Data General NOVA4 status

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Wed Jan 26 13:33:35 2005

Well things are moving along very nicely, I'm going to power up in
the next few days. I've been picking on it each night (30 min - 2
hrs) and it's pretty much ready to begin power-up.

I took another look at the DG LP2 that "faulted". With a dry
paintbrush and vacuum cleaned out the dustbunnies and a few
spiders, esp. attention to the photo-interruptor. Loaded paper
into it, powered up. This time carriage zeroing worked, everything
behaved including self-test printing out the charset onto
greenbar. The "new" ribbons seem dried out and the print is
yellow-gray (likely from Bakersfield heat) but I'll try another or
WD40 the ink ribbon. Washed it all down, other than a couple of
scuffs it looks like new.

Completed all the rack wiring, made a terminal (console) cable up
from the stub that got cut off for transport. Fan filter, rack
panel fillers all in.

Took a look at the other chassis; one now empty (DG salesmammals
talked customer into too many (profitable) racks, as Bruce
suspected :-) one's got the big analog mux thing (more, next
message), the remaining has the second tape drive (6023) and the
4300 expansion chassis. Which I might keep -- ask me in a month
-- it contains a 16 in/16 out digital interface and I think a
one-channel A/D and D/A. Nice. Big though, we're talking 14" rack
space but it's mostly air (lots of slots).

Laid out all the docs, culled more dupes, which Bruce will get (hi
Bruce :-) Bought binders on the way into work today for never-used
docs.



My lab, quickly outfit last fall (moved out of my nice,
purpose-built lab, which we turned into a rent-generating
apartment -- when I get sad, I think of the income :-) has crappy
power. I'm not sure it's got enough amps to run the CPU, tape and
disk. Umm, we'll see, the obvious way.
Received on Wed Jan 26 2005 - 13:33:35 GMT