Copying DEC VAX set up disks rx50, help

On 4 Mar 2007 at 7:06, Dave Dunfield wrote: Well, 22Disk, Copyqm, etc. doesn't ask the BIOS what's there unless there's no DISKETTE.CFG file anywhere in the command search path, the current directory, or where the command was loaded from. At that point, one punts and uses the BIOS data which works for the vast majority of cases. But for the oddball situation, one to specify oddball drive characteristics; e.g., dual-speed and double-speed drives, slow seek rate, lack of a change line etc. One can define different drives for the same physical interface by simply assigning different drive letters. Once done, it never has to be done again. What almost mandated this was SyDupe--customers would stack two large tower cases together and fill them with drives--to a maximum of 12 (3 controllers x 4 drives each). There was no hope for the BIOS to puzzle that one out. (You could actually write 3 2D copies at once, but 3 HDs was a bit iffy unless you had a fast ISA bus; otherwise you got DMA lost data errors). My own setup is a stack of external drive boxes with labels on them, calling out the drive letter used to access them and what's in the box. Just plug it in and you're good to go--use the drive letter on the box. Cheers, Chuck