Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:12:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Nickolai Zeldovich <kolya@zepa.net>
To: pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: PDP Prompt?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980305160751.25074A-100000@orbit.zepa.net>
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Sender: owner-pups@minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
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Hello,

I'm trying to revive a PDP 11/04, but not having much luck at the moment..
I got a serial terminal hooked up to it, and upon bootup, it gives me the
following on the display:

<triangle sign><triangle sign> 177777 177776
$

apparently, $ is some sort of a prompt. It only accepts two characters,
and after, it seems, any pair of characters, will go on and give me a new
prompt.

Is this some sort of a ROM debugger? What can I tell it? I think I've
tried almost every combination of 2 letters without any success..

Some info about the PDP:

It's a 11/04, with a dual 8" floppy drive and some big cage made by MTS,
with nothing in it but a large number of slots. Has some buttons saying
'STATION 1 DUMP', 'STATION 2 DUMP', and so on.. The floppy drive has two
8" floppies in it, one of them appears to be some sort of a system floppy,
the other has no label.

Does this look like even remotely salvageable? :)

-- [ Nickolai Zeldovich // nickolai@zepa.net ]