Recent content by pkhoury

And my house. The final end was Summer of 2021. My trailer is a 5x14, and I think I brought back about 7 or 8 full loads from Houston... I'm still sorting through things!

Thanks. C13 on my PSU looks charred and melted, so I couldn't make it out at all.

I tried some of my Compaq Portable II's (I have several) and all started smoking from the PSU (honestly, no shocker there). I took only one apart, and C13 on the PSU looks a bit charred/melted. I'll try and take a picture later on with a macro lens to better show what it looks like. That said...

Thanks for posting this. I have two of these; one tries to boot, the other powers up but doesn't do anything. On the one that boots, I only get half of the image on the screen, and it's VERY faint, so I'm wondering if it's recap time. Did you recap yours by chance?

I did look up the VAX 8600 as a result and it mentions a PDP-11 as being used for a console. Not sure if that's what the first board could be?

I picked these up at the freebie table at our club's last GTG, but nobody knows what they're for, other than the CPU being that of a PDP-11:

Good to know they end up on bitsavers. I've sold a decent amount of things to Mr. Kossow on ebay.

So after reading the pocket service guide, it appears my VT278 failed one of the three fatal tests. First appears to be ROM checksum, then RAM and finally making sure the keyboard is plugged in, which could explain why your CRT doesn't power up if the keyboard isn't plugged in. I think there...

I only got the RX02 floppy drives, sitting on casters next to my sofa. I did get a DECmate keyboard, probably in storage, but it's missing some keys. I may or may not have documentation, also in storage. No joke, I got between 1 and 2 trailers worth of documentation (for DEC, IBM, S100 systems...

That made me laugh, as I've had MANY drives sound like that, nearly all of those being MFM or RLL drives.

I don't suppose that was the one that was at the Houston Computer museum, was it? If so, I'm currently trying to troubleshoot it (also acquired the RX02 drives as well).

Yet another update. Reseated things, and oddly, the terminal now comes up, but I have a new issue. The picture gets shaky at random times horizontally. I've got it finally stable after playing with the rearmost POT and have brightness set where I want it. I'm very much a n00b when it comes to...

More updates, in reference to the VT101: Getting +12 to the video controller board. I'm not sure what +12 RTN is on the schematic, but the multimeter shows a negative voltage briefly, but nothing more than a tenth of a volt. -23 on the PSU is really -24.40. The interface to the flyback...

Flashing CPU LED... almost sounds like a heartbeat indicator like I've seen on some HP 9000 workstations. I don't know where my VT278 keyboard is, so I was using one from my VT101, but I think they're mostly the same electrically, right? I know I've used the VT278 keyboard on the VT101 before...

For an update, I did find the pocket service guide. Checked voltages going to the controller board. I didn't record the video, vertical and horizontal voltages, but I'm getting +5, +12, -12 and -23.