Booting RSX-11M On A PDP-11/34

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Sun Jun 10 14:40:33 2001

On Jun 10, 11:35, Owen Robertson wrote:

> I got the system as a whole. Everything came from the same person, except
> for the LA120, which I bought refurbished from a local dealer. I think
the
> communications settings have to be correct, because I get the register
> printout, and when I send an ASCII character to the LA120 through the
> programmer's console, it prints out correctly.

Assuming you have a standard DL11-E or DL11-W, you do have the settings
correct. Some third party serial cards (and some DEC multiplexers) have
software-programmable baud rate, but not the standard DL11s. It's possible
that RSX is faking the parity, but that would be easy to check by setting
the LA120 to 7E1 (or, less likely, 7bits, odd parity, one stop bit).

> I'm not sure I have all the right packs mounted, because
> A) I only have 2 of the 3 drives connected, and
> B) the labels on a lot of the packs are faded, or have come off
> completely. The RSX-11M version is 3.1. The system has 8 (I think)
> additional serial
> lines. I have lots of software manuals, but other than the processor
> handbook, I have no hardware documentation. How many RL01 packs does an
> average RSX-11M installation use?

If you have a non-bootable pack mounted it should print a message on the
console and then halt. Or maybe just halt (I can't remember for 3.1). If
you have a bootable pack, it should boot (not surprisingly!) and print
stuff on the console but it might complain about hardware being offline if
you don't have the same setup it was built for (eg missing serial lines or
missing disk packs).

A normal RSX 3.1 installation would use 2 x RL01 or 2 x RL02. Fitting a
useful system into a pair of RL01s is a bit of a squeeze, and building one
like that is a pain, which might explain why you have three drives.

> Also - do the drive numbers (0,1,2...)
> depend soley on the order they are connected in?

They don't depend at all on the order they're connected in. The depend
only on the unit select plug (the white one with the number on it) plugged
in to the front panel of the drive. Usually the system would boot from
drive 0.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York
Received on Sun Jun 10 2001 - 14:40:33 BST

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