18 Oct
2013
18 Oct
'13
11:22 p.m.
Hi all -
Snagged a Sage IV machine, running p-System (IV.21) with the Modula-2
suite installed on the internal hard drive (which I believe is 20mb; I
haven't disassembled the machine far enough to ID the drive and I don't
have any of the hard drive utilities available on the machine to probe
with). I'd like to back up the hard drive before I do anything else
with this thing, especially since I don't think the Modula-2 software
has been archived anywhere (if I'm incorrect in this regard do let me
know). Plus there's a sweet half-finished Vampire novel on the drive
that I simply must save.
Anyone have any experience with these and have any backup suggestions?
I'm considering writing a quick Modula-2 program to dump the drive
sector-by-sector over the serial port but if there's some prior art here
I'm a big fan of saving time.
Incidentally -- anyone have any contact with David Erhart, the guy who
runs sageandstride.org? His FTP site (which hosts a lot of the
documentation, schematics & software) is currently down; I've e-mailed
him to no response. (Anyone happen to have this stuff archived?)
Thanks as always,
Josh
19 Oct
19 Oct
4:04 a.m.
On Oct 19, 2013, at 05:22 , Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all -
Snagged a Sage IV machine, running p-System (IV.21) with the Modula-2 suite installed on
the internal hard drive (which I believe is 20mb; I haven't disassembled the machine
far enough to ID the drive and I don't have any of the hard drive utilities available
on the machine to probe with). I'd like to back up the hard drive before I do
anything else with this thing, especially since I don't think the Modula-2 software
has been archived anywhere (if I'm incorrect in this regard do let me know). Plus
there's a sweet half-finished Vampire novel on the drive that I simply must save.
Anyone have any experience with these and have any backup suggestions? I'm
considering writing a quick Modula-2 program to dump the drive sector-by-sector over the
serial port but if there's some prior art here I'm a big fan of saving time.
Incidentally -- anyone have any contact with David Erhart, the guy who runs
sageandstride.org? His FTP site (which hosts a lot of the documentation, schematics &
software) is currently down; I've e-mailed him to no response. (Anyone happen to have
this stuff archived?)
Thanks as always,
Josh
I'm pretty sure that the disk is MFM; it may be possible to attach a second disk and
copy the contents of the original disk to that. There may even be adapters from MFM to
something a bit more current.
The Sage has a fairly powerful BIOS (the "Multi-user BIOS"), which may have
functionality that would make your task easier. If this question had come up 15 years ago,
I would have been able to be more specific, but I traded my Sage and all the documentation
I had back then.
20 Oct
20 Oct
6:44 a.m.
New subject: MFM (and earlier cartridge disks) Disks Re: Sage IV info
On 19/10/2013 09:04, Raymond Wiker wrote:
On Oct 19, 2013, at 05:22 , Josh Dersch <derschjo
at gmail.com> wrote:
I think this is I think going to become a common problem. I have an
IBM3174 screen controller. I have plenty of spares for most of it, but
out of the three hard disks I have only one works reliably. They are
ST125 disks so once upon a time they were pretty common. These days, not
so easy to find. I know other users who want to do the same with older
PDP/11 systems to keep them as original as possible. I think the same
issues are going to arise with earlier drives such as the cartridge
drives used in IBM-1130 many PDP-11 systems. The cartridges for these
are not going to last forever....
There are MFM/ST506 to flash converters out there, so I found this one:-
http://www.amazon.com/dtx-300-Hard-Drive-Emulator/dp/B00BQY55M2
but at $2300 its a bit outside my price range. There is also "discferret"
http://discferret.com/wiki/DiscFerret
which looks like it could evolve into something really useful, but it
looks like I would have to build one from scratch. What would be really
nice would be to have something like this:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/3-5-Inch-Floppy-Drive-Emulator/dp/B0083Z29JO
at a similar price, but I guess thats not going to happen any time
soon......
The Sage has a fairly powerful BIOS (the "Multi-user BIOS"), which may
have functionality that would make your task easier. If this question
had come up 15 years ago, I would have been able to be more specific,
but I traded my Sage and all the documentation I had back then.
Dave
Hi all -
Snagged a Sage IV machine, running p-System (IV.21) with the Modula-2 suite installed on
the internal hard drive (which I believe is 20mb; I haven't disassembled the machine
far enough to ID the drive and I don't have any of the hard drive utilities available
on the machine to probe with). I'd like to back up the hard drive before I do
anything else with this thing, especially since I don't think the Modula-2 software
has been archived anywhere (if I'm incorrect in this regard do let me know). Plus
there's a sweet half-finished Vampire novel on the drive that I simply must save.
Anyone have any experience with these and have any backup suggestions? I'm
considering writing a quick Modula-2 program to dump the drive sector-by-sector over the
serial port but if there's some prior art here I'm a big fan of saving time.
Incidentally -- anyone have any contact with David Erhart, the guy who runs
sageandstride.org? His FTP site (which hosts a lot of the documentation, schematics &
software) is currently down; I've e-mailed him to no response. (Anyone happen to have
this stuff archived?)
Thanks as always,
Josh
I'm pretty sure that the disk is MFM; it may be possible to attach a second
disk and copy the contents of the original disk to that. There may even be adapters from
MFM to something a bit more current.
6:21 p.m.
As a follow up to my own post, I did manage to capture images of the
individual partitions on the Sage IV's drive. For future reference, the
UTILITY floppy has a program called "SEND" on it which will send
(excruciatingly slowly) the contents of a given partition over the
serial port, encoded as a series of ASCII hexadecimal digits.
That took all night, but it did finish and I hacked up a program to
convert them to a raw binary image. It's not quite a complete image of
the hard drive (missing the partition / bad block tables, etc) but it's
at least a backup; incidentally if anyone has any idea how to get
Partition 0 (the 'whole disk' partition) to show up as a Device under
the p-System, SEND could be used to create a full disk image.
Otherwise, sometime this week I'll try to hack something together.
The partition images can be found at:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/sage/
Thanks to all those who provided suggestions, on- and off-list.
- Josh
On 10/18/2013 8:22 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hi all -
Snagged a Sage IV machine, running p-System (IV.21) with the Modula-2
suite installed on the internal hard drive (which I believe is 20mb; I
haven't disassembled the machine far enough to ID the drive and I
don't have any of the hard drive utilities available on the machine to
probe with). I'd like to back up the hard drive before I do anything
else with this thing, especially since I don't think the Modula-2
software has been archived anywhere (if I'm incorrect in this regard
do let me know). Plus there's a sweet half-finished Vampire novel on
the drive that I simply must save.
Anyone have any experience with these and have any backup
suggestions? I'm considering writing a quick Modula-2 program to dump
the drive sector-by-sector over the serial port but if there's some
prior art here I'm a big fan of saving time.
Incidentally -- anyone have any contact with David Erhart, the guy who
runs sageandstride.org? His FTP site (which hosts a lot of the
documentation, schematics & software) is currently down; I've e-mailed
him to no response. (Anyone happen to have this stuff archived?)
Thanks as always,
Josh
21 Oct
21 Oct
1:39 a.m.
Zitat von Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com>:
incidentally if anyone has any idea how to get
Partition 0 (the 'whole disk' partition) to show up as a Device under
the p-System, SEND could be used to create a full disk image.
Idea, yes. Did I try? No, I don't have a SAGE :(
But I know, that you can use the MONITOR/BIOS from the p-system
(there is more infor in the technical doc), so you can directly jump
into the routines, which do sector read/write ...
Otherwise, sometime this week I'll try to hack
something together.
> Incidentally -- anyone have any contact with David
Erhart, the guy
> who runs sageandstride.org? His FTP site (which hosts a lot of the
> documentation, schematics & software) is currently down; I've
> e-mailed him to no response. (Anyone happen to have this stuff
> archived?)
I tried to contact him too, weeks ago. No response either.
But most of the stuff is avalable via http too, so just browse around
until you find it ...
Cheers & good luck
3908
days inactive
3910
days old
4 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
derschjo＠gmail.com -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
rwiker＠gmail.com