[TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's

[Don North]

On 10/30/2016 5:47 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>      > From: Don North <north at alum.mit.edu>
>
>      > .. the hardware bootstrap reads track 1 sectors 1, 3, 5, 7
>
> Ah, thanks for that. Starting to look at the code, I had missed the
> interleave.
>
> So does DEC do anything with track 0, or is it always just empty?
>
> 	Noel
>
Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software, block zero of the device (boot block)
starts at track 1 sector 1. Track 0 is not even accessible thru the standard 
drivers.

Applies to both PDP-11 (eg, XXDP, RT11) and PDP-8 (OS8).

Maybe specific software that reads/writes disks in IBM exchange mode accesses
track 0, but I've never used such s/w and am only guessing.