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What a great site-if only I had found it earlier.

dalmill

dalmill

Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2023
Messages
32
Location
Milwaukee area
Hi to all.

I joined recently after rediscovering all my computer stuff that had been largely forgotten in the corner of my basement.

That's what living in the same house for over 36 years and then moving to a new home will do.

I am an ex DEC field service engineer (1979-2007) in the Milwaukee area.

Unfortunately, I did not discover VCF soon enough as I threw out a lot of what I thought at the time was just junk. So sad.

My profile picture is of the first and to this date, the only home brew system I built, from the late 1970's.

It is loosely based on a Motorola development kit from the tech school I went to, but I used a 6802 instead of 6800 since it had 128 bytes of on-board RAM !

It is very basic and all wire wrap.

The less populated board contains the CPU, static 2114 RAM, serial IO 6850 and parallel ports 6820.

The other board is video, basically built directly from the TV Typewriter Cookbook.

The EPROM contained a self-authored simple interface that allowed the input, output and running of machine code via the keyboard and TV screen.

I had no real long term plans for it. It was just a hobby.

I did buy a cheapo acoustic modem kit and actually was able to login to sites with a simple send/recv program thru the 6850 UART chip.

I have to laugh every time I see this picture since I only used wire wrap gauge wire for the power supply connections !

Anyway, hope to contribute a little here and there along the way, but mostly looking forward to enjoying the various discussions, DEC subjects in particular.

Dale
 
Welcome. It's great to see you here at vcfed.org

The uptake in new members over the last three or so months is great.


I've tossed out bits n bobs as that I should have retained;)
 
Hello Dale !

Welcome to the forums.
It would be interesting to know if you have still some old DEC gear; besides systems/accessories i always find it very interesting what and how much different "merchandise"
things there have been. F.e. towels, pencils, note paper, sandals etc...

You wrote field service engineer, it would also be very interesting if you would tell about which systems you worked with ( PDP11 to VAX to Alpha ? )

Best regards,
Kai
 
VERAULT: Although I personally owned a Rainbow 100, I did not typically service those and even if I did, it would have never included chip or component chasing, as the priority was to get the system/option/customer up and running as soon as possible and that meant swapping out sub-assemblies for the most part. Those were then sent to the PRC (product repair center) for diagnosis, repair and ultimately back into spares stock. Only in my early days, did we do any chip level troubleshooting and typically only on older systems containing flip-chip modules.

WILDFIRE: Yes, I had many coffee mugs and other SWAG which I donated to a local charity. I do still have a DIGITAL blanket and a golf umbrella.

I started on PDP8's and made the logical progressions to PDP-11, Vax and Alpha. Throw in a PDP-9, a LINC8, an Industrial 14/35 (a PLC predecessor) and some other pretty low volume unique gear that our geography happened to have.

During the last stages of my DEC career, I worked from my home office remotely supporting SAN's (fiber channel storage area networks).

What we worked on in the field most was the peripherals. All the electro-mechanical devices such as disk drives (which in the early days were the size of washing machines), mag tape drives (vacuum type were particularly "fun") and line printers needed more attention than the electronics in the CPU cabinets.

Dale
 
dalmill said:
VERAULT: Although I personally owned a Rainbow 100, I did not typically service those and even if I did, it would have never included chip or component chasing, as the priority was to get the system/option/customer up and running as soon as possible and that meant swapping out sub-assemblies for the most part. Those were then sent to the PRC (product repair center) for diagnosis, repair and ultimately back into spares stock. Only in my early days, did we do any chip level troubleshooting and typically only on older systems containing flip-chip modules.

WILDFIRE: Yes, I had many coffee mugs and other SWAG which I donated to a local charity. I do still have a DIGITAL blanket and a golf umbrella.

I started on PDP8's and made the logical progressions to PDP-11, Vax and Alpha. Throw in a PDP-9, a LINC8, an Industrial 14/35 (a PLC predecessor) and some other pretty low volume unique gear that our geography happened to have.

During the last stages of my DEC career, I worked from my home office remotely supporting SAN's (fiber channel storage area networks).

What we worked on in the field most was the peripherals. All the electro-mechanical devices such as disk drives (which in the early days were the size of washing machines), mag tape drives (vacuum type were particularly "fun") and line printers needed more attention than the electronics in the CPU cabinets.

Dale
Click to expand...
I understand. The culmination of my career became part or module swapping as well. i get it. Its makes more sence coat wise.. its just bot gratifying or interesting as a tech in the long run. TI guess thats why I am. Into the whole vintage computer repair scene now. Either way your inputs and stories are most welcome here.
 
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