20 Nov
1999
20 Nov
'99
12:46 a.m.
CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote:
Zane wrote:
Of course it would be nice to mount the RT-11 Hobbyist software CD on a
emulator running the Hobbyist RT-11, and without MSCP, I don't believe that
is possible.
The best way to do this is with John Wilson's full E11, where you
can
directly mount the high (RT-11 disk structure) partitions of the CD-ROM.
Of course, this requires the commercial version of E11 for large disk
MSCP support, and also requires a regular (non-hobbyist) RT-11 license
to run (as the hobbyist RT-11 license is only good on the Supnik emulator.)
I think it also requires a SCSI CD-ROM (though I could be wrong and
it'll work fine with an IDE CD-ROM.) The next best way to do this is free, and doesn't
require commercial
anything, just the Supnik emulator running on your system and a copy
of RT-11 in compliance with the hobbyist license. If you look in the
RT-11 freeware CD at the ISO9660 partition, you'll see that each and
every piece of software on the CD is represented as a logical .DSK
file. In particular, in the /dsk directory, you'll find 185 logical
disks of freeware, split up between the SIGtapes, the DECUS 11-xxx
entries, and the "other" stuff. These can be mounted as any sort of volume
you
like under the Supnik emulator, as long as the emulated device is
large enough to hold the contents of the .DSK (i.e. you can use an
emulated RL02 to hold any virtual .DSK up to 20480 block.) Then
you're home free, and have "direct" access under the emulator to all
the contents.
Of course, this method can also be done on the E11 hobby version with
files up the 65535 blocks since V2.1 of the hobby emulator allows:
"MOUNT DU0: E:\DSK\SIGTAPES\11S076.DSK"
as an example - or so I have been told - I have not tried it as yet.
Likewise, PUTR can also MOUNT the files and splits then apart if
they are SIG tapes. Using PUTR is probably entirely legal all the
time since the code is only being copied, not "used". It would not be
legal to use even the hobby version of E11 with even V5.3 of RT-11
which is a hobby version of RT-11 under the Mentec license that
allows ONLY a DEC emulator to be used with V5.3 of RT-11
(usually the Supnik emulator although the Viking emulator for the
Alpha - now discontinued I understand - would also qualify).
So the E11 hobby version of the emulator could also be used to
just split apart very large SIG tapes - I don't know if that would
be considered legal to just pull portions of the SIG tape out on
the assumption that E11 was being used just as PUTR - not to
USE the file, but just to place the portion of the SIG tape into
a file that was small enough to be accessed by the Supnik emulator.
Perhaps Tim Shoppa or Megan Gentry could comment on the
legality of using PUTR to split apart SIG tapes into their smaller
DSK files.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine