PDP-10 General Maintenance
Routine care of a PDP-10 starts with the room: DEC's site guide treats temperature, humidity, dust and electrical noise as the main causes of slowly accumulated failures. The processor-specific work is margin testing on the KA10, programmable margins on the KI10, and the console-driven diagnostics of the KS10.[1][2][3] For KL10 systems see DECsystem-10 General Maintenance. Power is covered on PDP-10 Power System Service and faults on PDP-10 Troubleshooting Guide.
Environment
[edit | edit source]| Operating | Storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | 60–95 °F (15–35 °C) | 40–110 °F (5–45 °C) |
| Relative humidity | 20–80% | 10–80% |
| Optimum | 70 °F ±3 °F (20 °C ±2 °C), 50% ±10% relative humidity | – |
[1][4] DEC prefers a floor covering that conducts static and needs no wax, since wax flakes off and becomes airborne dust. Low humidity encourages static, and dust shortens tape life and causes early errors on disks and drums. DEC recommends recording temperature and humidity continuously at the site.[1]
Cabling
[edit | edit source]The KA10 must be at one end of its memory bus, and the total cable from the processor to the furthest memory cabinet must be less than 100 ft, allowing 5 ft for routing inside each free-standing cabinet. A memory bus takes at most 16 connections. The first memory should be within 3 ft of the left side of the KA10 for the published instruction times to hold.[5][6] Re-check these limits whenever cabinets are moved.
KA10 preventive maintenance
[edit | edit source]DEC's schedule for the KA10 is to run test programs N and O every 1000 hours with the machine under margin conditions. DEC considers these two thorough enough that the other MAINDEC programs need not be part of preventive maintenance.[2] Margining is done rack by rack with the local margin switches and the Type 702 variable supply, against DEC's limits for each panel; see PDP-10 Power System Service.[2]
DEC's maintenance supplies for the KA10 are the DEC Type 142 field service kit, a W980 or G998 FLIP CHIP module extender, and, for the KSR33, 35 and 37 Teletypes and the punch, Teletype KS7470 oil and Mobilgrease No. 2.[7]
KI10
[edit | edit source]The KI10's logic supply can be set under program control to any of 64 levels, so margin tests run from the diagnostics without switches. The processor watches all three mains phases and its temperature sensors, shutting down on overheating.[8]
KS10
[edit | edit source]The KS10 boots itself 30 seconds after power-up. Its console program lives in the PROMs of the 8080 front end and runs in two modes: user mode, in which the console terminal talks to the KS10, and console mode, in which commands go to the 8080.[3] DEC's maintenance guide gives the backplane and H7130 power adjustments, the Unibus adapter check and the diagnostic hierarchies for processor, memory and disk.[3][9]
Preventive maintenance checklist
[edit | edit source]- Check room temperature and humidity against the limits above.[1]
- Check that the fans or blowers in every cabinet run, and clean them.[10]
- On a KA10, run tests N and O under margins every 1000 hours of operation.[2]
- On a KS10, check the backplane voltages at the reference pins.[9]
- For KL10 systems follow DECsystem-10 General Maintenance.
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- PDP-10
- PDP-10 Power System Service
- PDP-10 Troubleshooting Guide
- PDP-10 Documentation
- DECsystem-10 General Maintenance
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 DEC, DEC-10-HAAB-D, environmental considerations: reliability, optimum temperature and humidity, flooring, recording instruments.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 DEC, DEC-10-HMAA-D, section 6.4 and Table 6-4, margin check system.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Digital Equipment Corporation, KS10 Maintenance Guide, Volume I, EK-OKS10-MG-001, June 1979, system software section: standard boot procedure, console program (File:KS10 Maintenance Guide Volume 1 (EK-OKS10-MG-001).pdf).
- ↑ Digital Equipment Corporation, PDP-10 Site Preparation Guide, DEC-10-HAAB-D, May 1970, humidity and temperature, and KA10 data sheet (File:PDP-10 Site Preparation Guide (DEC-10-HAAB-D).pdf).
- ↑ DEC, DEC-10-HAAB-D, cable length rules for the PDP-10 memory and channel buses.
- ↑ DEC, DEC-10-HAAB-D, MA10 core memory data sheet.
- ↑ DEC, DEC-10-HMAA-D, section 6.2 and Table 6-1, maintenance supplies.
- ↑ Digital Equipment Corporation, DECsystem-10 Technical Summary, 1971, p. 49 (File:DECsystem-10 Technical Summary (1971).pdf).
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 DEC, EK-OKS10-MG-001, checks/adjustments section.
- ↑ Digital Equipment Corporation, PDP-10 KA10 Central Processor Maintenance Manual, Volume I, DEC-10-HMAA-D, December 1968, section 1.1.1 (File:PDP-10 KA10 Central Processor Maintenance Manual Volume I (DEC-10-HMAA-D).pdf).