead' I thought he meant the circuit board that 
>> contains DB9, DB25, etc. which is usually bolted to the chassis.
>
>   Ah, gotcha.  In DEC parlance, that's the "cabinet kit".  What 
> probably happened is that it was originally an 11/23, and was upgraded 
> in-chassis to an 11/73, which uses a (slightly) different cabinet kit.
>
>> The link I posted described the connections from the on-board SLU 
>> connector to the bulkhead connector.B  DEC had a number of bulkhead 
>> configurations on their machines.B  In any case, I re-read the OPs 
>> post and realized his system does not have the bulkhead connector, on 
>> the two 10-pin Berg/IDC connectors on board.
>> To clarify things, the link I posted:
>> https://gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_asynchronous_serial_line_pinout#10_pin_header 
>> <https://gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_asynchronous_serial_line_pinout#10_pin_header> 
>>
>> describes the pinouts for the 10-pin Berg connector.
>
>   All understood.  That's also a good reference.
>
>             -Dave
>
> John Hudak <mailto:jjhudak at gmail.com>
> October 11, 2022 at 12:35 PM
> Thanks for the clarification Dave.  About the bulkhead, I was not 
> referring to the on-board connectors on the KDJ11-B. When the OP 
> mentioned 'bulkhead' I thought he meant the circuit board that 
> contains DB9, DB25, etc. which is usually bolted to the chassis. The 
> link I posted described the connections from the on-board SLU 
> connector to the bulkhead connector.  DEC had a number of bulkhead 
> configurations on their machines.  In any case, I re-read the OPs post 
> and realized his system does not have the bulkhead connector, on the 
> two 10-pin Berg/IDC connectors on board.
> To clarify things, the link I posted:
> https://gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_asynchronous_serial_line_pinout#10_pin_header
> describes the pinouts for the 10-pin Berg connector.
>
> John
>
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> Dave McGuire <mailto:mcguire at neurotica.com>
> October 11, 2022 at 8:27 AM
>   Just expanding on a few points below.
>
> On 10/11/22 00:48, John Hudak wrote:
>> A nice system - Congrats.B  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.
>
>   Steve said he has a KDJ11-B processor board.  This processor has two 
> onboard SLUs which use the 10-pin connectors, not the 40-pins.
>
>> I think you will need to know the disk type emulation the cpu is 
>> expecting to boot from.B  This info is contained in the boot proms 
>> and configured via the onboard jumpers.
>
>   There's virtually no chance of it being anything other than MSCP. 
> Several companies made Qbus SCSI host adapters; all of them (or nearly 
> so) implement MSCP.
>
>> Not sure how to get the images onto the zip drive.
>
>   dd
>
>> 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.
>
>   Not quite.  2.11BSD, the last release, is the first release to 
> require split I/D space.  2.10BSD and prior will run on the 11/23.
>
>             -Dave
>
> John Hudak <mailto:jjhudak at gmail.com>
> October 10, 2022 at 11:48 PM
> 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
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> Steve Hatle <mailto:steve.hatle at gmail.com>
> October 10, 2022 at 6:00 PM
> 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!

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