TOY-11

From: Douglas Taylor <taylor_at_crystal.nrl.navy.mil>
Date: Wed Aug 22 06:23:05 2001

At 03:37 PM 8/18/01 -0400, you wrote:
>I have one of the Codar boards... it is part of the 11/73 which
>used to run the heating/cooling systems at the DEC mill complex.

The TOY-11 has a copyright date of 1983 on the board and the ic's have
date codes for 1986. Isn't old good!


>If you can check the battery and replace it if needed, put it
>in a qbus machine and see how many registers there are after 176600
>(open 176600 and then simply hit <LF> until it complains).

I used the MAP function in my 11/23+ boot rom to find the registers, there are
two used by the TOY-11. 176670 and 176672.


>Keep track of the contents and see if they correlate to the
>current date/time... keep in mind the registers may have the
>info in BCD...
>
>In fact... I just found some datasheets for the chip on the web and
>can see that the info is in BCD... and it is in successive registers
>on the chip... the question is whether the qbus board implements
>a direct one-for-one relation to the chip registers or if there is
>a control register used as an index (write the register number to
>read) and a buffer register which is read to read that chip register
>and written to set that chip register.

It appears that the TOY-11 implementation is very simple. Address
176670 is write only and sets up the address code on the clock
chip. 176672 is read/write and I assume that means if you read you
get the current counter setting and if you write you set the counter.
At least that is what I have been able to do by writing codes to '670
and then reading '672.


>Oh, another thing... it could be that the registers are in successive
>*BYTES*, not words.

It looks like the contents of 176672 contain a byte of data, 2 BCD digits.


>Keep me informed... sounds interesting... I might be able to help
>with a program which reads the info and sets the RT system date/time
>on bootup...

I'm going to look at the software for the Codar board, maybe that can be
adapted to work with the TOY-11.
Received on Wed Aug 22 2001 - 06:23:05 BST