21 Sep
2015
21 Sep
'15
9:47 a.m.
On 2015-09-21 18:34, Paul Koning wrote:
For Unibus, the controller would be the RUX50. MSCP, as you say. And I
suspect that one didn't do formatting.
For Qbus, it would be the RQDX, which was MSCP, and did both the RD
disks and RX50. I'm not sure, but I think the RQDX could perform some
sort of low level formatting for the RD anyway. Not sure what it would
say if you pointed it at the RX...
On Sep 21, 2015, at 12:28 PM, Jay Jaeger
<cube1 at charter.net> wrote:
On 9/21/2015 4:30 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
For RX50? On standard PDP11s, those used an MSCP controller, which means the controller
would have to do it. Did it? The only MSCP controller I remember that did formatting was
the UDA50. On 2015-09-21 02:11, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
There was also a standalone PDP-11 diagnostic program available that
could do it. > Chuck Guzis wrote:
Note that the RX50 was the same. DEC finally changed
their marketing policy with the RX33 drive which used the
same 3.5" HD floppy media as the PC. It was actually
possible to FORMAT those floppies under RT-11.
No, DEC actually did support users formatting RX50 floppies on their
own, but only on the Rainbow.
Johnny
I suppose you could on a Pro, since that had its own
particularly disgusting junk controller. But I haven't seen RX50 formatting there.
My impression was that they came factory formatted, with the DEC-specific 10 sector per
track format.
Ugh! The PRO controller probably was weird enough to not allow you, even
though as far as I understand, it was also way more primitive than MSCP.
Johnny