It's time to restore the 11/45 - progress!

tony duell ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Fri Feb 6 14:14:49 CST 2015


>   OK, please forgive my ignorance, here.  To give you some idea of my
> electronics expertise level, I'd like you to know that I just googled
> crowbar :D

I do not want this to be taken the wrong way. I am not trying to insult you, nor
do I want to put you off restoring the 11/45 (which is a very nice machine).

FWIW, the 11/45 was the first PDP11 I ever restored and the first I ever used.
All I had was the printset (schematics and fortunately microcode flowcharts). 
No technical or maintenance manual. No instruction set listing. No web pages
to look at. No bitsavers. No list like this one. I managed it, and you can too. 

But the 11/45 is complicated, both in terms of the number of components and 
way it was designed. There are quite a few non-obvious (at least to me) bits of
logic circuitry in there. 

I think you need to read some more general books on electronics too. I am not 
sure what to recomend here (and of course suggestions are welcome). I do like
'The Art of Electronics' by Horrowitz and Hill, it does start from a basic level, but
it may be rather heavy going at the start. It's still a book to consider (and probably
buy), since you won't grow out of it. But there may be other inttoductory books to
look at.

-tony


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