10 Jun
2020
10 Jun
'20
12:06 p.m.
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.
I have approximately 80 11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
need reading.
/Mattis
10 Jun
10 Jun
2:30 p.m.
On Jun 10, 2020, at 3:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in
assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
You could try my ?fsio? utility from the SIMH simtools repository:
<https://github.com/simh/simtools/converters/fsio>
I originally wrote it to read/write SIMH disk images in various formats (including RT11).
I?ve
never tried it with a tape drive but if it looks like a block device it should work.
John.
It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.
I have approximately 80 11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
need reading.
/Mattis
3:04 p.m.
On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 3:30 PM John Forecast via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
You could try my ?fsio? utility from the SIMH
simtools repository:
<https://github.com/simh/simtools/converters/fsio>
I originally wrote it to read/write SIMH disk images in various formats
(including RT11). I?ve
never tried it with a tape drive but if it looks like a block device it
should work.
I get a 404 when I click on that link. I think you may have meant:
https://github.com/simh/simtools/tree/master/converters/fsio
That looks like it would be useful to me for a lot of other things, but
probably not for reading from actual TU58 drives.
A real TU58 drive hooked up to a system running Linux does not look
anything like a block device. Linux has no idea what it is; it's just
something hooked up to a serial port. To read tape blocks, it would be up
to a user space program to send the TU58 the right MRSP commands and
interpret the responses.
There are a number of programs that solve the opposite problem, and make a
PC pretend to be a TU58, but those don't help when what you want to do is
talk to an actual TU58. I haven't seen a program for that. Perhaps some
code from the NetBSD kernel could be useful, but I'm guessing that dealing
with that would be more trouble than just writing a new program.
There are some undocumented MRSP commands, but the documented commands
should be sufficient to read a tape.
11 Jun
11 Jun
7:18 a.m.
On Wed, 2020-06-10 16:04:38 -0600, Eric Smith via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
[...]
A real TU58 drive hooked up to a system running Linux
does not look
anything like a block device. Linux has no idea what it is; it's just
something hooked up to a serial port. To read tape blocks, it would be up
to a user space program to send the TU58 the right MRSP commands and
interpret the responses.
I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or BUSE[2] (which seems to
hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
pretty straight forward.
Another route might be to use it as an actual tape device. ISTR that
these offer a few extra ioctls which might be interesting to have to
also support software that expects to talk to actual tapes. Both ways
would have their PROs and CONs... I'd probably go the nbdkit route,
but .. no hardware. ^^
MfG, JBG
[1] https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit
[2] https://github.com/acozzette/BUSE
--
9:55 a.m.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 AM Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw at lug-owl.de> wrote:
I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or
BUSE[2] (which seems to
hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
pretty straight forward.
Yes, that could certainly be done, but it's a fair bit more work than just
writing a tape dump program.
15 Jun
15 Jun
12:55 p.m.
On Thu, 2020-06-11 10:55:02 -0600, Eric Smith via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 AM Jan-Benedict Glaw
<jbglaw at lug-owl.de> wrote:
I'm not sure... But I guess it's quite pointless to attempt to work on
something like this without being able to test it with actual
hardware. :-(
Just for the fun of it, I just checked eBay for drives, but there's
nothing viable around right now. Maybe I'll come back to it at some
later time?
MfG, JBG
--
I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or
BUSE[2] (which seems to
hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
pretty straight forward.
Yes, that could certainly be done, but it's a fair bit more work than just
writing a tape dump program. 
10 Jun
10 Jun
2:33 p.m.
On 06/10/2020 02:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump
TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
Wait, isn't a TU58 actually connected by plain serial port?
That should be fairly easy to write a
dump program for.
Jon
5:25 p.m.
On Jun 10, 2020, at 5:33 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 06/10/2020 02:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
Yes, it connects to a serial port. But on that serial port it speaks some sort of
protocol that implements a block access service. So what you actually have to do is
implement that protocol. I have never looked at it (never wanted to touch a TU58), but
it's been done, so there's probably code that can be used. With that, the next
step is to tie it to an implementation of the RT11 file system, which is a simple matter.
paul
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to
dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
Wait, isn't a TU58 actually connected by plain serial port? That should be
fairly easy to write a
dump program for.
Jon
17 Jun
17 Jun
1:29 a.m.
On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump
TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
I had a look at the TU58 documentation, it doesn't seem too hard to
wire it up as a BUSE or NBD block device, though it'll be slow by
today's standards. If I ever get my hands on a drive and a few tapes
(at least one with known content!), I'll give it a try.
MfG, JBG
--
2:30 a.m.
On Wed, 2020-06-17 10:29:08 +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
As the tapes are so small, it would probably even make sense to just
cache the whole tape upon starting the block device simulation and
just write to the tape as needed.
Now, as I'm curious about it, I need such a drive. :)
MfG, JBG
--
Is there anyone that has already built a tool to
dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.
I had a look at the TU58 documentation, it doesn't seem too hard to
wire it up as a BUSE or NBD block device, though it'll be slow by
today's standards. If I ever get my hands on a drive and a few tapes
(at least one with known content!), I'll give it a try. 
5:48 a.m.
On 6/17/20 2:30 AM, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, 2020-06-17 10:29:08 +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw
via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
>> machine? I have the drive of course.
active discussion and coding going on here
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?75527-TU58-dump-tool/page4
1649
days inactive
1656
days old
10 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
jbglaw＠lug-owl.de -
john＠forecast.name -
mattislind＠gmail.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
spacewar＠gmail.com