DEC find

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Wed Jan 3 08:20:19 2001

>healyzh_at_aracnet.com wrote:

> > Now, what do I do with all this stuff? What will work with my 11/84
> > and how do I set it up? My 11/84 is bare right now - just CPU and
> > some memory. I don't even remember what exactly is in there right
> > now, I'll have to go check later. The MicroVAX II CPU was a surprise.
> > Is there anything I can do with that? Anyone in the Portland, OR area
> > (or other areas of OR/WA with a bit of planning) need any of this
> > stuff or have something that I could use with it?
> I'm guessing all the boards you just got are Q-Bus, the 11/84 is Unibus.
> However, I think you can pull the CPU and RAM out of the 11/84, and put them
> in the Q-Bus chassis and have a Q-Bus 11/83. Wait a MINUTE! Did you get a
> chassis with all these boards, or just the boards?!?!

Jerome Fine replies:

STOP!! STOP!! WARNING!! WARNING!!

11/84 PMI memory MSV11-JB,C is NOT the same as 11/83 PMI memory
which is MSV11-JD,E. For reasons which I do not understand, DEC used
the former in the 11/84 even though I understand that the CPU that is used
in the 11/84 is the identical board to the 11/83 (KDJ11-BF). Since the
11/83 CPU obviously MUST be Qbus and is designed to be used in the
BA23/BA123 with MSV11-JD,E memory, the portion of the 11/84 which
has the CPU and memory MUST be Qbus as well, but obviously is not
quite Qbus since DEC used those DIFFERENT PMI memory boards.

The question is exactly what is the difference between the MSV11-JB,C
and the MSV11-JD,E - if you don't know, I would advise that you do not
use the 11/84 MSV11-JB,C in the Qbus chassis in a BA23/BA123.

Megan Gentry often sees these posts - do you know what electronic
differences exist between the MSV11-JB,C and the MSV11-JD,E?
And would there be any damage if the MSV11-JB,C boards were
used in the BA23/BA123 chassis?

> I'm in the area and think I've got some spare RQDX2 disk controllers (trust
> me you don't want them). Not sure if I've got any spare RQDX3's, but
> probably do. Of course if you didn't get a chassis, these won't do you any
> good as they're Q-Bus.

I may also have a few spare RQDX3 controllers. But, they use only the
RD51,2,3,4 hard drives and RX50/RX33 floppy drives. And to format
the hard drives, you really need XXDP. I suppose that an RD54 at about
159 MBytes is not terrible, especially for RT-11 and the hobby V5.03
of RT-11 (oops - you can only legally run V5.03 of RT-11 as a hobby
user with the Supnik emulator), since V5.03 was the first version to
support eight 32 MByte RT-11 partitions and will soon support dates
after 1999 as well as other great options (if I ever get around to it -
still not very much interest, but I am working on it very slowly). If you
need an RX50 floppy to use with XXDP, I can probably find one of
those as well.

Lots of fun with the 11/83. What operating system do you intend to run?

If you don't intend to use some of the boards, please let me know - I
can always use a few spares.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 08:20:19 GMT