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desktop LSI-11

saipan59

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2010
Messages
259
Location
Colorado Springs
My desktop LSI-11 setup.
A 4-slot dual backplane with an 11/03 front panel, plus MXV11 and a W9512 wire-wrap module giving some parallel I/O and a pair of D/A's.
The fans are 12V, but running from 5V, so they are nice and quiet.
The little MCU board hanging on the left side drives the LSI console, and is a virtual COM port on a PC via USB. It has a micro-SD card for storing PDP code images. The virtual COM port has a 'command mode' for telling the MCU what to do. The MCU also talks to the 11/03 front panel, to perform Halt or Restart, and to drive the 3rd LED (normally unpopulated) in the FP.
Power supply is an H7842A from a Rainbow.
In the space above the FP, I want to add a 7-segment LED display (or similar).
The only code image so far is my hack of FigFORTH V1.3.

Pete

PDP.jpg
 
That's a great little system. I have an 11/23+ in a rack case which is a lot larger :)

Thanks Rich and others! Yeah, I used to have one of those 4-foot-high cabs, with dual 9-slots and dual RX02's, but it just needed too much space. This little guy sits beside my PC, where I can access the console via Putty, and experiment with stuff.
Within a couple weeks I'm going to start auctioning off various DEC boards and things that I don't plan to use any more, to help fund my retirement...

Pete
 
Hi Pete,

That's a nice build.

I would like to do one like that myself and I have most of the bits I need with the exception of a double height card cage. My boards are currently in a quad height which is just too big for my plans.

Keep up the good work.


Cheers,

Andy.
 
My desktop LSI-11 setup.
A 4-slot dual backplane with an 11/03 front panel, plus MXV11 and a W9512 wire-wrap module giving some parallel I/O and a pair of D/A's.
The fans are 12V, but running from 5V, so they are nice and quiet.
The little MCU board hanging on the left side drives the LSI console, and is a virtual COM port on a PC via USB. It has a micro-SD card for storing PDP code images. The virtual COM port has a 'command mode' for telling the MCU what to do. The MCU also talks to the 11/03 front panel, to perform Halt or Restart, and to drive the 3rd LED (normally unpopulated) in the FP.
Power supply is an H7842A from a Rainbow.
In the space above the FP, I want to add a 7-segment LED display (or similar).
The only code image so far is my hack of FigFORTH V1.3.

Pete

View attachment 58169
Hi Pete,

these tiny LSI11 systems are cute, can't see enough of them.
Also worked on that, http://retrocmp.com/projects/lsibox , but you won the "who has the smallest" contest.
My electronics was: H9270 backplane, PC-Powersupply, PIC microcontroller + BeagleBone, Linux desktop, UC07 SCSI with SCSI2SD to hold 4 different disk images.
Making a nice outfit was the real challenge ... being such a techno-only nerd. Kept me busy much too long, for 6-9 months.

happy new year!
Joerg
 
Upgrade:
I added a 4-line X 20-column LCD display, driven by the modern MCU board via I2C.
Hooked up the 'SLU 0' from the MXV11 to the MCU, so that it can receive data from the LSI-11 at 38.4K-baud.
Added a little code to the Forth image so that it handles BEVNT interrupts, gets the latest PC from the stack, then outputs two bytes with the PC value via SLU 0.
The MCU then displays the address in the upper-right corner of the LCD. Sorta like an old blinkenlights panel.

Pete
20200228_151205.jpg
 
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