Operating Instructions for the Charles work-stations
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A Charles work-station consists of a PDP 11/23 processor, a colour monitor,
a Visual 200 terminal, and a Bit Pad. Each workstation has an 8 plane
framestore (giving 255 colours) although if they are being used from VAX
only 16 of the colours are available because of a restriction in the
protocol used to drive them. The workstations are called Charles II and
Charles III for historical reasons.
The speed of the terminal (19.2Kb) on each station is hard-wired into
the PDP 11, so the terminal speeds cannot be changed !
Normally each station is switched off at the power distribution point
mounted on the wall, and all that is required to power the equipment up
is to switch it on at the appropriate switch. If this fails, the
following list gives the things to check for each station.
Normal procedure :
Switch on the power distribution point.
If this fails :
Charles II :
Check that all the switches are UP.
Charles III :
Check that the "DC ON" and "ENABLE HALT" buttons on the PDP11
are UP, and that the "LTC" switch is DOWN.
Check that the display is on, (button lower left of screen on II,
and lower right of screen on III).
Check that the terminal is switched on,
(the switch is on the right hand side of the screen).
The terminal will be connected to VAX so the work-station may now be
used to talk to the VAX/VMS service as though it were an normal terminal.
Before any pictures are drawn on the Charles display it is necessary
to load Charles with a protocol interpreter. This is done using the
VAX command CHARLES (assuming that the command SETUP VLSI has already
been given in your LOGIN.COM file).
If the terminal hangs, the following action can be used to reset it -
Charles II : Press the button marked RESET.
Charles III : Press the DC ON switch down and then up to reset.
When the command CHARLES has been given there are a few minutes where
it is not possible to type ahead. After the CHARLES command has
terminated the terminal can once again be used as a normal terminal
for interacting with the host.