31 Oct
2016
31 Oct
'16
11:58 a.m.
On 10/30/2016 4:24 PM, Don North wrote:
On 10/30/2016 5:47 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software, block zero of the device
(boot block)
starts at track 1 sector 1. Track 0 is not even accessible thru the
standard drivers.
Applies to both PDP-11 (eg, XXDP, RT11) and PDP-8 (OS8).
Maybe specific software that reads/writes disks in IBM exchange mode
accesses
track 0, but I've never used such s/w and am only guessing
If you cared about
not erasing the drive manufacture's data on sealed
media Winchester and the like you have to avoid any writes to cylinder 0
at all.
The drive formatting software could read that cylinder track 0 for a
defect map. Nothing to stop you from overwriting it, but you would then
need to do a local media certification that is more complicated than
just formatting the drive, and mapping out defective tracks / sectors.
I never worked with a system that had a controller or software that
could read the defect track, so don't know how that was used. Later
drives with more intelligence in the drive are another matter, but in
those cases, the hiding of the defect data can be a task assigned to
that processor, and don't need magic handling of the addressing.
Thanks
Jim
From: Don
North <north at alum.mit.edu>
.. the hardware bootstrap reads track 1 sectors
1, 3, 5, 7
Ah, thanks for that. Starting to look at the code, I had missed the
interleave.
So does DEC do anything with track 0, or is it always just empty?
Noel