Decwriter LA30

Most recent revision date of this page, Feb 17 2011.
Back to the DEC stuff.

My Decwriter LA30-P, acquired early 2010.
Decwriter head and paper mechs
Decwriter backplane and H735 power supply from back
Decwriter boards in backplane
Decwriter backplane label - dated June 1973
Decwriter label #7695

Boards in LA30, left to right, top/bottom

[three empty slots dual width]
M7721, dual width "CONTROL LOGIC A, (M7711 WITH BELL LOGIC) LA30"
M7712, dual width "CONTROL LOGIC B FOR LA30" 
M7713, dual width RIBBON CONTROL AND LAST CHARACTER VISIBILITY FOR LA30
M7724, dual width M7714 CHARACTER GENERATOR FOR LA30 WITH 7474'S INST
M7710, dual width "PRINT CYCLE TIMING, LA30 
M7717/16, single width Motor Control/HS50 Motor Translator
M7717/G936, single width Motor Control/Clock Accelerator 
cable/M7715 single width "LINE FEED CONTROL, LA30  
G8004/G380, single width /Solenoid Drivers 
cable/G380, single width /Solenoid Drivers 
cable/G380, single width /Solenoid Drivers 
cable/G380, single width /Solenoid Drivers

Dave Fischer's site cca.org has a list from RCS of LA30 modules which match mine, except they have this modules, presumbly where I have empties:

M7389 (dbl) async serial transceiver M7731 (dbl) active buffer/control module M973 M598 cable connector & opto-isolated I/O card M7721 (dbl) control logic A M7712 (dbl) control logic B ...etc

These are SERIAL modules option, for an LA30-S. I have an LA30-P, a PARALLEL interface option. The maintenance manual says "A parallel LA30 interface consists of an 18-twisted pair cable up to 25 feet long and a set of modules to gate parallel data signals on and off the processor I/O bus.".."The parallel cable connects between A06 on the logic panel and the interface module of the system in which the LA30 is to operate."

SOurces for module descriptions, tech info:

http://pdp12.lofty.com/pdp-common/reference/drawings/modules/index.html

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/modules/mSeries/

http://www.computertradingpost.com/archives/CTP_Archive_118.htm

http://vt100.net/docs/

"RCS" above is/was RCS/RI The Retrocomputing Society of Rhode Island. http://www.rcsri.org/

Other Web sites

In Feb 2011, I recieved an email from the picture editor of the German magazine CHIP as follows: "In our upcoming issue we are featuring a timeline about printers. In this context we would very much like to show a photo of the LA30 by the Digital Equipment Corporation. May we use [your] photo to illustrate our article?". We provided a higher-resolution photo in response, which they accepted. They agreed to crediting the photo to me by name and with a link to this Web page. - Herb Johnson