Making an RT-11 TU58 Image

Yes, it's quite easy. You can build an RX image, or as hinted at above, you can create an entire RL02-sized image and use it with the TU58 driver (DD). It turns out that RT11's DD driver only cares about size of the media when it *writes*, but it can read any properly initialized media of any size.

As you suggest, using SIMH, mount up a blank 'disk' of whatever variety you want (RX01 would be fine, but a little small for working with RT11 easily, I'd suggest an RL01 or RL02), and initialize it, copy over the files you want, and just as you say, do a COPY/BOOT with the TU58 driver (DD), such as: .COPY/BOOT:DD DL0:RT11SJ.SYS DL0: to put the TU58 driver in the boot block of a RL0x. At this point you'll need to physically cable your Linux box running the TU58 emulator and the PDP-11 with a simple null-modem cable. When you fire up the PDP-11 hardware, you'll have to enter the TU58 bootstrap (which Will gives in his emulator documentation). At that point you should be home free. It won't be fast, but it will certainly function fine. If you do create a non-TU58-sized virtual disk image, you'll want to again refer to Will's docs where he gives you a patch to the DD.SYS driver, setting the number of blocks allowed. This will allow you to read and write to a larger (than standard TU58) disk image. Good luck! - Jared