Copying DEC VAX set up disks rx50, help

On 3/3/07, g-wright at att.net <g-wright at att.net> wrote: You should not have to use a VAX. There's nothing strange about the low-level format for 8200 console disks (I have an 8200/8300 in my basement, FWIW). Sure. So far, so good... Hmm... Others on the list can chime in with their floppy expertise, but from the way you are describing what you've tried, it doesn't sound as if you have a clear picture of the media in front of you. RX50 disks are single-sided (as mentioned by imagedisk in your read example, above), 80-track, ten 512 byte-sectors per track for a total of 400Kbytes. Your 360K drive can _not_ write RX50 disks (among other issues, it's a 40-track drive). If you've verified that your 1.2MB drive works as a PC drive, then, presuming you have the right media, you shouldn't have any hardware issues writing RX50 images. Media is where I get a little fuzzy on the details. I've personally only ever written RX50 images to RX50 media. I've never tried to recycle PC floppies, so I'm not sure what the best choice is. I do seem to recall that what you want should *not* have hub reinforcement rings, as they can cause alignment problems in real RX50 drives. If you can score a Teac FD55GFR drive, it can be strapped up to be a _real_ RX33 or strapped to behave "normally" on a PC FC controller. The strapping has to do with motor on and select lines, not data, BTW. I mention the FD55GFR because it was the 5.25" drive DEC shipped after they moved on from the RX50, so you can be sure that you aren't having hardware compatibility issues (plus, it's all-around good, solid 5.25" drive). In your case, I'd run some read/write/verify tests with your 1.2MB drive and PC-compatible floppies and if they show any marginal problems, try cleaning the heads. You can clean the heads in any case, but it might be nice to have a "before" picture to compare post-cleaning performance. If you can locate some real RX50 media, try writing to those. They aren't "magical", but they are pre-formatted for 10 sectors-per-track (MS-DOS uses 9 sectors for 360K disks and 17 sectors for 1.2MB disks, if you didn't remember). As with the RX01s, most DEC equipment can *not* lay down the RX50 low-level format, the Rainbow being the most notable exception. A PC _can_ format an RX50, but you'll need some 3rd-party tool to do that - DOS can't by itself. I'm sure others will be able to chime in with various informed opinions. -ethan P.S. - just found this old doc on the state of RX50s and various versions of DOS and tools for DOS... http://www.classiccmp.org/rainbow/files/rx50faq.doc Dunno what OS you are using to write your disks, but perhaps some info in this FAQ will shed some light.