Formatting disk on rt11

Jerome Fine replies: Believe it or not, it is possible to FORMAT an RX33 floppy under RT-11! Just a little side note which has nothing to do with the original question. Also, you can't FORMAT an RX50 under RT-11 and it is much easier to FORMAT the RX50 floppy on a PC. Shout if you want instructions how! Since you refer to DU1:, it sounds like you have an RX50 dual floppy disk drive. Are you booting V5.3 of RT-11 from the DU1:? If yes, and a: "DIR/FULL DU1:" command yields of total of about 800 (786 to be exact) blocks of files and unused areas, then you have an RX50. If the total is close to 2400 blocks, you are very fortunate to have an RX33. Tim has stated most of the situation. The other command to try is: "DUMP/TERMINAL DU0:" If any blocks are dumped, then the drive is OK and only needs an INIT. However, if an "?DUMP-F-Input error" results, the drive may need to be FORMATed or the drive may be bad - you will not know until you try the FORMAT. Also, the total size of an RD54 is about 160 MBytes. Under RT-11, you are able to see ONLY 32 MBytes in DU0: and the rest MUST be made available via set commands. If you get the RD54 working and need further help, please shout!! We love to help RT-11 novices. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine