20 Jan
2023
20 Jan
'23
10:36 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Corti via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: 20 January 2023 09:34
To: ClassicCmp <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Christian Corti <cc(a)informatik.uni-stuttgart.de>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Computer Museum uses GreaseWeazle to help exonerate
Maryland Man
On Thu, 19 Jan 2023, rar(a)syssrc.com wrote:
[... blob of text ...]
They can, but once you hit a read error a PC goes into re-try mode and you
run the risk of dirtying the heads and damaging the disk.
With one of these tools you read the flux transitions of the disk, so a
whole track and then sort the data out.
This reduces the risk of damaging the disk and the drive.
It had been written on a DEC PDP-11 minicomputer
using the RSX-11
Operating System. Although the museum has a PDP-11 in its collection,
it had not yet been restored and could not be started. Brendan
Becker,
[...]
Brendan set up a ?Greaseweazle,? a device that
reads the magnetic flux
transitions on the floppy disk without regard to operating systems,
disk
[...]
Isn't that a bit overcomplicated? I mean, they *are* standard IBM format
floppys that can be read with a normal PC floppy controller.
I really wonder why the museum did not know this. Maybe even PUTR could
have been used to copy off the files from the disks.
Christian
Dave