29 Aug
2006
29 Aug
'06
1:47 p.m.
As I did with the PDP-11 RL cartridges, I'm first
trying to image these
uVAXen disks[1] before I do something stupid. Please be aware that I'm
a complete VAX newbie and I consider this imaging a vital CYA insurance
step to my eventual VAX/VMS/ULTRIX/BSD education.
Excellent idea, years later, I still regret not *IMMEDIATLY* doing some sort
of backup of an RD53 with VAX/VMS 4.x on it that I got with a MicroVAX III.
Am I correct in assuming that you don't have any newer hard drives than the
MFM drives on these systems?
Since I don't have (at least to my knowledge, yet)
a functional VAX that
might do the trick, I've removed each drive and attached it to a known
working WD1002-WA2 controller [2] running on a 40Mhz 386 box, with
Debian Linux. I'm just using the dd command to image the drive to a
file, which I'll burn off to a CD when I've got everything imaged.
This idea seems sound to me, although I have *never* heard of anyone
attempting this. I have done this with SCSI drives from my PDP-11.
I suspect, but this is only a guess, that the issue is the way the DEC MFM
drives are formated. There are only two ways that I'm aware of to format an
MFM drive for use on a VAX. One is with a MicroVAX/VAXstation 2000
(formatter is built into the ROM's), the other is with the Field Service
Diagnostics (customer diagnostics can't format drives).
Hopefully someone here as some idea on this, as this is an interesting idea.
Zane