PDP-11/73 booting!

[David Betz]

Well, I have the two cables that connect to the RDxx drive. Sounds  
like my best bet would be to get a BA23 box with the appropriate  
panel already installed. I guess I'll start looking for one of those.

On Nov 30, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Allison wrote:

>>
>> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting!
>>   From: David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.mv.com>
>>   Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:53:32 -0500
>>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"  
>> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>>
>> Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was
>> unable to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to reconnect
>> the pins I could see were disconnected and wasn't able to get it to
>> work. However, the good news is that I was able to acquire another
>> cable and that fixed the problem entirely. In fact, the PDP-11/73
>> booted off the RL01 pack the first time I powered it up. I have three
>> packs and was able to read all of them. One contains RT-11 V5.5,
>> another is a TSX-Plus system disk but appears just to boot RT-11SJ.
>> It does have lots of files on it with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't
>> seem to boot TSX. The third is a blank scratch pack.
>
> First, Congrats!
>
> You need TSX.SAV and TSX also is built on RT11.
>
>> I'm now in the market for a cable and breakout panel (cab kit?) for
>> my RQDX3 controller so that I can connect an ST225 drive and an RX50
>> floppy drive to my 11/73. I know it's possible to build one of these
>> but from my experience with attempting to fix the RL01 cable, I don't
>> think I want to tackle that project. If someone has a cable and
>> breakout panel they'd like to sell please get in touch with me.
>
> There isn't a "cab kit" for RQDXn.  The cables were all internal
> and you used RQDXn in one of the BA23/123 boxen.  So you either need
> a M9058 from a scrapped BA123 or a mostly torn up BA23 (micro PDP11
> or microvax) you can pull the pannel from. You also need the little
> switch pannel inserts from the BA123 to enable READY/OFFLINE and
> Writeprotect.
>
> You need:
>
> 1 50 pin female to female IDC cable (max length 18") RQDXn to breakout
> 1 34pin female to female IDC cable (max length 30") (RX50)
> 1 26pin IDC to card edge (RDxx)
> 1 34 pin IDC to card edge (RDxx)
>
> If your not using either of those boxes then your doing what I did
> which was to build something DEC didn't document.  The cables are
> seriously are trivial and not a big a deal like those breakout boards
> and the switch pannels.
>
> Having done this I know.
>
>> Anyway, thanks to everyone who has given me help with this machine. I
>> now have a working PDP-11/73 with 1.5mb of memory, an RX02 floppy
>> drive and an RL01 hard drive and it's all working!
>
> Sounds like mine. ;)
>
>
> Allison