Hardware Plea

[BitWiz]

I know that that it is highly unlikely but i will try anyway.

Does anyone have a spare working RK8E or Plessey PMDC/8 RK05 Controller board set that might be looking for a good home at a reasonable price? Pretty Please !

I have two Plessey PMDC/8's and neither of them work very well. One passes the diskless maindec but can only read and write some data and hangs on the Disk Read/Write maindec. The other one fails on the diskless maindec.

I don't have the electrical debugging knowledge to fix something this complicated so if someone can help in that respect instead that would also be appreciated. If necessary I can provide the extender board and over the top extenders to aid in debugging.

Thank you all in advance,

Mike
bitwiz@12bitsbest.com

 

[Al Kossow]

I think you are going to be more likely to find someone willing to look at your boards then giving you a third set.
Reverse engineering the Plessey seems like a worthwhile effort considering how little documentation is available,
and that they use common TTL rather than the hard to find Signetics parts DEC used.

 

[BitWiz]

I think you are going to be more likely to find someone willing to look at your boards then giving you a third set.
Reverse engineering the Plessey seems like a worthwhile effort considering how little documentation is available,
and that they use common TTL rather than the hard to find Signetics parts DEC used.

I totally agree with your statement about not finding a board set bit it is worth the try.

I believe that there is full documentation on the Plessey but I could be wrong.

 

[Roland Huisman]

Plessey documentation is here on bitsavers. Isn't there someone near to help you with fixing these boards?

Index of /pdf/plessey/peripheral/omnibus/Plessey_PM_DC-8

 

[Al Kossow]

oops...
it is their version of the RK11-D that there is no documentation for

 

[thunter0512]

I think you are going to be more likely to find someone willing to look at your boards then giving you a third set.

I agree with Al that it doesn't make sense to acquire yet another board set rather then putting in the effort to fix the two you have. There are not that many of these controllers out there and by vacuuming up more means other people miss out.

 

[BitWiz]

I agree with Al that it doesn't make sense to acquire yet another board set rather then putting in the effort to fix the two you have. There are not that many of these controllers out there and by vacuuming up more means other people miss out.

I would be happy to trade a non-working controller set for a working set or, once I get a working set, offer my non-working sets to the community. So that I won't be too much of a vacuum.