>From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
>
>> >It has some good information, some errors, and some good and bad guesses
>> >(such as saying that it is probably possible to read hard sectored disks
>> >with PC hardware)
>
>On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>> Maybe he meant that if the computer he had, has an accessible
>> DSP processor ( as some modem and sound cards have ). With
>> this, one could use the controller to deal with track stepping
>> and use the DSP to do the actual data reads. Of course,
>> one needs to do some hard wiring to patch things together.
>>
>> ( Well, maybe he didn't mean that after all. )
>
>If so, that would have to be a definition of "on standard FDCs" that I was
>not previously aware of.
Ok, I was stretching a little to give him the 'benefit of the doubt'.
Dwight
>
>He DID properly state that reading Macintosh 400K/800K needed hardware
>assistance, but incorrectly blamed it on the drive (its a disk CONTROLLER
>issue),
>
>
>From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
>
>
---snip--- Great Stuff!!
>
>I estimate that there are about 2500 mutually incompatible floppy disk
>formats. I've analyzed about a quarter of them, and implemented about 2/3
>of those.
This doesn't include all of the copy protection stuff that
has been done.
Dwight
>
>
>--
>Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
>XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
>
>
>From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
>
>Thanks
>It has some good information, some errors, and some good and bad guesses
>(such as saying that it is probably possible to read hard sectored disks
>with PC hardware)
Hi Fred
Maybe he meant that if the computer he had, has an accessible
DSP processor ( as some modem and sound cards have ). With
this, one could use the controller to deal with track stepping
and use the DSP to do the actual data reads. Of course,
one needs to do some hard wiring to patch things together.
( Well, maybe he didn't mean that after all. )
Dwight
>Oh, also, does anyone have the schematics for the composite adapter, or
>someplace where I can find one? I have heard rumors of an electronics
>store on the 'net that still carries them.
The Tech Ref has schematics for lost of Osborne stuff (including data
sheets for the PSU and the Motorola (?) data sheet for the monitor).
I don't recall whether that adapter is in there ...
I have the tech ref scanned - I can ftp it to you if you have 67MB or so free.
Or if someone is willing to host it, that would be even better (the user guide
is only an additional 127MB ...)
Antonio
arcarlini(a)iee.org
Hi Patrick
I think you might try looking at:
http://www.moria.de/~michael/cpmtools/
This stuff is specific to doing cpm stuff but the
basics are there. One should be able to modify this
quickly to deal with any format that the hardware supports.
I've not looked at it closely but suspect it has what you need.
Dwight
>From: "Patrick Finnegan" <pat(a)purdueriots.com>
>
>On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
>
>> Thanks
>> It has some good information, some errors, and some good and bad guesses
>> (such as saying that it is probably possible to read hard sectored disks
>> with PC hardware)
>
>If you're refering to 'fixed format devices', they seem to be referring to
>OS device nodes - such as "/dev/fd0h360", not physical (hard-sectored)
>devices/disks.
>
>> Are you trying to transfer files, or just read raw sectors?
>
>For now, I just want to be able to copy disks without having to resort to
>using teledisk on a machine running DOS.
>
>> Which "odd formats" are you trying to read?
>
>I was making a generalization... I've been able to successfully read
>RX-50's created with teledisk using this method:
>
>root@dualie:~# setfdprm /dev/fd1 qd sect=10 cyl=80 head=1
>root@dualie:~# dd if=/dev/fd1 of=myfd.img
>800+0 records in
>800+0 records out
>root@dualie:~#
>
>I've also been successful with an Osborne Executive disk written with
>teledisk:
>
>root@dualie:~# setfdprm /dev/fd1 dd sect=5 cyl=40 head=1 ssize=1024
>root@dualie:~# dd if=/dev/fd1 of=myfd.img bs=1k
>200+0 records in
>200+0 records out
>root@dualie:~#
>
>To me, it looks like the hardest part will be attempting to determine what
>format the disk is in, automatically. Any ideas? My best guess is to do
>a guess-and-check method, of course this would be tough to verify every
>possibility, such as varied sector sizes (although it would be possible).
>I'm guessing that I'll have to use a raw floppy ioctl to make that work.
>
>One last thing, I found a reference to a program that could decode
>teledisk 'normal' compression images in past postings to classiccmp, but
>it's gone away and I didn't grab a copy before it did. Anyone know where
>I could find it? Here's the original URL:
>
>http://www.conknet.com/~w_kranz/WTELEDSK.HTM
>
>Pat
>
>> --
>> Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
>> XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>>
>> > Quite a while ago (and maybe more than once) we had a thread on
>> > reading/writing 'odd' disk formats. I thought about it again, typed a few
>> > words into google, and found this:
>> >
>> > http://fdutils.linux.lu/Fdutils.html#SEC22
>> >
>> > It looks like setfdprm and superformat will do much of what's necessary in
>> > working with 'odd' format disks. I haven't played much with it yet, but
>> > I've verified it works for setting the density, heads, cyls, and
>> > sect/track of the disk to write to. However, it doesn't allow for
>> > setting an initial sector number - something that's necessary for some
>> > formats. Using the program "fdrawcmd" should overcome any obsticles, but
>> > will require more work to be useful.
>> >
>> > I just thought I'd pass this along in case people would find it useful.
>
>--
>"This fucking university has shown time and time again that it is
> completely fucking incompetent when it comes to employing technology"
> -- Anonymous
>http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2040637020924.gif
>
>
>
>
I need some help in reading some RK05 packs. I have
17 RK05 packs and I have been able to read 14 without
a problem. Two others have 14 and 5 bad blocks, respectively.
The last has 1231 bad blocks. Is there any reasonably
easy and simple way to recover the bad blocks. These are
all RT-11 distributions prior to V5.03 of RT-11.
In particular, the one with 5 bad blocks is a copy of
another pack, so I was able to verify that the other
4797 blocks were the same. One down!
The ones with 14 blocks and 1231 blocks are for V3.0B
of RT-11, but they do seem to be a bit different. The
14 bad blocks are all in 5 OBJ files (for FORTRAN IV)
an I may be able to find a copy elsewhere. The 1231
bad blocks seem almost hopeless unless I can find the
same distribution and verify that the rest are OK.
Obviously there is no point in spending any money
since eventually someone will find a set of files for
V3.0B of RT-11. Any ideas. I have tried to read
each bad block a number of times - one at a time,
but no success.
I only have until Friday when I will be giving the RK05
drive and the borrowed RKV11D controller to Ethan
Dicks.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.
Looking to pay under $50 preferably, although
I really have no idea what the market value is.
I just need a drive that will be suitable
For installing VMS on a MicroVAX 3100.
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe [mailto:rigdonj@cfl.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 7:05 AM
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: WANTED: DEC RRD40 or RRD42 CD-ROM
What are you offering for them?
Joe
At 10:54 AM 10/16/02 -0600, you wrote:
>Wanted: DEC RRD40 or RRD42 CD-ROM Drive
>
>
>John P. Willis, MCP
>Software Engineer/Database Architect
>Ariel Technologies
>(505) 524-6860
>jwillis(a)arielusa.com
>
>
>
>
>
>Attachment Converted: "C:\EUDORA\Attach\WANTEDDE.htm"
>
Hi folks,
I just 'won' an old HP Apollo 700 Series, Model 735/125. Unfortunately, I
don't have ANY information about it - searching HP's website took me to the
service manual, so I know a little bit more about it now.
By searching the web, I've learned that I can use a standard PC-VGA monitor
with the apollo, by soldering (or buying, :-( ) a special cable.
But, a few questions remain:
- Anyone has a PIN-layout for the monitor cable? I know that I have to solder
red to red VGA, red ground to red ground, and so on, but I don't know the
pinout of the VGA connector... Maybe anyone did this before, and can tell
me the correct PIN-to-PIN assignments?!
- Can I use a standard PC keyboard with the Apollo? It just has a so-called
"HPIL"-connector on the back, and I don't have such a keyboard...
- What about a mouse? Unfortunately, I just got the machine, and nothing
else...
- My Apollo doesn't have a standard LAN-connector, just an AUI... But, I saw
it has a EISA slot, and the manual told me that EISA is fully compliat to
ISA (didn't know this before...). So, can I just equip the Apollo with one
of my old ISA Novell/ Eagle-cards? There's an EISA card in the slot, but
this seems to be a Token Ring (it's called a "Ring" card)
Sorry if my questions are a little bit stupid, but I don't know anything
about the machine - just got it from dumpster without any additional
informatins, and thought it would be nice to use it.
Thanks for your help, I'm glad that there is a mailing list dealing with this
systems - thought I've just got > 10kg of old iron, when I start searching
the web, :-)
keep on hackin',
Harald (bofh(a)dh9dat.de)
>The main difference with this box is that it's not as expandable as a
>full VAX 6000. The big ones have ample space within them for disk
>drives, tape drives, and BI bus card cages. I think the full VAX 6000s
>come standard with one, maybe two BI bus card cages.
My VAX 6000 is no longer here, so I have to go on memory. Pretty much all
there is in a standard 6000 is a row of PSUs at the top, a row with the
VAXBI and XMI busses and - right at the bottom - a converter/coditioner
that takes the incoming power feed and presents it to the rest of the box.
There is a large gap with plenty of air in it. About the only thing you could
use it for was a late-breaking internal storage addon. Every 6000 I've
seen had external storage (mostly via CI, since that's what big customers
were expected to do).
Internally it cannot have been much wider that 19" so I would guess that the
rack-mount version would be about the same but without the large wad
of air :-)
>These rackmount boxes only have an XMI bus. I suppose it'd be possible
>to hang BI busses off of this with an external box; that's if you needed
Is there no space for a VAXBI? My box had an XMI to the right and two
VAXBIs to the left (IIRC).
>on comp.os.vms say that it's easy to boot this type of system over an
>ethernet based VAXcluster. Your disk I/O will be bottlenecked by the
>speed of the ethernet. I'm planning on running mine this way initially.
I've done this - it works well. Especially nice is botting from an
InfoServer for upgrades etc.
Antonio
arcarlini(a)iee.org
