Troubleshooting RX02

From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri Feb 4 16:46:06 2005

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 13:21:53 -0800 (PST), Vintage Computer Festival
<vcf_at_siconic.com> wrote:
> What the hell happened to all the DEC hackers here?!!?

I just got back to town a week ago and I've been too busy with mundane
stuff to get a chance to play with toys yet... I haven't even
reassembled my desktop machine yet... I'm still on my laptop.

In terms of what you are dealing with, I have to say that I don't
remember ever having to poke through bootstrap code with an 11/03...
but my stuff is frequently 100% DEC, with the occasional Emulex card
or Systems Industries interface... If I were to sit down and build an
11/03, I'd throw in the CPU, a memory card, a DLV11J (for console),
and a real RXV11 and real RX01, and top it off with a BDV11 bootstrap
and terminator... From there, I'd expect that if I had a known,
bootable RX01, I would see an RT-11 prompt. I didn't speak up
because I don't have much experience with the DSD drives, nor the
MXV11.

Also... I tended to play with RL(V)11-based systems more than any
other interface, due to the price/performance point of the RL01 and
RL02 drives at the time I was personally and professionally fiddling
with this stuff on a daily basis... if you were having an RLV11
problem, I could be of much more assistance than helping with a 3rd
party-floppy controller problem with boot code of unknown provenance.
I do have floppy-only PDP-11s, but I haven't experienced any pitfalls
with setting them up, and your symptoms are unfamiliar to me.

-ethan
Received on Fri Feb 04 2005 - 16:46:06 GMT