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PDP-11 Operator's Console (Front Panel) Demo

As I mentioned in the “PDP-11 Tutorials” blog post, I’ve been working on some methods for visually illustrating how machine components work. And the PDP-11/70 Operator’s Console, with its daunting number of lights and switches, seemed like a good candidate.

NOTE: I prefer the generic term “Front Panel” to describe DEC’s Operator’s Console, because it’s less ambiguous and more generally recognized and understood.

I still haven’t written a real tutorial on the PDP-11/70 Front Panel, which will require starting at a much more fundamental level, explaining and demonstrating each switch in turn. However, I have made more progress on the basic elements that any tutorial or demo will need: allowing the user to walk through a step-by-step demonstration of some procedure.

To illustrate, I’ve copied a multi-step procedure from the page on Toggle-Ins that shows how to use the PDP-11/70 Front Panel to verify that the Memory Management Unit (MMU) is operating properly.

The procedure requires you to enter a small 3-instruction program at address 200 that will write a value (070707) to address 200, execute the program, and then verify that the MMU relocated that value to address 300 instead.

As you click through each of the steps below, pay attention to the Front Panel. You should see all the switches being toggled at each stage. And as you complete each step, the button for that step will be disabled, so that you don’t forget your place or accidentally repeat a step. And as you scroll through the steps, the machine should always remain visible.

Give it a try!

MMU Relocation Test

From DEC’s PDP-11/70 Maintenance Service Guide, Chapter 4:

Use the following toggle-in to verify the correct operation of Memory Management Relocation.

200/012737          MOV #400,@#177572 (load maint. bit in MMRO)
202/000400
204/177572
206/012737          MOV #070707,@#200 (move 070707 to virtual 200)
210/070707
212/000200
214/000000          HLT

300/000300          Preset loc 300 to 300

17772300/077406     Set Kernel I PDR 0 to R/W 4K page
17772340/000001     Set Kernel I PAR 0 to (Base address 100)

Load Address 200
Start               Display = 000216 (Halt@214)
Load Address 300
Exam                Display = 070707 ... Relocation works

The above “toggle-in” can broken down into the following steps.

Step 1: Load ADDRESS register with 200.

LOAD 200

Step 2: Deposit 012737 at ADDRESS 200.

DEPOSIT 012737

Step 3: Deposit 000400 at ADDRESS 202.

DEPOSIT 000400

Step 4: Deposit 177572 at ADDRESS 204.

DEPOSIT 177572

Step 5: Deposit 012737 at ADDRESS 206.

DEPOSIT 012737

Step 6: Deposit 070707 at ADDRESS 210.

DEPOSIT 070707

Step 7: Deposit 000200 at ADDRESS 212.

DEPOSIT 000200

Step 8: Deposit 000000 at ADDRESS 214.

DEPOSIT 000000

Step 9: Load ADDRESS register with 300.

LOAD 300

Step 10: Deposit 300 at ADDRESS 300.

DEPOSIT 300

Step 11: Load ADDRESS register with 17772300.

LOAD 17772300

Step 12: Deposit 077406 at ADDRESS 17772300 (“Set Kernel I PDR 0 to R/W 4K page”).

DEPOSIT 077406

Step 13: Load ADDRESS register with 17772340.

LOAD 17772340

Step 14: Deposit 000001 at ADDRESS 17772340 (“Set Kernel I PAR 0 to (Base address 100”).

DEPOSIT 000001

Step 15: Load ADDRESS register with 200.

LOAD 200

Step 16: Set ENABLE and toggle START.

START

Step 17: Load ADDRESS register with 300.

LOAD 300

Step 18: Examine ADDRESS 300.

EXAM

At this point, the DATA register should display 070707. You can also use the PCjs Debugger’s rm command to verify the contents of the DATA register, or use a Dump command (dw 300 l1) to dump memory location 300.

[GitHub Source]

Jeff Parsons
Feb 9, 2017