I forget if they can be formatted, but I do know that they can be erased and scanned... but you need to have something which speaks DU Protocol (DUP)... if you have a uVaxII or uVaxIII, you have what you need... You have to use one of the maintenance commands from the uVax console... One of the commands of the form SET HOST/MAINT/UQSSP/SERVER n where n is the number of the UQSSP port. Once the DUP starts up, it will prompt for a command or filename... type DIRECT and it will give you a listing of what is available. Some drives have different numbers of programs available, so try what looks obvious. BTW - the DUP protocol is essentially a protocol which causes the VAX and the KFQSA to exchange packets of text. You type something, it is packetized and sent to the KFQSA where it is passed to code running in the disk. The output of that code is passed back to the VAX in a packet. I don't know of anything else which speaks it (unless there is something on the user test TK50 under MDM). And it is a proprietary protocol, so I can't explain the specifics. Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+