RX01 Floppies

Johnny Billquist bqt at update.uu.se
Sat Nov 22 00:17:50 CST 2014


On 2014-11-21 22:01, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 11/21/2014 09:21 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
>>
>> One point to mention (or clarify) is that for DEC, the FORMAT
>> operation did NOT include writing the file structure.  For the PC,
>> the FORMAT command does BOTH an LLF as well as writing
>> an initial root file structure (FAT16??) on the floppy media.  But
>> for DEC hardware with both the RX01 and the RX02, writing
>> the file structure made use of the INITIALIZE command (at least
>> under RT-11 and something similar under RSTS/E and RSX-11).
>> So with DEC PDP-11 operating systems which used 8" floppy
>> media, the user understood very clearly the difference between
>> the FORMAT and INITIALIZE commands and what each one
>> did.
>
> Sort of like Unix mkfs?

Correct.

And to make yet another silly point. FORMAT on PCs often does not 
actually do a low level format, but actually only creates a file system.

	Johnny



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