MicroVAX II - TK50 problem

[Ethan Dicks]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 01:15:44 -0700, John Willis <willisjo at zianet.com> wrote:
> Tried Ethan's arrangement. Also works as far as passing self-tests...

Glad to hear it... but I didn't catch what kind of box this is in...
my suggestion is
valid for a BA23, but not a BA123.  Given that you drew 9 slots, I figured you
had a BA23, but feel free to correct me.

> although
> I'm still having issues trying to get a terminal to work on
> any of the DHV11's TXA ports. Any pointers on this? (the terminal
> does work on OPA0). Specifically, I get this error message (same for TXA0
> through TXA7):
> 
> $ SET TERMINAL TXA0:/PERMANENT/INTERACTIVE/DEVICE_TYPE=vt100
> %SET-W-NOTSET, error modifying TXA0:
>  -SYSTEM-F-TIMEOUT, device timeout

Hmm... if you weren't getting interrupt and DMA grant passed, the machine
wouldn't boot because the RQDX3 wouldn't be able to interrupt/make DMA
requests (a side benefit of putting it last, I suppose - no boot is an obvious
sign problems, whereas a machine that boots, but has problems with a device
behind the RQDX3 might be harder for a novice customer to grasp the
situation of).   

It's more likely there's a configuration problem than broken hardware, but
that doesn't mean that it's impossible that you have an actual DHV11
problem. I just don't remember seeing device timeouts on serial adapters
since most problems will make them not show up at all.

I no longer have a copy of your "show device TX" output, but I take it you
_have_ tried putting a terminal on TXA0 and pressing return a couple of
times?  Have you put a terminal on there and tried outputting any text to
it (a DCL command procedure or a C program should do the trick)?  One
can attach serial printers to random ports, if you didn't know that.  They
aren't just for logins (when they are working, that is).

> However, it does now show two
> additional devices, HXA0: and HXA1:. According to everything
> I can figure, these are two large Centronics-type connectors
> hanging off of the "mystery card" which turned out to be a
> DRQ3. Anyone know what this is for? The description in the field
> guide isn't exactly verbose.

I do not recognize either the HX designator or the DRQ3, but it
sounds like some kind of DMA-based parallel interface.  Perhaps you
could try running the system with that out?  I doubt there's an
interrupt conflict, but testing with the simplest machine possible is
a good technique to use to keep the number of variables down.
 
> This machine also had a DRV11 in it when I got it, but no cabkit.
> It [the DRV11] is no longer in the system.

Right... that _is_ parallel I/O... not typically used for printers, but
can be used to interface to odd external logic, or some such.

-ethan