'Missing' Digital Equipment Corporation
Field Maintenance Print Sets Online

Introduction

A large proportion of the print sets produced by DEC over the years are now online, at sites such as BitSavers and Manx, as well as other repositories maintained by individual collectors, etc; Web searches using popular search engines usually turn up manuals and print sets when needed.

However, there is are several flaws in this system, one of which is that DEC often included the print set (FMPS, in DEC jargon) for a sub-system in the print set for a larger system; e.g. a power supply print set might be included as part of the print set for the computer that used it. Often, these larger print sets are scanned as a unit, and the individual sub-systems are not visible to search engines; Web searches for the prints of the sub-system therefore fail.

Other print sets which cannot easily be found via search engines, for reasons which are not entirely clear, although the lack of a consistent naming scheme (they may be called FMPS, or "Engineering Drawings" - another, earlier DEC formal name, or simple "schematics") is clearly part of the problem.

This site is an attempt to rectify that problem. It provides links to system FMPS's which contain the FMPS's of sub-systems which individuals might search for; hopefully, a Web search for that sub-system will lead here, and from here, to the larger FMPS containing the desired FMPS.

Print sets which cannot easily be found via a canonical search engine (this effort used Google, as it's the most popular) are listed below, in alphabetical order of the sub-system's DEC ID.

Tips For Finding Prints

The search terms used in this effort were "{item} prints" "{item} prints DEC" (since for some items, "{item} prints" alone turns up many non-DEC-related results which mask out the DEC related ones). Other useful search keywords are 'schematics' and 'drawings'.

If you can find the MP number for the print set (only on the later prints sets, alas), try searching for that ('"MP-12345"' or '"MP-12345" FMPS'). Adding the '-' may, or may not, give the best results - try searching for '"MP-00317" FMPS' and '"MP00317" FMPS' (for the MM11-Y prints) and see what happens!

In short, try all sorts of variants before you give up! In particular, for devices which include an '-' in the name, it might be worth trying both with and without the '-'.

Note: When looking for core memory prints, make sure to look for both "MM11-x" and "MM11-xP"; sometimes the print sets are filed under the "P" (for parity) designation.

Print Lists