PDP-11/03

1/10/03

I acquired an 11/03 (it was cheap).  I've also borrowed enough Q-bus cards that I can test out the RL02 drives that I have (total of 4).  I also have a copy of RT-11 on an RL02, so I'll be able to test out the RL02 drives.
 

1/14/03

After messing around with RL02 cables and cleaning the drives up some I did manage to get RT-11 to boot on one of the drives.  The second drive I tried made nasty sounds when it tried to spin up (fortunately I put a "scratch" pack in the drive before I tried to spin it up).  When I took the pack out it looked like it was scored -- I guess that drive needs some work.  The third drive I tried worked too.  The fourth drive I knew needed work so I wasn't prepared to try that one out.  This is great!  I seem to have two working RL02 drives.  So now atleast I can do pack to pack copies and initialize and check out packs.
 

1/23/03

Over the past few days a number of the Q-bus cards that I've ordered have shown up.  So now I can build up the 11/03 with my own set of boards and can return those I borrowed.  Here's what's in the 11/03 now:
 
Option Module Description
KD11-HA M7270 LSI-11/2 CPU 16-bit
MSV11-DD M8044-DB 32K Word 16-bit MOS RAM
DLV11 M7940 Serial Line Unit
RXV21 M8029 RX02 floppy disk controller
RLV11 M8013 RL01/RL02 disk controller (1 of 2)
RLV11 M8014 RL01/RL02 disk controller (2 of 2)
BDV11 M8012-YA Bus terminator, bootstrap and diagnostic ROMs

I put both the RXV21 and the RLV11 in the 11/03 because both are limited to 18-bit addressing which happens to be the same as the LSI-11/2's limit.  Right now I have one of the RL02 drives connected to it, but eventually I'll have the RX02 drives connected and the RL02 will be put on one of the bigger 11's.