The PDP-11/34 Project
(New ways to waste more money!)
The PDP-11/23 turned out to be so much fun and such a efficient waste of money I decided that now my life wont be complete until I have a Unibus system.
Back of the 11/34 showing the RL-02, RL-01 drives and the 11/34 processor on the bottom of the rack, what you don't see is the AC power controller located at the bottom of the rack. each of the RL-01 drive holds a 5 Mb disk pack and the RL-02 has 10 Mb for a total system storage size of 15 Mb. My 11/23 thats over by the work bench has one RL-01 along with a RX-02 drive.
The system has the standard M7265/66 CPU cards, M9301 bootstrap terminator, M7859 KY11 programmers consul, 16 Kb of Plessey RAM, M7762 RL11 RL Drive controller and last but not least a DL11-W serial real time card next to the M9302 terminator. This is an old picture of when the 11/34 and 11/23 were located next to each other.
This system is all up and running and I have been using it to build up duplicate RT-11 systems disks and running DEC Basic.
Lots of work and time went into adapting Atari Basic code into DEC Basic code to play the game "Rock, Paper and Scissors" and this is a link to the finished program on YouTube:
YouTube Rock, Paper and Scissors
The Quest for the Unibus system
Nothing is ever easy, and sometimes if you want something you have to be willing to drive six hundred miles to get it, so after much searching, many emails and lots of dead ends I found a couple Unibus systems just outside of Akron Ohio. so after ten hours of driving and a stack of cash I was the proud owner of two PDP-11/34, a flock of RL-01 and 02 drives, A RK-05 and a couple racks.
The Best thing about this was that the seller and his two nephews did all the loading! if you have never tried to move a Unibus system or a RK-05 be warned that they are heavy. think the 11/34 processor weighs in at around 110 Lbs. itself.
They were all happy to see this truckload going!
Now that I own all this junk, spent more money on EBay buying cards and bits to get everything working, learned the mysteries on placement of grant cards (G727) and the secrets of the NPG signal path I now have my system up and running. loading programs from the keypad is way more fun then I thought it would be. See the video I have on YouTube to get a idea of keypad operation. have to wonder what's next? maybe magnetic tape?
My YouTube Videos of the 11/34
Web links for the PDP-11
Vintage Computer Forum Source of the final solution
Henk's DIGITAL computer room Examples of almost every member of the 11 family
PDP-11 Home Page at metalab.unc.edu Tons of resources
YouTube - PDP-11 And The RL-01
YouTube - PDP-11/23 2011 The 11/23
September 2014