test-drb October 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

264 participants
655 discussions

by bqt＠Update.UU.SE

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 Madcrow Maxwell <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> wrote: > I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available > for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one > online. Can anybody help me out here? Phew, that's a long list. I can't give you all, but I can list some from my head atleast. And these are just older DEC drives. You are aware of the fact that PDP-11s can have SCSI disks, which means you can grab almost any current SCSI disk as well? Okay... Here we go: Type Capacity RS series RS03 512 Kbyte RS04 1 Mbyte RF series RF11 512 Kbyte RK series RK02 1.2 Mbyte RK03 2.5 Mbyte RK05 2.5 Mbyte RK06 14 Mbyte RK07 28 Mbyte RL series RL01 5 Mbyte RL02 10 Mbyte RM series RM02 63 Mbyte RM03 63 Mbyte RM05 256 Mbyte RM80 124 Mbyte RP series RP01 5 Mbyte RP02 20 Mbyte RP03 40 Mbyte RP04 83 Mbyte RP05 83 Mbyte RP06 176 Mbyte RP07 504 Mbyte RA series RA80 124 Mbyte RA81 456 Mbyte RA82 622 Mbyte RA90 1.2 Gbyte RA92 1.5 Gbyte RA60 205 Mbyte RA70 280 Mbyte RA71 684 Mbyte RA72 1 Gbyte RA73 2 Gbyte RC series RC25 25 Mbyte * 2 RD series RD31 20 Mbyte RD32 40 Mbyte RD33 71 Mbyte RD50 5 Mbyte RD51 10 Mbyte RD52 31 Mbyte RD53 71 Mbyte RD54 159 Mbyte RX series RX01 256 Kbyte RX02 512 Kbyte RX33 1.2 Mbyte RX50 400 Kbyte RZ series (SCSI disks) And I know that a few of these numbers don't match some pages turned up by Google, but this is what my memory is telling me... Johnny Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

18 years, 9 months

PDP-11 Hard Drives

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: PDP-11 Hard Drives > From: Madcrow Maxwell <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 08:40:54 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available >for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one >online. Can anybody help me out here? Reason is your asking too broad a question. PDP-11 was a series of CPUs/systems that used at least 4 busses and an even greater array of storage facilities over the period from 1970 to current(yes current!). So to even start answering the question. What cpu or bus? Or what time period? Fixed or removable? Allison

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Punched the send by error.... continued. > >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:30:01 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >>Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data >> From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> >> Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:59:35 +0100 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> >> >>My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring >>out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems >>means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad >>enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;) >> >>But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences. > >CP/M file system is fairly easy to understand. It was fairly standardized >depite media variations. A dump of any form would be reconstructable >if there are no lost sectors. > >For 8" systems they fell onto two major groups: > >Hard sector: Altair and a Zilog used those. However _most_ > hard sector 8" systems rarely carried CP/M. > >Soft sector: Most common and there was a standard interchange format > for CP/M. That was 8" single sided single density (8"SSSD). > Other formats that existed were CP/M on Intel (M2FM) and > Odd sector sizes or double density. Likely formats in > the 8" realm were fortunatly fairly few (likely one of 5). > The two most common after SSSD was SSDD (single side > Double density) and DSDD (double sided double density). > The latter two SSDD was often seen and had a fairly similar > layout compared to SSSD. The DSDD was far less common and > there were a few different ideas how data should be laid down. > FYI: the M2FM (intel MDS) used conventional 8" drives but the FDC was really a custom board designed by intel to do double density when there were no chips that did it. The format must and can only be read on intel. >The 5.25 worlds was chaotic as drive were developing and people needed to >push those minifloppies from the base of only 80k to a more useable 360 >or even 780k. Where the base 8"SSSD was 256k from day one. Even then many of the 5.25 based systems were not locked one format and could at least read a few others. Again if it was hard sector then all bets were off (Heath, Northstar, and a few others were hard sector). To read base 8"sssd disks there are a lot of people that have working systems (myself included) that have zero problem doing this. It's also possible to do it using a compaticard or even a hacked PC FDC with the right cable to a working drive. If the media was 8"SSSD then reading them to the file content level is best. IF the media is unknown and and different then it really helps to know what the origin system was as then the format is known. If all is unknown the reading the media at the sector level will likely get it done. That is a slower interative process that being determine sector size, read sectors sequentially saving them on other media, decode disk layout and reconstruct files. Again most 8" media is real old and there were a few brands of media that aged poorly [worse if mishandled] with media shedding being a really big problem. Allison

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:59:35 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring >out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems >means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad >enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;) > >But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences. CP/M file system is fairly easy to understand. It was fairly standardized depite media variations. A dump of any form would be reconstructable if there are no lost sectors. For 8" systems they fell onto two major groups: Hard sector: Altair and a Zilog used those. However _most_ hard sector 8" systems rarely carried CP/M. Soft sector: Most common and there was a standard interchange format for CP/M. That was 8" single sided single density (8"SSSD). Other formats that existed were CP/M on Intel (M2FM) and Odd sector sizes or double density. Likely formats in the 8" realm were fortunatly fairly few (likely one of 5). The two most common after SSSD was SSDD (single side Double density) and DSDD (double sided double density). The latter two SSDD was often seen and had a fairly similar layout compared to SSSD. The DSDD was far less common and there were a few different ideas how data should be laid down. FYI: the M2FM (intel MDS) used conventional 8" drives but the FDC was really The 5.25 worlds was chaotic as drive were developing and people needed to push those minifloppies from the base of only 80k to a more useable 360 or even 780k. Where the base 8"SSSD was 256k from day one. > >> A "photocopy" of a disk is possible using (MS)DOS, if you can >> find a MicroSolutions Compaticard IV (I have one, and no, I >> dont want to part with it). >> This card works very well; I once generated a bootable MS-DOS >> 3.1 (or 3.20?) 8" >> floppy. > >Nice. > >> The only (in my opinion) good solution, is software reading >> the CP/M (or >> whatever) disk, and decode the filestructure etc., so you can >> write a nice, continuous file. > >Absolutely, my only concern was getting that wrong. But perhaps it is >far simpler operation to work out the file system with CP/M than getting >a track dump the disk, in which case this method is probably more >appropriate. > >Of course one reason (off topic!) to dump the whole disk (down to the >flux-transition level) is to ensure you get absolutely everything on the >disk. But of course, this is only really useful for retail software that >might have applied copy protection - not really applicable for a >developers old development system! :) > >Thanks! >Kieron > >============================ >Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. >

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Dave Dunfield > > CP/M itself is independant of any particular disk format. It > can work with hard-sector systems, soft-sector systems, 8" > 5.25", 3.5" drives, ROM disks and RAM disks. The only real > requirement is that there be block addressable storage. Nice! At least, it probably was at the time. ;) > Most 8" systems use IBM soft-sector format, and a lot of them > use the WD series of FDC controllers. Most of these can be > read with a 765 type controller, but there are a number that > cannot. There really is a lot of variation. Okay. > Getting data from 8" drives will require some work. Chances > are that it can be recovered on a PC with ImageDisk or > TeleDisk, however to do so they would have to make an adapter > to connect the drive, connect it to the PC floppy controller, > power the drive, configure the software etc/, and you run the > risk that after all that effort, it may not be a disk format > compatible with the PC floppy controller (we could tell this > in advance if you can find out the exact type of CP/M system it is). > This sounds like it is more work they they are willing to do. Ouch. Yes, exactly. > If the original CP/M system is still running, then the > content of the disks can be pulled off with a serial > connection to a PC - but this will require getting the > connection established, getting a bit of software running on > both the CP/M system and the PC. No, only the media is available unfortunately. Hence the problem. > Failing either of the two above, then you need someone local > who can do one of the above, or have them send the disks to > someone further away who can do it. I'll contact Sellam Ismail, he is certainly looking to be my best bet so far. > I have the ability image 8" disks directly to a PC, and I > also have a multi-format copying station that I have not yet > "gotten around" to setting up (but I could do that). I also > know someone relatively close to me who does have a > multi-format copying station up and running. You could have > them send the disks to me (Ontario > Canada) which would be a bit closer than going "across the pond". Lets see what we can do on location, and if that fails, we will have to campaign to get them to send somebody the disks. :) > I've been fairly actively involved in preservation of disk > images from classic systems in the past couple of years - if Ah really? That is very interesting! Check your mail. ;) > it would help, the game developer can contact me directly to > discuss ways to recover the data. Thanks for the offer! I'll keep it in mind if things pan out that way. Kieron ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

18 years, 9 months

PDP-11 Hard Drives

by James＠jdfogg.com

> I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units > available for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not > been able to find one online. Can anybody help me out here? Which PDP? They span many models and 3 decades. Some later models could use "modern" (1985 modern) disks with the addition of the right interface board.

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Dave Mabry > > There has been lots of discussion lately about 8" formats. > Perhaps we might be lucky here. There is a chance that the > 8" diskettes in question here were written in the one > standard 8" format. Single-sided, single-density. If that > is the case then there are lots of cp/m systems that can read > those diskettes. Even my Intel development systems can read > that format! And I would be happy to transfer the files to > today's format, whatever form that might be. However I am > not on the left coast and the diskettes would have to travel > through the postal system or UPS, etc., to get to me and back. > > Do you have a way to determine if the diskettes are SS, SD ??? I think ultimately, before we get further with this, I need to go back to the developer and try to get some more information on the system involved. If they can remember anyway! I'll do that, and then report back. :) Kieron ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Nico de Jong > > Well, that does not really help very much, as a > track-by-track dump does not take the niceties of CP/M into > account, such as directory structure and where the various > segments are written. As you speak about 8" disks, we also > have to take the segment size (often 256 or 512, on some > formats 1024) into account. Eeek. My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;) But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences. > A "photocopy" of a disk is possible using (MS)DOS, if you can > find a MicroSolutions Compaticard IV (I have one, and no, I > dont want to part with it). > This card works very well; I once generated a bootable MS-DOS > 3.1 (or 3.20?) 8" > floppy. Nice. > The only (in my opinion) good solution, is software reading > the CP/M (or > whatever) disk, and decode the filestructure etc., so you can > write a nice, continuous file. Absolutely, my only concern was getting that wrong. But perhaps it is far simpler operation to work out the file system with CP/M than getting a track dump the disk, in which case this method is probably more appropriate. Of course one reason (off topic!) to dump the whole disk (down to the flux-transition level) is to ensure you get absolutely everything on the disk. But of course, this is only really useful for retail software that might have applied copy protection - not really applicable for a developers old development system! :) Thanks! Kieron ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM systems. Could you please >tell me why a conversion system is needed? Didn't they use similar FDC >chips? I (perhaps naively) assumed it would be some sort of a >NEC765-derived one and we could get a simple track-by-track dump... CP/M itself is independant of any particular disk format. It can work with hard-sector systems, soft-sector systems, 8" 5.25", 3.5" drives, ROM disks and RAM disks. The only real requirement is that there be block addressable storage. Most 8" systems use IBM soft-sector format, and a lot of them use the WD series of FDC controllers. Most of these can be read with a 765 type controller, but there are a number that cannot. There really is a lot of variation. >While this is true, the problem we have is that although we have >convinced the ex-developer to let us help them preserve this data, it >will be very much harder to get them to go out of their way to get it >done. This is the reason I was trying to get somebody local to them to >help us do it, even though they do treasure it. Getting data from 8" drives will require some work. Chances are that it can be recovered on a PC with ImageDisk or TeleDisk, however to do so they would have to make an adapter to connect the drive, connect it to the PC floppy controller, power the drive, configure the software etc/, and you run the risk that after all that effort, it may not be a disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller (we could tell this in advance if you can find out the exact type of CP/M system it is). This sounds like it is more work they they are willing to do. If the original CP/M system is still running, then the content of the disks can be pulled off with a serial connection to a PC - but this will require getting the connection established, getting a bit of software running on both the CP/M system and the PC. Failing either of the two above, then you need someone local who can do one of the above, or have them send the disks to someone further away who can do it. >It's a difficult situation for sure. > >I'll try again on the mailing of the media, but it will probably have to >be a last resort. I have the ability image 8" disks directly to a PC, and I also have a multi-format copying station that I have not yet "gotten around" to setting up (but I could do that). I also know someone relatively close to me who does have a multi-format copying station up and running. You could have them send the disks to me (Ontario Canada) which would be a bit closer than going "across the pond". I've been fairly actively involved in preservation of disk images from classic systems in the past couple of years - if it would help, the game developer can contact me directly to discuss ways to recover the data. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

18 years, 9 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Allison > > >I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM systems. Could you please > >tell me why a conversion system is needed? Didn't they use > similar FDC > >chips? I (perhaps naively) assumed it would be some sort of a > >NEC765-derived one and we could get a simple track-by-track dump... > > No. the 765 was available for sale in late 1980, CP/M systems were > 3+ years old by then. Even after that point the 765 was not the > common part used for CP/M systems. That a PCism. Okay, thanks for putting me straight. I think my confusion stems from my experience of the Amstrad CPC computer that IIRC ran a CPM-derived operating system, and used the 765. > CP/M systems were largely a common coperating system a that allowed > for diverse hardware by way of a BIOS that the user or manufacturer > could configure for that hardware. There were many different disk > systems, formats and in the games space deliberate attempts to make > the disks uncopyable by standard systems. What a nightmare! > What you need is a CP/M familiar person here (actually close > to the developer) > in the usa and the data once extracted can be shipped via the > internet. > Systems that convert formats are common enough for people > that actively > collect and restore. Well that is good news at least. > >> The only "local" one I can think of from the top of my head, > >> is Sellam Ismail > > IF its in San Fancisco hes' loads closer than me (3000 miles!). Seems he lives in California at least. Maybe I can convince him to make a trip... ;) Kieron ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

18 years, 9 months

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test-drb October 2005