14 Oct
2000
14 Oct
'00
4:10 p.m.
ajp166 wrote:
Anyone out
there who wants to try? I would be very pleased to
swap some of my time for a couple of SCSI 32 GByte hard drives
to test out the software. The only problem is that the only SCSI
host adapters I have are the 50 pin type (CQD 220/M), so there
I've run my
PDP11 with SCSI CQD already as it's MSCP, Same
for VAX/VMS (it's in my MVII). It's limited to 4 or 8gb and SCSI-II so forget the
reall monster drives.
Are you sure? Is anyone aware of larger drives that still use the 50 pin
SCSI-2 interface?
The idea of such huge drive with RT11 and friends is
that is wasted.
I use D540s (31mb) and swap them like carts as I have a bunch of em
and they are plenty big enough. Drives in the 120-400MB range are
plentyful for me, one 200mb drive would take all the binaries and
sources I have with room to spare that aren't already on Tims CD.
Whats the point?
The point is that maybe you are not the only person who runs with
drives that are so small. And while I agree with you that probably
most RT-11 or TSX-PLUS users do not use drives even as large
as 2 GBytes (I use a 600 MByte drive myself and find that is normally
more than enough capacity), there may be a few who could benefit
from even larger drives. The problem with the standard
MSCP
DU(X).SYS device driver in RT-11 is that the software limits the user
to easily using drives that are smaller than 8 GBytes. While I know
that you are aware of the limitation, the actual question I asked is
if MSCP allows the hardware use of drives up to a 32 bit block
number? Again, I obviously did not make my question clear
enough since you did not answer it. Namely, if the DU(X).SYS
device driver in RT-11 could handle sending more than a 24 bit
block number to the hard disk drive via the use of SET commands
(which would allow a partition number with more than 8 bits), could
the hardware handle that?
I did not say that everyone would want to make use of that feature
if it were possible - I know that you will not and I will not. I was
just asking if it were possible and maybe someone might want
to do so?
I guess that the point I am trying to make is that I enjoy a software
challenge whereas you enjoy a hardware challenge. I look a
some hardware and see what is. You look at the same hardware
and see what could be. I guess that I do the same with software.
Then I also go ahead and try make it work. Many times, I actually
can enhance or fix software just as you make changes to the hardware.
Can we agree on that?
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine