*early* Domain OS available? ---> 8" floppy with Imagedisk - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Jul 2006

...
  From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk>
 Subject: Re: *early* Domain OS available?

 Al Kossow wrote:

   The
floppy drive appeared to be a standard PC style 5 1/4" drive.
         It would be a good thing to try Imagedisk on these to try to get the
 software archived.

 I've had pretty good luck with reading 5" floppies. 8" is another story...

 Hmm, good point - I had 'floppy-based' stuck in my head and completely missed 
 that the fax we've got says that they're 8". That suggests it's a pretty
early 
 Apollo and well before the 3000 or 4000 series.

 At least if they're 8" disks then the recording density is pretty low and so 
 there's a good chance they're intact. OTOH, I've never tried hooking up an
8" 
 drive to a modern machine (i.e. PC) and tried Imagedisk (for example) with it.
I've used a Shugart 801R with Imagedisk, and it works very nicely.  I 
laid out a small pcb to simplify the connections and could have more 
made up if there were any interest. 

Dave Dunfield was invaluable in helping me work thru issues getting 
single density to work properly.  I ended up with an Adaptec ISA scsi 
adapter card for the floppy controller which works well (it's a 1522a).

- Gary