Saving TU-58 Tapes

Let me say in addition that saving early versions of operating systems like VMS is a good thing. (As a 36-bit bigot, I can't believe I just wrote that!) Please, PLEASE let someone image those tapes before you re-use them! (Ian, my cow-orker, is a good candidate for the job.) Rich Alderson Server Engineer, PDPplanet Project Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com (206) 342-2239 (206) 465-2916 cell -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ian King Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 5:46 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Saving TU-58 Tapes Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent SIMH simulators do not attach to any 'real' software other than ethernet. However, I've successfully attached to an emulated TU58 (on a separate computer, over a serial line) with E11. If I were doing this (and that's not out of the question, if you'd like), I would hook up the real TU58 and an emulated TU58 to an E11 emulator running RT11; initialize TU58 tape images using the TU58 emulator; and COPY/DEVICE. I've had good results doing this with disk images. -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jerome H. Fine [jhfinedp3k at compsys.to] Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 5:15 PM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Saving TU-58 Tapes I just received a number of TU-58 tapes. Most seem to have VAX software. Is a list of the contents of such tapes available somewhere? I want to save the files before I use them for RT-11. I have seen such a collection of VAX software before and I presume that I am not the only person to save the files. So if this has already been done, it will not be necessary to repeat the exercise. I attempted to look at bitsavers, but there does not seem to be anything much there in the way of software for the VAX. I assume that since there are hobby licenses for the VAX that all of the software is also available. By the way, the dates on the files are 1983 to 1985. Some of the contents are: VAX/VMS 3.4 FORTRAN C PASCAL Are these tapes useful? How are the files saved? Can the files be easily saved using RT-11? What is the best media to save the files? Probably the only reasonable method with RT-11 is to save all 512 blocks of the TU-58 tape as an image so that a VAX/VMS system can easily ATTACH the file as a TU-58 tape drive under SIMH. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine