The All Mighty Microvax II

The Microvax II Motherboard

The M7606 or 50-16523-02 A1 Microvax II motherboard

The KA630 is a quad-height VAX processor module for the Q22-Bus. The 78032 CPU chip is a 32-bit virtual memory microprocessor packaged in a 68-pin ZMOS (double metal NMOS) chip. At its maximum frequency, the Microvax CPU chip achieves a 200ns microcycle and a 400ns I/O (memory) cycle. As a point of reference, the 80386 circa 1986/1987 ran with a 16MHz clock.

Microvax Interface Gate Array

The Microvax interface gate array consists of two custom Large Scale Integration (LSI) chips. The gate array includes the following features:

• Provides interface between the Microvax CPU, FPU and module logic
• Provides signals to the KA630-AA LEDs indicating consile and diagnostic boot state
• Decodes signals from the KA630-Aa connector J2 to determine module characteristics. (J2 is to the "console" module that includes TOY, batteries and battery backed up config memory).
• Contains a local decoder and address latch, for use by the memory subsystem and other KA630 logic elements.

Links to other resources:

KA630 Manual The Microvax II CPU and motherboard manual (PDF format). Note that this manual is for the first version of the Microvax-II with slightly different chip layouts than those picture above.

Microvax II hardware manual This PDF file contains the various documents that described how to install run and configure a microvax II.

Microvax II Diagnostics kit The Microvax II's console was extremely primitive and lacked basic functions such as diagnostics, configuration display and more importantly, a disk formatter. This ZIP file contains the files that were found on a MVII Diagnostics tape (AQ-QL5AH-DN) labeled "MVII DIAG CUST TK50". This has not been tested. The AAA_README.TXT file provides some explanation. There is also a file that copies files to a tape in the order they were present on the original TK50. Addendum: After initializing the tape to which you copy the files, you need to MOUNT/BLOCKSIZE=512 You should also use the /contiguous and /truncate switches on the copy commands.