So, I picked up (and I did just carry it into the house, and now I hurt) a
Microvax II from another list member yesterday. Cosmetically it's a
disaster (BA123 has a cracked top panel, broken wheels, missing front door,
missing right-rear panel) but internally it appears to be complete; board
wise we have:
M7606 - CPU
M7608 - 4MB ram
M9047 - grant continuity
M7504 - DEQNA ethernet
M3104 - DHV11 8-port serial
M7555 - RQDX3 disk controller
M7546 - TX50 controller
... it's got a TK50 and hard drive (no idea of capacity).
Operational status is a complete unknown, and I have absolutely zero
knowledge about these systems - so my question at this stage is what
background reading I need to be doing in terms of pre-powerup* checks,
actually hooking a console, if there's a suggested minimal config I can use
to diag the CPU, and then (assuming it gets to that point) how to actually
use the thing (I'm assuming it was running VMS rather than Ultrix, but I
don't know for sure). I'm wondering there aren't any handy tutorials out
there, alongside whatever DEC docs are recommended.
* e.g. for most machines I'd be thinking in terms of pulling all
boards/drives, hooking up a dummy load to whatever PSU rails required it,
and then at least running the PSU up in isolation first, but I don't know
to what extent this machine requires some logic in place for the PSU to
even run.
cheers
Jules
