Hello, ive been reading on the list here for a while. I'm usually in the background not seen much, I figured i would give a status update on my pdp 11/34 system. I have been moving quite often for work over the past couple years, and still have not gotten my machine running since picking it up over 3 years ago. Thankfully I have all of the equipment and peripherals in one place now, and am hoping to get this thing finally running soon.
I had picked up an entire truckload of a pdp 11/34 system. Its an 11/34 with a tape drive in a separate rack, 2 rl02 drives and an rl01. Lots of disk packs and terminals. I fought with some power supply troubles at first, but after some part swapping i got the machine to power back up. As of right now, i have a minimal machine that i can key in programs on the front panel. I was able to enter programs through the front panel that would display on the vt100 connected via current loop. Thats pretty much the state of things right now. The system is in a minimal state,most of the cards are removed for troubleshooting. i wanted to test the hardware and see if i can boot to a disk packs. My disk packs appear to be loaded with RSX. I was trying to switch from current loop to rs232, so i can connect the machine to a modern computer with a serial port, and dump diagnostics over the line to test the machine. I have tried wiring up the cable, but am getting intermittent garbage on the terminal. Thats pretty much the hangup at the moment. I hope to over the weekend troubleshoot it further and get this project moving again. There is a lot of local activity here with all the hacker spaces and amateur radio folks, i really want to get it running in some kind of public manner that others can interact with, perhaps some kind of telnet gateway or over ax.25 packet, but thats later down the line once its running. There is also another 11 I am picking up in Georgia in the following week, so i have that drive ahead of me. Not even sure i will get started checking the other system out till the 34 is running. Well, thats about it for the state of things and my progress. Once i get things cleaned up a little better ill post back with some pictures of the current setup. --Devin D.
