MicroVax II update

[Douglas Taylor]

On 8/5/2016 6:18 PM, Jerry Weiss wrote:
> On Aug 5, 2016, at 3:48 PM, derschjo at gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Aug 5, 2016, at 1:42 PM, Douglas Taylor <dj.taylor4 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Progress on getting the MVII up and running:
>>>
>>> I ordered the SCSI2SD adapter and it has come in, the plan is to use it as the system disk on the MVII.
>>>
>>> The hobbyist VMS PAKS have arrived and I was able to download the VMS 7.3 iso, not sure what I can do with it since I think it must be burned to a 512 byte sector CD.
>> Burn it to a CD.  Shouldn't be anything complex here.
>>
>>> I asked if the PAKS were good for older versions of VMS, like 5.5, and was told yes they were.  We'll see about that.
> Yes - I have used the same PAK on 5.5 and 7.3.
>
>>> The Hobbyist VMS CD I had for VMS 7.2 was found and I was able to get the old Toshiba CD drive to work on the MV 4000 using a CQD 223A.  How can I create an image of these CD's on the VAX 4000 that I could use in an emulator?
>>>
>>> I wasn't able to get the UC07 to see the CDROM because of a bad SCSI cable, I had hoped to format the SCSI2SD using the UC07
>> Keep in mind that the SCSI2SD can pretend to be a CD-ROM, and can emulate up to 4 SCSI devices at one go.  No need to futz with a real drive if you don't want to...
>>
>>> Is it possible to use the SCSI2SD on a microPDP-11 under RT-11? I ask because of the disk size limit under RT-11.’
> Yes.  It works well with the later versions of RT11 V5.5-5.7.     There are DU Handlers (MSCP) that allow a large disk  to be partitioned (in the handler) into multiple drives  I’ve used up to 7 in RT and 20+ in TSX+ drives at the same time.   Each drive is still limited to 32Mb per partition, but you can manage up to 255 partitions (~8GB).
>
> Jerry
>
>
Jerry;

I am starting to read about the SCSI2SD and it will be very useful to 
have it emulate multiple drives, I am thinking of one hard disk and up 
to 3 CDROMs, one each for 5.5, 7.2 and 7.3.  If I want to use one of the 
SCSI id's for an image of a VMS installation CD do I make its size 
exactly match the size of the iso image (534MB for 7.3)?

My problem is that the only computer with a SCSI interface in my 
possession is the VAX (and microPDP11), so I will be forced to install 
from an actual CD.  This isn't that bad though, I installed 7.2 about 12 
years ago on the VAX 4000 that I have.

About RT-11, I had 5.4 and it allowed you to use multiple 32MB 
partitions, when I finish with the VAX I will start on the microPDP11.  
I was just curious if you could use the SCSI2SD adapter with RT-11, it 
looks like I can, thanks.

I am at a loss to figure out how to get data onto the SD card partitions 
outside of VMS, will simh recognize the partitions?

Doug