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My lucky blinken light day.

MattisLind

MattisLind

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 30, 2013
Messages
1,193
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Well, finally my search is over. I have today found myself a PDP-11/05 with proper switches and lights. My lucky day!

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Used in a Swiss Charmilles CNC system

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Inside with some cards. Only one of the CPU cards though.

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A bunch of cards. Including the missing CPU card which unfortunately is marked broken. Several core memory boards. Some marked broken... Others marked OK. Total list:

CardAmount
M1054
M93021
M93121
M99701
G1102
M8731
M72631
M72611
H2143
G652/H2221
G651/H2211
M78561
M72601
M78214
G2311

+ a number of Charmilles specific IO cards.

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Documentation and MAINDEC tapes.

This is the start of a new journey to repair it and restore it to its former glory... Together with a paper tape reader / punch and a teletype this would make a nice system. My father would love to see it running since this type of computer system was where he started his programming career more than 40 years ago. Testing different type of speech coding algorithms.

Can anyone tell me more about the different core memory boards? They are all very different. What kind of beast is the H214 board? Since they do not have any over the top connectors how would they connect with the driver / sense amp boards. The PDP-8/e has three stack boards with over the top connectors and the core memory plane in the middle. But this is different. A special back plane?
 
I see the system has a key. Any chance you could trace it's outline onto fine graph paper or scan it at a known DPI so it could be reproduced? Would be a good thing to add to the Key Repository thread if it's accurate enough.

BTW - That system is a find. It's got a chassis I don't see much any more.
 
MattisLind said:
Can anyone tell me more about the different core memory boards? They are all very different. What kind of beast is the H214 board? Since they do not have any over the top connectors how would they connect with the driver / sense amp boards. The PDP-8/e has three stack boards with over the top connectors and the core memory plane in the middle. But this is different. A special back plane?
Click to expand...

Congratulations on your find!

In answer to your memory question, I believe the H214 (8K words), G110 (control) and G231 (driver) collectively comprise the MM11-L core memory and those modules may be directly plugged into appropriate slots of the 11/05 processor backplane.
 
Hello World !

Nice rescue you´ve got !
The 11/05s or 11/10s do have a special backplane with dedicated slots for the boards, as you can see on the writing of the housing.
So no top connectors are needed as seen on the 8e memory.
Do not insert other boards than mentioned by the writing or you will have eventually some "special effects" if you know what i mean!

The other two memory boards should be afaik normal unibus memory which could be inserted if you add another unibus backplane to the system and then max out the memory to 32KW.
 
Wildfire said:
Hello World !

Nice rescue you´ve got !
The 11/05s or 11/10s do have a special backplane with dedicated slots for the boards, as you can see on the writing of the housing.
So no top connectors are needed as seen on the 8e memory.
Do not insert other boards than mentioned by the writing or you will have eventually some "special effects" if you know what i mean!

The other two memory boards should be afaik normal unibus memory which could be inserted if you add another unibus backplane to the system and then max out the memory to 32KW.
Click to expand...


I have to be honest. Yesterday I had this particularly boring merge to do to get the release branch into main branch with plenty of conflicts and it is summer and really nice weather and I guess that every one of the six levels of managers above me are on holiday so my mind suddenly shifted focus to the PDP-11/05 instead and I browsed around on bitsavers and found out what you told me above. It is not at all a standard unibus backplane with SPC slots but a very specific backplane.

Slightly annoying is that I have three H214 core stack boards (two of them has writing on them indicating they are broken), I have two G110 boards but only one G231 board. So regardless if I manage to fix the H214 board (assuming it is not the actual core matrix that had failed but some chip) I cannot get more than 8 k words of memory, unless I put the unibus core memory boards in it. But these boards were originally not meant for this machine but a PDP-11/04 with core.

Anyone want to trade a broken H214 against a G231 (in any condition) ?
 
This is all speculation on my part and may be completely wrong but have to look at systems like the 11/05 or 10 and wonder just how much memory they need.
I think the 05/10 systems were intended as signal function devices for use as graphic terminals or in your case running a CNC system and never needed to support what were at the time larger operating systems like RT-11 or RSX-11. That along with not having to support much beyond the ASR, paper tape or maybe a RX drive that’s all they wanted to work with and never developed out to systems that supported things like RL drives or large operating systems. Larger systems were used to develop programs and compile code that would be loaded on the smaller systems like the 11/05 to carry out there one or two tasks. From today’s standpoint were the smallest peripheral has its own inelegance and every computer supports some form of operating system and large scale functionality I feel we are often blinded by the idea that every system has to have a disk operating system and lots of memory for supporting it but in the day of the 11/05 don’t think they looked at it like that. I may be completely wrong but view the 11/05 and 10 more along the lines of something like the Basic Stamp or not much beyond the operating system and processor power of a modern programmable coffee maker. All that said it does not change the fact that I also want one have several Qbus systems and a 11/34 up and running but you’re not really running a DEC system until you have one with switches and lights. A direction I have been trying to move forward in is in getting all the paper tape junk up and running with the idea that maybe I can compile programs that I have written in Basic on the 11/34 to machine code on paper tape and then use the paper tape to load them to minimal 11/23 with just processor, memory and communications card and see that work. Would be way more fun with something like the 11/05 or 10
 
Hi All;
MattisLind, Congratulations, Gotta like the switches and lights.. Possibly with what you have You could make it into a machine with Paper Tape or Magnetic Tape SOS (Simple Operating System) that would assemble code and run small assembler programs.. I don't know If DEC made any SOS systems, but as Qbus said it would be a good fit for this machine..
I am trying to put together a SOS system for my Data General machine, only Difference is that DG had an actual SOS system on Paper Tape or Magnetic Tape, and in DG's case it stood for Single Operating System, (Single User)..

THANK YOU Marty
 
Qbus, just fyi - besides the use in the GT40 with graphics (11/05) the 11/10 has been a standard product in laboratory configurations DEC sold directly to end users like universities and research companies. That included for real time measuring the use of RT11-SJ for example.
If it is of interest for the people here i can post a photo of such a system i did rescue some years ago - nearly a full rack.
 
Presumably you could run CAPS-11 on the PDP-11/05 (/10) since that was the original target for this OS. CAPS-11 really requires the switches at some places. But then CAPS-11 is just slightly more than paper tapes.

My planned setup for this system is to add PC04 paper tape reader which I convert to serial (unless some one has a PC11 card available?) so I could interface it through a DL-11 and then also attach ASR33 Teletype. Then I run paper tape BASIC on it!
 
Mattis, if you try to bring your 11 back to "blinkenlights" be careful on first testing with the power supply.
On my system the capacitors are still working well but during the first test the rectifier became a short circuit and some of the traces burned away into copper steam :-(
So watch it carefully while using the control transformer for forming the capacitors or first powerup.
When you think the power supply is good, you can try to test the CPU boards without any memory, because it is able to run "on itself" for some "first tests".
Eventually i am able to help you with the G231, i send you a PM then.
 
Yes, you need a TU60 dual cassette drive to run it on - if you want to do this with original hardware.
Eventually there are some emulations ? ( Does anybody know ? )
 
Wildfire said:
Mattis, if you try to bring your 11 back to "blinkenlights" be careful on first testing with the power supply.
On my system the capacitors are still working well but during the first test the rectifier became a short circuit and some of the traces burned away into copper steam :-(
So watch it carefully while using the control transformer for forming the capacitors or first powerup.
When you think the power supply is good, you can try to test the CPU boards without any memory, because it is able to run "on itself" for some "first tests".
Click to expand...
Yes. I always start my restoration projects by carefully checking the PSU. On PSUs with a mains transformer I usually check it with a megger alone. Then I reform all larger capacitors that could easily be disconnected. For secondary switchers I start them very slowly using a dummy load and a variac to see that it are no major problems. Primary switchers are often trickier. Then I try to run the control system of a lab power supply and apply voltage using a variac. But it depends on how the PSU is built.
I actually did most of this in my PDP-11/04 restoration project. That machine runs CAPS-11 pretty well now!

Wildfire said:
Eventually i am able to help you with the G231, i send you a PM then.
Click to expand...
That sound promising! But it might take a while until I get there. Besides there is no use for the G231 if I am unable to fix the H214 board that is indicated broken. One chip has its top casing missing. Might be the problem. But finding those chips, diode arrays, might be problematic, at least cheaply. I guess that I have to borrow from the third one.
 
Ok, attached you see a picture with the well filled CPU box ( Mattis - for your inspiration if you want to max out your 11/05 :) )
4160_0_20140708_190945.jpg

Next picture is the whole rack, this has once been used in a laboratory for realtime measuring with RT11 (SJ ?) after CAPS-11
11_10.jpg

After some upgrade of the boot proms now able to boot from the RK05 and DSD Dual 8" drive.
The TU60 is still to test, the LAB11 panel has a dead power supply.
The VT220 is connected to 20mA port of the system.
Maxed out with 32KW, usable under RT11 28KW.
There have been connected also one ASR33 Teletype and a Decwriter III.
The RK05 drive was used for data collection only, eventually the DSD drives also.
I did change the Unibus Terminator board to M9312 and added the boot proms.
 
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Very nice! Any chance you could upload them as larger images so we can read the card numbers?
(no good deed goes unpunished!)

Do the DSD drives boot as RX02s or did you have to burn a custom ROM loader?

Thanks,
Jack
 
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