[rescue] Trying to get Cadmus 9200 running (serial console trouble)

[Peter Stokes]

Hi

On reading this blog

http://www.pcs-cadmus.de/en/blog/2016/05/06/cadmus-and-pdp11/

The systems are essentially the old Dec LSI Qbus systems with the LSI proc
replaced with a Motorola one. Importantly it states that the serial console is
based on the DLV11-J board, is that the case here?

If so go through the settings on the DLV11-J, which if you are stuck should be
available online I guess or in the Cadmus docs?

If not I can dig out may old Dec books to scan them in!

Peter
---------------------------
Peter Stokes
Ashlyn Computer Services
Mbl: 07977 532320
---------------------------




On 4 Feb 2019, at 16:29, Mike Spooner <mike.spooner.ux at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do you need to have the PC serial ports set to 7N2 or 7N1.5 instead of
> 8N1? Also might want to try different parity settings instead of N (none)
> - try E (even), or O (odd).
>
> -- Mike Spooner
>
> --------- Original Message ---------
> From: Meelis Roos
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Date: Sun Feb 03 14:58:49 GMT+00:00 2019
> Subject: [rescue] Trying to get Cadmus 9200 running (serial console
> trouble)
> Some time ago (last year? or 2017?) I wrote about rescue of 5 sets of
> 2-box
> Cadmus 9200 computers. Now I finally got around to sorting them out to
> decide
> what to leave for myself and what to send out to those in the queue.
>
> Yesterday I dug them out.
>
> The sets all seem to be Cadmus 9230 (some parts are from 1987, some from
> 1988):
> Cadmus 2800 main box with QBUS cage and no storage and Cadmus 2804-62
> storage box
> with 65M SMD disk and 16M QIC tape drive (4 boxes have tape drives, one
> misses the
> tape drive). All main boxes have MC68010L10 CPU, 512M RAM board (directly
> connected
> to the CPU board), Emulex SMD disk controller (4-wide), 8-port serial mux
> card
> (4-wide) and a 2-wide tape controller card, 3 also have parallel port
> card (4-wide)
> with MC68000-10 CPU on it.
>
> I happily found that there is virtually no dust inside to clean before
> plugging in,
> and tried to get some output. Just from the main box, no storage
> attached. After two
> days of trying and reading manuals, I still have no output at all.
>
> The two boxes I used most have three front panel lights and they are on
> (well,
> one lamp is out on one of the boxes but I know the lamp should be on by
> swapping the
> lamp panels around). The lamps are "RUN", "LTC" (line to clock) and INIT
> and they
> should be on normally, according to the manual. So the box thinks it is
> somewhat alive.
> If I remove some QBUS boards, the lamps still light on powerup, except
> when I remove
> the CPU board (then RUN goes off, as would be expected).
>
> I tried 3 different cables to two PC-s (one Dell D600 with native serial,
> one a later
> Thinkpad with pl2303-based USB-serial adapter). Tried with and without a
> null modem
> adapter with all the cables to be sure that I have at least one correct
> twistedness.
> 9600-8N1 as the manual says, and tried both hardware flow control and no
> flow control
> (by the manual, most ports should have no hardware flow control lines
> connected, only
> console and another port have it, no explicit mention of whether the
> console port
> should have hardware flow control).
>
> Reseating all the QBUS cards did not change anything.
>
> With one unknown black cable and no null modem adapter, I got some
> strangeness: there
> is partial echo back of what I type, but that is garbled (about 1 out of
> 3 characters
> is the same, 2 are garbage that is different for each character).
> Interesting part is
> that I only get echo for 4 last serial ports (including console on 8) but
> no echo on
> first 4 serial ports. Might that be some strange pinout of the black
> cable that is
> somehow activated by remote port handshake?
>
> Does anyone have any ideas how to continue? I want to get the systems up
> to the point
> where I can at least see which hard disks might still be working (for
> sorting).
>
> --
> Meelis Roos
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