[Simh] Making tape/disk images

[Michael Richter]

Larry,

RSTS/E v9.6 is the guest operating system.  Using another SIMH simulation to
do this isn't really suitable.  (To begin with I haven't yet solved the
problem of getting the OpenVMS CD, but that's a different issue.)  I have
loose files--many of them--I want to get into the PDP-11without hand-typing
thousands of lines of MACRO-11 source.  Using a SIMH VAX to do this just
moves the typing problem around.  It would be nice if I could manually
construct a tape image on the host system instead of the simulated ones.

DECnetting it would be a bit of overkill, but I'll investigate if I can get
that working.

Another possibility would be ... is the specification for ANSI-labelled
tapes lying around somewhere?  I could hack together a tar-like program to
build those from outside of the DEC world if the spec is available
somewhere.

On 30 April 2010 01:58, Larry Baker <baker at usgs.gov> wrote:

> Michael,
>
> Which PDP-11 O/S?  Will it have DECnet access to another system (e.g., a
> SIMH VAX or linux-decnet)?
>
> OpenVMS system can create and mount a Files-11 Level 1 disk volume, which
> can be read/written by RSX-11M/M-Plus and IAS.  You could create a virtual
> Files-11 Level 1 volume with a SIMH VAX and then read it on a SIMH PDP-11.
>  The same SIMH VAX can create a SIMH virtual ANSI-labelled tape, which can
> be read/written by those O/S's, and RSTS, I assume (I have never used RSTS).
>  RT-11 disk volumes and DOS-11 tape volumes can be created with the OpenVMS
> EXCHANGE utility.  Any of these can be to virtual devices that can be
> cross-mounted on various SIMH machines, as long as the O/S supports the
> volume format.
>
> Of course, any systems that are DECnet'ed together can exchange files.  I
> use linux-decnet on a CentOS (Red Hat) file server to store OpenVMS Backup
> save sets that are created using remote file access (FAL) directly from the
> Backup command.  linux-decnet may not be available for very much longer --
> the people that supported the DECnet code in the Linux kernel can no longer
> keep up with the latest versions of the kernel.
>
> Larry Baker
> US Geological Survey
> 650-329-5608
> baker at usgs.gov
>
> On Apr 29, 2010, at 9:00 AM, simh-request at trailing-edge.com wrote:
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:54:50 +0800
> From: Michael Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Simh] Making tape/disk images
> To: simh <simh at trailing-edge.com>
> Message-ID:
> <o2mee970b291004282354xbfdea62dwe8e2b8389f27a5b3 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
> Is there an easy way to take a bunch of files and turn them into either a
> tape image or a disk image suited for attaching to a PDP-11 under SIMH?
>
>
>


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