Fire up the iron...

From: TY Sealy <ty_at_mit.edu>
Date: Thu Nov 30 10:31:47 2000

Greetings folks,
  This weekend I will see if I can find some old friends ( Former DEC20
Service Tech's) who used to work on those Beasts.. I will pass on
this Info and see I can get some contact Info from them, and if they
are willing to Help...
enjoy,
   --TY

At 10:27 PM -0500 11/27/00, Christopher Zach wrote:
>Ok, it's fall, it's cool, and I can finally start working on AI again.
>With the cold weather, I can pop open a window instead of fighting a
>losing battle with an 8,000 BTU AC unit.
>
>Quick bit of status: Sitting in my computer room here at the house is:
>
>AI (20/20 system, fully loaded with memory, passes all diags)
>RM03 (Fully operational, need to dust off and purge)
>RM80 (Operational, however currently unformatted)
>RM03 (Logic problem in getting the heads to load)
>TU77 (Doesn't work, why?)
>TU77 (Spare for parts)
>
>I've got a pair of RM02's, a TU45, and an RP07 sitting in storage. The
>TU45 is a bit of a shambles, maybe with Dan's system as a plate I can
>diagnose it someday. The RM02's will work on a 20, bit slower than an
>RM03, but same format. The RP07 is in God knows what kind of shape (the
>lid for it disintegrated on Interstate 40...). A dream would be to get
>that drive operational and running as the system disk.
>
>Once running, the systems will move to a place where power and AC is not
>an issue. Till then, they run at my house.
>
>The big problem with AI is that the tape MASSBUS is dead. I don't have a
>clue as to why. Diagnostics are very vague, closest thing I get on the
>controller is a control bus parity error/8915 bit fiddler error.
>According to the limited TOPS20 diags, this could be anything.
>
>So in order to figure this out, I've spent the evening pulling out the
>DZ11's, the chaos controller and the Micon Ethernet card. In it's place
>I have installed a pdp11/23+ for running pdp11 diagnostics on the RH11.
>
>Yes, I know: 11/23's are Q-Bus and the RH11 is a Unibus tank. However
>I've also got a Qunivertor, and it seems to be working (albeit in 18 bit
>mode). At least I can fire up RSX11/M and begin walkin through tests on
>the TU77/TM03/RH11. And I don't have to deal with the main CPU, the 18
>bit fiddler, etc...
>
>Thus my question: Did the tape drives work on AI before it went offline.
>Somehow I seem to recall that they didn't, and this might be due to a
>bad RH11 MASSBUS controller (as I have swapped in 2 other TM03
>controllers with the same lack o results).
>
>CZ
Received on Thu Nov 30 2000 - 10:31:47 GMT