22 Jul
2013
22 Jul
'13
4:22 a.m.
Been away from the list for a while, but a recent discovery has
rekindled one of my classic computing projects I always wanted to do...
I have 3 tapes that I have re-discovered that came from my earliest
college days.
They have stuff from my days on a TOPS-10 system.
I have a DEC SCSI based tabletop tape drive to read these with.
What is the best way to image these, preserving their contents ?
Also, what software will put these in a format I can use with an
emulator ?
Does anyone know if any of the emulators can mount the tapes directly
from the emulator through the SCSI bus ? Or is the
only way to image
these in a format compatible with the emulators ?
Anyone know what the best emulator is for DECsystem10 ? How about
DECsystem 20 ?
Thank in advance,
-- Curt
22 Jul
22 Jul
11:35 a.m.
SIMH has good PDP10 emulation, but it does not emulate the KL processor, if
you need that then I believe the best emulator would be KLH10.
Regards
Rob
On 21 July 2013 23:22, rescue <rescue at hawkmountain.net> wrote:
Been away from the list for a while, but a recent discovery has rekindled
one of my classic computing projects I always wanted to do...
I have 3 tapes that I have re-discovered that came from my earliest
college days.
They have stuff from my days on a TOPS-10 system.
I have a DEC SCSI based tabletop tape drive to read these with.
What is the best way to image these, preserving their contents ?
Also, what software will put these in a format I can use with an emulator ?
Does anyone know if any of the emulators can mount the tapes directly from
the emulator through the SCSI bus ? Or is the only way to image these in a
format compatible with the emulators ?
Anyone know what the best emulator is for DECsystem10 ? How about
DECsystem 20 ?
Thank in advance,
-- Curt
6:55 p.m.
From: rescue
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 9:23 PM
I have 3 tapes that I have re-discovered that came
from my earliest
college days.
They have stuff from my days on a TOPS-10 system.
I have a DEC SCSI based tabletop tape drive to read
these with.
What is the best way to image these, preserving their
contents ?
Also, what software will put these in a format I can
use with an
emulator ?
The best software for imaging the tapes will automagically put them
into a format usable by SimH and KLH10. The question is, what do you
have to drive your tape drive? (I use an M4 9914 drive on a Toad-1,
but that's not an option for most people. :-)
Does anyone know if any of the emulators can mount the
tapes directly
from the emulator through the SCSI bus ? Or is the only way to image
these in a format compatible with the emulators ?
People are working on all kinds of hacks for SimH with respect to real
hardware, but since most of the software for any of the systems that
have SimH emulators is in tape images, I don't think anyone is doing
the work to make real tape drives work with them.
Anyone know what the best emulator is for DECsystem10
? How about
DECsystem 20 ?
SimH emulates only a KS10 processor, and will allow you to run Tops-10
7.04 or TOPS-20 4.1 (or ITS, but that's an entirely different kettle
of lutefisk). For Tops-10 work, it's entirely sufficient.
KLH10 emulates either a KL10 "Model B" or a KS10 (in either DEC or
ITS configurations). The KL10 emulator is the only one that will allow
you to run TOPS-20 releases past 4.1; the distributed TOPS-20 system
is 7.1, with Panda enhancements. It also runs Tops-10 7.04 quite nicely
(though neither Ken Harrenstien nor Mark Crispin cared to distribute
that).
I guarantee you that no one has done any work to make any of the
KLH10 emulators drive a real tape drive; feel free to contribute
if you decide to do that yourself.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
25 Jul
25 Jul
4:19 p.m.
Rich,
Thanks for the info.
What is the best software for imaging these tapes ?
My DEC tabletop tape drive is SCSI interface, and I could connect it to
almost anything (PC with Linux/Solaris/Windows, Mac with OS9/OSX, Sparc,
SGI, etc).
The tapes were not stored in an ideal environment (humidity probably
not bad, but temps of up to 90+ on and off for 20+ years), so I figure
I'll hopefully have at least one shot to get these imaged... so I want
to pick the right stuff before I try to read those tapes.
Thanks,
-- Curt
On 2013-07-22 14:55, Rich Alderson wrote:
From: rescue
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2013 9:23 PM
...
What is the best way to image these, preserving
their contents ?
Also, what software will put these in a format I
can use with an
emulator ?
The best software for imaging the tapes will automagically put them
into a format usable by SimH and KLH10. The question is, what do you
have to drive your tape drive? (I use an M4 9914 drive on a Toad-1,
but that's not an option for most people. :-)
...
Rich Alderson
6:35 p.m.
From: rescue
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2013 9:20 AM
Thanks for the info.
What is the best software for imaging these tapes ?
Well, I had written
> I guarantee you that no one has done any work to
make any of the
> KLH10 emulators drive a real tape drive; feel free to contribute
> if you decide to do that yourself.
which was only partially correct. The KLH10 package comes with an
external utility, tapedd, which can read (and presumably write) real
physical tapes and create virtual tapes (i. e., images) in several
differ formats:
RAW: 8 bit frames, no internal formatting, with a separate tape
directory file that describes the location of blocks within
the data file
TPS: SimH-format tape image
TPE: DBit E11-format (similar to SimH, without PDP-11 padding bytes)
TPC: DECUS/Shoppa format (similar to SimH but with 2-byte count at
start of block only)
Your best best, it seems to me, would be to build tapedd on Linux
and handle the conversions with it, since it's entirely agnostic
about the tape content. Use the SimH conversion unless you only
want to run KLH10 (and maybe even then, since KLH10 will accept it).
My DEC tabletop tape drive is SCSI interface, and I
could connect it to
almost anything (PC with Linux/Solaris/Windows, Mac with OS9/OSX, Sparc,
SGI, etc).
Neither MacOS will handle tape drives. I thought about writing a
SCSI tape driver for OSX many years ago, but was talked out of it by
[true story] one of the OSX developers from Apple. :-)
Any of the Unices should suffice, but Linux is probably easiest.
The tapes were not stored in an ideal environment
(humidity
probably not bad, but temps of up to 90+ on and off for 20+
years), so I figure I'll hopefully have at least one shot to get
these imaged... so I want to pick the right stuff before I try to
read those tapes.
Yeah, be careful with your tapes. We haven't lost any yet, but
we've clearly been very very lucky.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
4245
days inactive
4248
days old
4 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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rescue＠hawkmountain.net -
RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com