[vcf-midatlantic] LSSM visit

[William Dromgoole]

Good news fellows.
I love to see teamwork bringing up big hardware.
You forgot to say how much fun it was.
I know you had fun.
I need to get to Pittsburg and see Dave’s museum.

Bill

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic
Sent: Monday, November 6, 2017 7:16 PM
To: vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org
Cc: Mike Loewen
Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] LSSM visit


    We had a very productive hacking session yesterday at Dave McGuire's Large 
Scale Systems Museum.  We managed to get his HP 2117F mini running, after 
finding some flaky DIP switches on one of the 64KW memory boards.  I brought 
my HPDrive emulator and the requisite HP-IB boot loader PROMS for the 2117F, 
and we were able to load and run diagnostics from an emulated 9144 tape drive.

    Several of the front panel switch toggles on the 2117F were broken on one 
side, and one was completely broken.  We pulled the switch assembly from a 
previously mouse-infested donor unit, and I showed Dave how to replace the 
switch toggles.

    The external Floating Point Processor unit I brought to complete the 2117F 
turned out to have an overload problem, tripping the internal breaker/switch. 
It would power up with either of the two internal boards installed, but not 
both.  Dave thinks it may be just leaky caps.

    We also verified the operation of one of his 2645A terminals, and used it 
for running diagnostics.  Matt and Chris cleaned up and evaluated a 7905A 15MB 
cartridge disc drive.  It has the requisite 13037 controller and cables, and 
should connect right up to the interface card in the 2117F.  Needs a good disc 
pack, tnough.  Dave says he should be able to disassemble and clean the pack 
that was in the drive.

    Matt Patoray was there, along with Chris (?) and Dan Roganti.  We 
accomplished a lot.


Mike Loewen				mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology				http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/