On Jul 1, 2007, at 10:59 PM, Kim Hawtin wrote:
>>> at which point i removed the rear plate and reseated every qbus card
>>> and socketed cable and now have have output on my terminal with
>>> 7..6..5..4..3..
>>>>>>
>>
>>   Most excellent.
>
> certainly made my day, at around 2am after spending most the day  
> fiddling
> with it and hunting down cables!

   :-)

>>> so i issued a boot, but i get a fail and retry ...
>>> need to figure out whats going on with the disk drive now =)
>>
>>   Ok.  The drive is most certainly SMD.
>
> the emulex controller has three sockets on it, one about 50 pin the
> other about 14-16 pin. cabled running off to the drive is one 50  
> and on 14

   SMD uses a 60-pin daisy-chained & terminated control cable, and a  
26-pin radially-connected data cable, FYI.

> the drive has a terminator in the second 50 pin socket on the back of
> the drive, tied to ground.

   Ok.

>> What's the make and model of the controller?
>
> the card is an Emulex, I didn't find a model number on it first
> inspection last night.
>
> will have another look and hit it with some contact cleaner tonight.

   Look at the larger (28- or 40-pin) DIP packages on the  
board...Emulex usually put a white sticker on one of them which will  
contain the model number, which will be the first few characters of  
the long number.  It might be something like QD32, SC03, etc.  We'll  
need to know that so we can figure out what type of DEC controller it  
emulates, which in turn will determine how we'll try to boot the  
machine.

>>> do earlier KA630's not know; 'show dev' or 'help'
>>> in their firmware a the >>> prompt?
>>
>>   Nope...In fact I've never seen a KA630 that had such advanced  
>> commands
>> in the ROMs; earlier or otherwise.  The oldest CPU board I've seen  
>> with
>> those capabilities is the KA650.
>
> ah, maybe I'm thinking of the ka41 microvax 3100 I have ...?
> does not matter. just need to learn how to use it then =)

   Yup.  The KA630 has no such functionality.  You can manually query  
the disk controller's registers, but that's a bit painful for quick  
diagnostic checking.

> also has a tk50, four port serial card, deqna (sp?) ethernet
> and a grant continuity card... (not sure how that works yet)

   A grant continuity card is required for unused slots, to maintain  
the continuity of the bus grant lines.

> do all cards need to be bunched up together?
> no gaps between cards, ie no empty slots?
> is there any specific order of cards in the qbus?
> must the CPU always be on the right? (when looking from the back)

   Be careful here.  The ordering of the cards in Qbus is (in many  
cases) important, and with the BA23 in particular, the bus is  
straight-through A-B-C-D for the first three slots (for CPU &  
memory), then changes to a serpentine A-B-A-B layout for the rest of  
the bus.  Google for something like "ba23 slot ordering" or something  
like that for a diagram.  If you can't find one, let me know and I'll  
dig it up.

   If you give me a complete list of all the cards in the system, I  
can cook up a functional card placement for you.

   Now, however, I must sleep, for the caffeine is wearing off.

             -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL