On 2013-01-11 05:08, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 01/10/2013 11:04 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:I have a clear memory of playing with this, and I don't recall ever playing much on an 11/10 or 11/05. I'm pretty sure it was on the 11/70... Ah, yes. Checking the processor handbook, both the 11/44 and 11/70 have the general registers at memory addresses for manipulating from the front panel/console. Other do as well, but I'm not going to read through all documentation right now. (The 1979 processor handbook, page 329 shows it for the 11/70 anyway.)So they do! Wow, I've never run across that.You've probably not sat as much in front of a PDP-11/70 front panel as me... ;-)Probably not. ;) I run it whenever I can, but my only front-panel interaction with it is booting and demonstrating the toggling-in of simple programs to visitors...never any actual debugging.
Sometimes that debugging isn't that fun though. The worst one have been when the timing generator card have been off a little. Really messy on the 11/70, and that card is all analog stuff. (Ie. black magic in my eyes...)
Broken core memory have also been kindof interesting. :-)Machines are getting old, so occasionally, chips give up. (Although I stopped used core 20 years ago.)
But in general, it's really fun sitting on the front panel and program and single step code.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol