30 Oct
2016
30 Oct
'16
4:24 p.m.
On 10/30/2016 5:47 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software, block zero of the device (boot
block)
starts at track 1 sector 1. Track 0 is not even accessible thru the standard
drivers.
Applies to both PDP-11 (eg, XXDP, RT11) and PDP-8 (OS8).
Maybe specific software that reads/writes disks in IBM exchange mode accesses
track 0, but I've never used such s/w and am only guessing.
From: Don
North <north at alum.mit.edu>
.. the hardware bootstrap reads track 1 sectors
1, 3, 5, 7
Ah, thanks for that. Starting to look at the code, I had missed the
interleave.
So does DEC do anything with track 0, or is it always just empty?
Noel