VAX 6000 Platform Technical User's Guide

This "VAX 6000 Platform Technical User’s Guide" serves as a comprehensive reference for field-level repair and programming of VAX 6000 platform systems. It details the system's architecture, key components, and operational procedures.

The document is organized into four main chapters:

1. VAX 6000 Platform Overview: Introduces the H9657-CA/CB/CU cabinet, its physical and electrical specifications, and various configurations. It describes the system's front and rear views, the XMI backplane and card cage (which provides +3.3V and has 14 slots with a 100 MB/s maximum bandwidth), console load devices (including Ethernet booting), DWMBB I/O adapter, I/O connections, and the power and cooling systems (including power regulators and a battery backup unit).
2. The XMI: This chapter provides an in-depth look at the XMI (Xtra-large Memory Interconnect), the VAX 6000's primary 64-bit, high-speed system bus. It covers the XMI's architecture, data transactions (such as Read, Interlock Read, Ownership Read, Write Mask, etc., supporting various data lengths like longword, quadword, octaword, and hexword), interrupt transactions (INTR, IDENT, IVINTR), arbitration mechanisms, bus integrity features (parity, ECC, timeouts), addressing schemes (30-bit and 32-bit modes, I/O space allocation), and detailed descriptions of XMI cycles, transactions, and error handling processes (including error conditions, recovery, and reporting).
3. DWMBB Adapter: Focuses on the DWMBB XMI-to-VAXBI adapter, which acts as a crucial information path between the XMI bus and VAXBI I/O devices. It explains the adapter's two modules (DWMBB/A on XMI, DWMBB/B on VAXBI) and their interconnection via the IBUS. Key topics include address translation (mapping VAXBI to XMI memory space using Page Map Registers for various page sizes), I/O and DMA transaction processing, detailed interrupt types and their handling, VAXBI wrapped read transactions, lockout modes for preventing lock starvation, programmable timeouts, ECC protection on the PMR data path, and extensive diagnostic features like internal loopback modes and parity forcing for testing and verifying logic.
4. Power and Cooling Systems: Describes the components and functions of the system's power delivery (AC power controllers, power and logic units, DC-to-DC power regulators, and the optional battery backup unit that provides "ride-through" capability during power failures) and cooling mechanisms (blowers and sensors).

The manual is intended for Digital's customer service engineers and OEMs developing specialized applications, providing a detailed technical understanding for system repair, maintenance, and advanced programming.