MicroVAX II

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Sat Nov 30 03:22:01 2002

Yet another update on the MicroVAX II that seems to prefer dormancy...

The KA630 was still hanging at '9', so after thinking it over, I pulled
the backplane and checked it over again. I really don't like pulling it,
since aligning it is somewhat of a pain. I didn't find any visible
problems with it, but those threaded standoffs used to mount it kept
unscrewing when removing the outer retaining screws. I decided to add a
small bit of Loctite to each of the 8 inside screws to see if that will
solve that problem.

Once I got the backplane back in and aligned with the card cage, the
system would constantly get to '6' and hang, which was further than '9'. I
then tried cleaning the gold fingers of the card edge connector on the
KA630, since it seemed to be the card at fault. Even though they looked
clean, the amount of crud that came off with some isopropyl alcohol was
startling. After cleaning that board and then the memory board, the system
would reach '6', and error with a '?2' 'Failed.' message. I pulled the 4MB
memory card and shuffled boards to keep the Q bus happy, and got a chevron
prompt for possibly the first time with the KA630.

So, it looks like I have either a fussy memory board or KA630. I've not
yet tried the KA655 and associated memory cards in the BA123 again, but I
may later.

-Toth
Received on Sat Nov 30 2002 - 03:22:01 GMT