NF6X
Veteran Member
A little while back, I purchased a Data General Nova 3 system and a DEC PDP-11V03-L system, both of which were owned by a fellow named Herman Cohen and used in his electronic alarm company business. He passed on several years ago, but his business is still running and owned by his family.
I've been working on the PDP-11 so far. I'm still working out kinks in the system and playing with upgrades, but I have completed one of my goals: imaging the two floppy disks that were sitting in the drive to archive their contents and to allow me to simulate the system in SIMH in its original configuration. Seeing the boot message ("WELCOME TO ANOTHER DAY IN THE YEAR OF 1987") was like taking a trip back in time, and poking around in the BASIC programs that Herman wrote was a lot of fun.
Now it's time for me to try to bring up the Nova 3, and my first priority is to image its disks. You may have noticed another Nova 3 thread that was just created by another one of us retrocomputing nuts. That's not a mere coincidence… he's lusting after my Nova 3, but I can't consider letting it go until I've had some fun with it and imaged those disks!
I have no prior experience with DG systems or with RDOS. Can any of y'all help me figure out how to get disk images off of the system, assuming that I can boot it up and get the drive working? It has a single drive with one fixed platter and a removable pack. Two packs came with the system.
Can I safely use this kind of drive without a removable pack installed, or does a pack always need to be installed before spinning it up?
Are there any things I should do to the drive before trying to spin it up other than thoroughly vacuuming out as much dust as I can find? I've popped out the air filter once, and it's quite gray on the intake side. I don't have any spare filters.
Come to think of it, I don't even know how to connect a console terminal to it yet. It looks like I may need to wire up to a bank of unmarked wire-wrap posts at the left rear corner of the machine and/or on the backplane. I took some pictures of where cables were connected when I picked up the machine, since I disassembled it to barely-liftable pieces.
This DG noob welcomes any advice on successfully bringing this system up and archiving whatever intact data may still be on it!
I've been working on the PDP-11 so far. I'm still working out kinks in the system and playing with upgrades, but I have completed one of my goals: imaging the two floppy disks that were sitting in the drive to archive their contents and to allow me to simulate the system in SIMH in its original configuration. Seeing the boot message ("WELCOME TO ANOTHER DAY IN THE YEAR OF 1987") was like taking a trip back in time, and poking around in the BASIC programs that Herman wrote was a lot of fun.
Now it's time for me to try to bring up the Nova 3, and my first priority is to image its disks. You may have noticed another Nova 3 thread that was just created by another one of us retrocomputing nuts. That's not a mere coincidence… he's lusting after my Nova 3, but I can't consider letting it go until I've had some fun with it and imaged those disks!
I have no prior experience with DG systems or with RDOS. Can any of y'all help me figure out how to get disk images off of the system, assuming that I can boot it up and get the drive working? It has a single drive with one fixed platter and a removable pack. Two packs came with the system.
Can I safely use this kind of drive without a removable pack installed, or does a pack always need to be installed before spinning it up?
Are there any things I should do to the drive before trying to spin it up other than thoroughly vacuuming out as much dust as I can find? I've popped out the air filter once, and it's quite gray on the intake side. I don't have any spare filters.
Come to think of it, I don't even know how to connect a console terminal to it yet. It looks like I may need to wire up to a bank of unmarked wire-wrap posts at the left rear corner of the machine and/or on the backplane. I took some pictures of where cables were connected when I picked up the machine, since I disassembled it to barely-liftable pieces.
This DG noob welcomes any advice on successfully bringing this system up and archiving whatever intact data may still be on it!