Backing up VMS

What is needed to write a CD from a VAX? - presumably a writer that can create 512 byte sectors? (I don't think any of my SCSI writers can)... Made some progress... I discovered that both of my 8mm drives have developed mechanical problems - The "press on" gears in the tape loading mechanics appear to be problematifc - On one drive, a gear has split (not much chance for repair), on the other the gear on the motor has come loose - This I should be able to repair if I can get to it. Fortunately the 4mm drive seems to be OK - I wrote a backup tape which appears to have worked, although I have not tried to restore it yet. I also wrote stand-alone backup to a tape, which took a LONG time ... this went through the motions and looked like it worked, however when I try to boot it I get a crash dump. The good news is that BACKUP/IMAGE from one SCSI drive to another worked fine - I was able to clone the system to a larger (1G) drive which is now installed and working. I'll keep the original RZ23L as a backup, and probably make at least one more. The SCSI ZIP drive did not work at all on the VAX - I had hoped that it would present as a normal SCSI drive (it works under Linux fine), but although the VAX could see and identify it, it could not access it (gave errors about not being able to allocate blocks) - perhaps this is due to differences in the SCSI command set implementation? Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html