PUTR V2.0 (and ST V1.1)

At long last (three years since V1.28), new version of PUTR.COM is now available from: http://www.dbit.com/putr/ -or- ftp://ftp.bit.com/pub/putr/ PUTR (Peripheral Utility Transfer Routines) is a file transfer utility which runs under DOS (or in a DOS session) and can exchange files and/or disk images with DEC file systems and/or media. It has a simple command language which feels sort of like a stripped-down DOS command interpreter, but extended so that files on PDP-8 and/or PDP-11 volumes may be accessed the same way as native DOS files, using familiar commands like DIR, TYPE, COPY, DELETE, etc. It also can perform more basic functions, like formating DEC-style floppies, and copying container files to or from real disks. It supports most of the major PDP-8 and PDP-11 file structures (although the Files-11 support is currently read-only), and a bunch of minor ones too. Volumes may be located in PC container files, on PDP-8/PDP-11 floppies (most DEC formats, including SSSD 8" disks on a suitably equipped PC), raw SCSI drives (including Zip and MO), TU58 cartridge tapes (connected through a COM port), and raw CDs. As always, MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DATA BEFORE USING PUTR ON IT. PUTR V2.0 has many brand new features which have been tested by only one person, so you may find ways to trip it up that I wouldn't have thought of, and in any case it always makes sense to be unusually cautious when writing on a foreign file system. You have been warned! New features since previous version (V1.28, 06/11/1998): * Reads Files-11 disks (RSX, IAS, P/OS). * Reads TSS/8.24 disks. * Reads/writes RSTS/E disks (RSTS support was read-only in V1.28). * Reads/writes DOS/BATCH disks. * Reads/writes XXDP+ disks. * Reads/writes TSS/8 DECtapes in PUTR.SAV format (but not COPY.SAV format). * Many new disk drive types (RAxx, RDxx, RMxx, RPxx). * Image file sizes over usual 2 GB DOS limit (on FAT32 systems only), up to (almost) 4 GB. * Raw CD-ROMs may be accessed through MSCDEX (used to support SCSI CDs only), on real DOS anyway (Windows 95/98 MSCDEX emulation is buggy). * FORMAT /MSCP command now accepts BLOCKS, MB etc. keywords in file size (so you don't need a calculator to convert blocks to bytes). * Bugs fixed. ---------- Also, a new version of the "ST.EXE" SCSI tape utility is now at: ftp://ftp.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/st.exe -and- ftp://ftp.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/st.txt This is a simple utility for manipulating SCSI tapes, including DEC TZ30 and TK50Z-GA tape drives, SCSI 9-track drives, and other tapes with 9-track-ish semantics, like DLT or 4 mm DAT. It provides many of the same basic commands as the UNIX "mt" utility (space N records in either direction, write a tape mark, rewind, etc.), but also has IGET and IPUT commands which copy between a real tape, and a tape image file in Ersatz-11's format (which is also used by some other emulators). Changes since V1.0: * IGET and IPUT now take an optional record length parameter. If this value is specified, then the image file is assumed *not* to contain blocking information and all bytes are treated as data, at the specified fixed record length (so it works like the UNIX "dd" utility). * Source code is now available. John Wilson D Bit