Jerome Fine replies: Why would you want to run a "MODERN" operating system like Windows 2000? After all, it has an up-time measured in decades and is not susceptible to attack by a virus or a worm. In addition it only uses a couple of hundred MBytes for the operating system files. And finally, there are very few bugs. Not like that really dumb operating system that DEC (oops - Compaq) has available free to hobby users called VMS. I hear the VMS usually crashes once a day and is easily attacked by software bugs since it has no hardware protection like execute only and read only memory. Of course you are not able to run VMS under an emulator. So you must use real hardware under the hobby license and run on a real VAX or real Alpha hardware. By the way, can you tell me the location of those files which helped? I have an M8981-AA which I hope to receive the Qbus cab kit for eventually. But you can buy a DECnet license for so little for RSX-11M-PLUS although an ethernet board might be available for free via a trade. And that extra 2 MBytes of memory was also extremely low in price when DEC was still selling the 11/93 module. I seem to remember that the 4 MByte board was ONLY about $ US 2000 more than the 2 MByte board. Can anyone remember how much a 4 MByte 30 pin SIMM cost when they were new? I have a few lying around to show to my great-great-grandchildren. Some even use 4 MBit DRAM although most are the less expensive type that use 16 MBit DRAM. NO! The RT-11 Freeware CD from Tim Shoppa does NOT contain any RT-11 distributions. Sorry. Do you want me to send you one? Which version of RT-11? Do you have a CDROM drive on the real PDP-11 hardware that is able to read 512 byte blocks? If you already have a file under Windows 98 that is able to boot RT-11 under Ersatz-11, I have found that Nero Burning can copy that file under the "Burn Image" option to the CD - including the first 64 blocks which the ISO file structure ignores - or so I am told. Now that is an extremely interesting thought. Since RT-11 only needs the first 8 blocks to set up a file structure, it might be possible to write a DSK file under the ISO file structure that could be used by Ersatz-11 via the command: MOUNT DU1: I:RT11V5.3/RONLY but also the command MOUNT DU0: CDROMI:/RONLY if Ersatz-11 could ever manage to access those 64 blocks like MOUNT DU0: SCSI4:/RONLY can do in the commercial version. Since I can look at those 64 blocks (actually 16 2048 byte sectors) under Nero Burning, maybe there are special requests to Windows 98 that Ersatz-11 is not aware of that will allow access to the first 64 blocks of the CD even with the MOUNT DU0: CDROMI:/RONLY command. Now that I can understand. Enjoy the 11/93. But don't expect the hype from DEC to be valid as far as speed is concerned. Based on just a few measurements I once made, the 11/93 CPU speed seems to be about twice as fast as an 11/73. A MACRO-11 file took about this many seconds using VM: (all in memory): 11/73 11/83 11/93 270 180 135 Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.

What version? If you've got a /93 the OS is probably fairly modern! The current is V4.6. What is the system using for a disk? No, none of Tim's CD's are bootable. Also, be aware, that it isn't exactly easy to find a hardware combination that will allow a PDP-11 to talk to a CD-ROM. I use a Viking SCSI controller (which needs almost current ROMs to be able to handle CD-ROM's) and a DEC RRD-42. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Jerome Fine replies: I think I finally figured out a method of creating a bootable CD under RT-11 which also holds a set of files under the ISO file structure. I don't know if it will work under anything but DOS/W95/W98, but here goes. Note that I have noticed that there may be some hardware/software problems with one of the SCSI CDROM drive I am using, so I suspect that this whole procedure may take a bit of time to work out. If anyone is interested enough to follow all of the details, I would appreciate helpful comments. The key point is that I will likely use RT-11 to solve the problem of transferring the data to the hard disk file "BurnImage.DSK" which will be used to hold all the data until it is ready to be transferred to the final CD. As such, I still need to modify the DUP.SAV program so that I can easily copy block 65535 of an RT-11 partition to the last block of all of the non-RT-11 partitions at the start of the disk file "BurnImage.DSK" - right now, the DEC distributions will read, but not write block 65535. There is a simple way around this problem and I will use the work around the first few times. First, I make the assumption that DOS/W95/W98 allow readable sectors in the area of sectors zero to 15 (sectors are 2048 bytes each). I did a "DUMP" under "Nero Burning" and in every case, where I had set up only an ISO file structure, all 16 sectors had 2048 bytes of zeros. Where I had an RT-11 file structure, the correct data was there instead. I will first try all this out with a CD-RW (erasable CD). (a) Create the CD with the files that the user wants to have under the ISO file structure with ONE additional file which MUST be contained within the first 32 MBytes or 16383 sectors (of 2048 bytes each) on the CD. This additional file will be the RT-11 DSK file that I want to be bootable. (b) After I create the CD with the files that I want to be there under the ISO file, I use PUTR to create a file on the hard disk that will be exactly the number of bytes which I will eventually use for the "Burn Image" option. The size of BurnImage.DSK will be an integer multiple of 33,554,432 bytes. The fist portion covers the files under the ISO file structure. The second portion covers the files under the RT-11 files structure. Normally, the maximum size will be 20 RT-11 partitions or 671,088,640 bytes. (c) Under E11, I will mount both: MOUNT DU0: CDROME:/RONLY MOUNT DU1: BurnImage.DSK after which I will run RT-11 and copy each 65536 block partition (d) This is now the tricky part. That bootable DSK file which is also a file under the ISO file structure must be located somewhere in BurnImage.DSK in the first 32 MBytes. I am not sure yet if it will start on a sector boundary, but after it is found, I will need to set up the RT-11 fist structure in the first 64 blocks of BurnImage.DSK by putting a dummy file in that file structure immediately in front of the first file in that bootable.DSK file. Alternatively, I suspect that the starting block number can be set to be the correct start of the first file in the bootable.DSK, so a bit of calculations will be needed. (e) Finally, the RT-11 partitions in the second portion will be copied to the RT-11 partitions in hard disk file. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.

Jerome Fine replies: THANK YOU!!!!!!!! I had not yet been concerned with that exact detail as yet, but I though it could be a problem solved either by the order of selection or via the name (alphabetical order). This feature makes the selection VERY easy!! I was not too concerned, but it is really helpful to know about the feature. One thing that I did not mention is that I will need to do a bit of hand calculations and SIPP set up in the directory which should NOT be very difficult for those of us who get into the directory segments all the time for other purposes. I presume that DOS/W95/W98 utilities are available that can do the same thing, but RT-11 utilities will serve just as well along with PUTR to initially create the file which will be the BurnImage.DSK to be copied to the CD media exactly as it appears. Actually, I think it is a bit humorous that the solution to setting up a multi-use file structure which will use the same RT-11 DSK file (placed there in the ISO file structure using the "Nero Burning" application software in the normal manner under DOS/W95/W98 - actually, any of the available application software can be used for the ISO file structure portion) is the use of mostly standard RT-11 utilities. The only two changes will be: DUP.SAV - must be modified to write block 65535 BINCOM - must be modified to read block 65535 Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.

Amazingly enough, you can do this with the *nix mkisofs program by specifying the files to burn on its command line. The order that you type them is the order that they get put into the ISO image IIRC. Amazing how easy stuff becomes when you drop Windoze :) -- Pat On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, John Foust wrote: