Digital Equipment Corporation Systems

Cleaning DEC RL Packs

In March 2013, I'd finally gotten enough hardware together to try and run DEC RL01 pack drives with my PDP-11. Sark and I got together to clean a bunch of packs and get our respective systems set up and running.

DEC Scholar 2400 BPS Modem

DEC produced a series of modems intended for end users. This one is the Scholar DF 224-AA, a 2400 BPS non-Hayes modem with some interesting hardware inside.

Repairing the PDP-11/10 Power Supply

As mentioned in the RX211 repair writeup, my PDP-11/10's power supply failed with the release of smoke during operation. I finally got a chance to tear it down, isolate the problem, and fix it.

Repairing the RX211 RX02 Unibus Controller

With a friend's PDP-11/34a on the workbench, I decided to take the time to repair and test my RX211 controller, which is a DMA capable controller for the RX02 8 inch floppy system. I'd picked one up in rough shape but hadn't gotten around to repairing it.

Installing DEC Handles

Many DEC cards and modules use plastic extractor handles. These handles can become damaged, and some cards (new made prototype boards, for example) often come with no handles. DEC attached them with tubular hollow rivets, while most hobbyists are stuck with pop rivets or bolts. Here's how to properly rivet handles on!

Upgrading BDV11 ROMs

My MINC-23 came with a BDV11 loaded with the standard turnkey boot ROMs, which requires manually entering bootloaders for things like TU58 and MSCP boot. The BDV11 can be upgraded to more complete boot ROMs using images from a PDP-11/23+.