19 Oct
2024
19 Oct
'24
6:18 p.m.
If you go this route, be advised, that SIMH creates
RD32 disk images
are not the same size as a real RD32. This will likely cause problems
when writing a SIMH created image to a real disk (and I'm not talking
about the additional issues that the trailing metadata on disk images
from the Pizzolato version of SIMH can cause - the problem I'm
describing is caused by an incorrect disk size value in SIMH).
True, I think you can get around this by making the disk in SIMH a
couple of blocks smaller.
However there is another way. Format your real RD32 with the RQDX3
formatter, then once formatted suck it into a file. Then you have an
exact replica you can mount in SIMH and load it up.
I did this with a 154mb Hitachi ESDI MCSP disk that went "bad" 30 years
ago and would not boot. Sucked it in, booted RSX11M off a virtual drive,
then mounted it. Turns out when I did a purge of old files I deleted the
RSX11M.TSK file I was using to boot because I forgot to do a /SAV /WB in
VMR to update the boot block to the new file location. Did that, system
booted, then copied it back to the "real" Hitachi disk.
Back in operation. :-)