Installing an operating system on the 11/83 - update.

[Ray Jewhurst]

I read that you can indeed use a standard 1.2 Meg drive and that you can also use DSHD 5.25 disks in place of RX50s. Is there any truth in this? If there is it will be much easier and cheaper to make disks for my Rainbow.

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________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Warner Losh via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2022 6:42:38 PM
To: js at cimmeri.com <js at cimmeri.com>; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Cc: General at ezwind.net <General at ezwind.net>
Subject: Re: Installing an operating system on the 11/83 - update.

On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 4:36 PM js--- via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

>
> Rod,
>
>    Not sure an RX33 (if 1.2MB
> equivalent) would write working RX50
> 800k (double density) disks.  Very
> different drives.
>

The RX-33 is the same sort of drive that you had in your PC if you wrote
RX-50s with your PC. Back in the day, lots of people used RX50.SYS to
have it setup the transfer rates, RPM and sectors per track parameters
so that you could read/write them on a PC running DOS. The parameters
are basically the same ones you need to write the 360k DOS floppies, only
with twice the number of tracks and 10 sectors per track instead of 9 (this
is
done by making the track gaps smaller and eeking an extra sector out of the
deal, but using at the same data rates).


>    I've successfully put an actual RX-50
> drive on my PC, and written RX-50 images
> using PUTR.  You might try that route.
>

Did you have difficulties with Pin34 not being the change disk pin? That's
what
I ran into when I tried this many many years ago...

Warner


> - John Singleton
>
> On 2/22/2022 11:20 AM, Rod Smallwood via
> cctalk wrote:
> > Hi All
> >
> >       I did find some RX50 images of
> > the MicroRSX distribution.
> >
> >      So I fired up my DEC Celebris FX.
> > It runs W95 and has a 3.5 inch floppy,
> > a real RX33 5.25 inch drive and a CD-R.
> >
> >    Its accessible on my network so
> > getting files onto it is not a problem.
> >
> >     So install putR.com , and transfer
> > the image files.
> >
> >     Huh! putR says the RX50 disk is
> > write protected. Its not and the drive
> > works normally with the disk from the
> > MS DOS prompt.
> >
> >      So much for putR writes RX50's on
> > RX33!
> >
> >     Rod
> >
> >
> >
> >
>