2100 at smecc

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Thu Sep 9 22:37:53 2004

> hi jay need a drive 2883 or a controller and a 79xx drive(s)
At least in my world, 2883's are unobtanium. I will check how many 7900's I
have. If I have enough after refurbing them all, I can trade you a 7900A
drive. A 13210 controller may be more difficult. There's a catch though -
I'd rather not send a pristine 7900A that I spent a hundred hours
refurbishing into a non-working environment. Let's get the other processors
and peripherals working first. Once they fly, then we'll talk about a drive.
By the way, you DO know you can use a 7905, or a 7906A,B,C,D don't you? The
latter are common as dirt it seems.

> will have to fire up the processors and see what happens there...
You will need a diagnostic library. There's quite a few you'd need to pass,
and at least two that should be run for an extended period. If you don't
have a diag lib, contact me off-list and I'll get you one on any of several
media. If it was me, I'd do some serious inspection if they haven't been
powered up in years. At the very least pull all cards, progold the edge
connectors and backplane sockets, check the power supply (there's a simple
adjustment procedure). To check the power supply you need a single board
in - I think it was the IDL board, have to check. To adjust the 20v memory
supply you need the machine to warm up and the setting is based on a
temperature chart. I'd also check the backplane wirewrapping for damage,
bent pins, etc. The last thing you want to do is just hit the power switch
and pray. You may loose a set of processor cards and those aren't easy to
get.

> if I was
> to run this system I would want a good stash of 2100s on hand...
You definitely don't need a "stash of 2100's" to run a system regularly. At
least in my experience, the 2100's dont fail often, once you get one running
well. Most common failure is an XY driver board or DC board. Get your two
cpu's running well, then get one spare cpu set, and a couple spare memory
boards. You should be set with that.

> do you have any extra?
Not yet, maybe in the future. But don't you already have two? Let's spend
the time to get your existing ones working first.

Jay
Received on Thu Sep 09 2004 - 22:37:53 BST