PDP11 Disk Image Creation

Another possibility might be to put the disk in a VAX 2000, boot VMS over the network from another VMS machine or simulator and use BACKUP /PHYSICAL to copy the disk over the network. On the plus side, the 2000 would likely understand the low level format which random MFM controllers designed for PCs would be unlikely to. On the minus side, with older versions of VMS, it may be difficult to do much with the image other than to restore it to another disk of the same type, which is not going to be very useful. The online help on newer VMS versions suggests it may be possible to restore the image to any disk of the same size or larger but I haven't tried it. It may also be possible to boot some other OS on the 2000 and use that to perform the imaging operation. Regards, Peter Coghlan.