[Simh] Looking for clues: MAKECD; CDROM format?

[Clem Cole]

On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 5:47 PM, Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org> wrote:

>  It might be Ultrix CDFS - anyone know that format/a linux tool?


This question is causing some random bits in my memory FS to slowly be
retrieved but have not been active for 20+ years I fear.   ;-)

My memory is that Ultrix CDFS was strange for a UNIX FS or CDs and some of
what you describe sounds about right.  IIRC Ultrix used 512 bytes for the
block size, when "normal" CDs used 1024.  We had a funky Unix system in ZK
which we used to write the CD masters for ultrix and VMS - I want to stay
it named Young something (youngbloods so some such - I've forgotten).
Again, Armando may remember - but I think Fed Cantor did hte interfacing,

I remember, you had to have very special media to write them, in those days
since the CD writers were not forgiving.   It took a source media created a
CD image on a raw disk first with whatever parameters you were using for
the CD like block size, then did a bit map copy from the disk to the CD and
IIRC correctly we used an funky ANSI tape program to write the masters.

Standard ISO CD were's 1024 bytes, but could not handle Unix or VMS style
file attributes.  So Ultrix did not use the ISO format, as folk has support
for for full case, extended file attribute etc of UFS etc, i.e it was
before rockridge extensions were standardized for ISO.   By the time of
Tru64, Rockridge was standardized for the Unix community (and ISO) and I
think that was some how used, but I pretty sure Ultrix did not.

But I do think the DEC tools of time to write most CD's were based on
Ultrix which interfaced to the box in ZK.   I looked for some docs on the
ultrix format, I had at one time, but can not find them.  I'll keep
looking, but I fear I lost much of that in the flood in my old condo about
25 years ago.   I'm going to have dinner with another pack rat tomorrow
night and I will ask him if he thinks still has any of the Ultrix docs
stuffed away.  If I can find it, I'll try get it scanned and pass it on.

Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/pipermail/simh/attachments/20150510/80f5161b/attachment-0001.html>