[Simh] {Spam?} transferring files to and from v6 unix running in pdp11 emulator

[Anders Magnusson]

Den 2015-11-20 kl. 17:35, skrev Will Senn:
> Hi,
>
> I have searched and searched and have not found a satisfactory answer 
> to this question:
>
> How can I efficiently copy files from my host system to unix version 6 
> running in the pdp11 emulator and from unix 6 to my host system?
I usually do this by just tar'ing to/from a disk file, something like:

on pdp11: tar cf /dev/rxp0c myfiles
on host: tar xf simh-disk-file

Works both ways :-)

-- Ragge
>
> Most answers are shallow (copy/paste in terminal), or oriented toward 
> RTS or another environment than unix. So, I thought I would articulate 
> some of the ideas that I have tried and then ask some relevant 
> questions in the hopes that the someone will shed some light on the 
> problem, if not provide the answers.
>
> My system is one of:
> Debian 8 running on Intel Core 2 Quad Processor
> FreeBSD 10.2 running on same
> Macbook Pro running on Intel i7
> Various Linuxes running in Virtualbox 5.x
>
> Here are the methods I have found that work, sort of...
>
> Unix on PDP11 SimH to Host:
> 1. cat file and copy and paste from terminal
> This only works for pure text files and is not ideal
>
> 2. setup lpt in simh attached to printer.txt and cat file > /dev/lp0
> This only works for textual output, but includes form feed characters 
> and has formatting applied on its way to printer.txt
>
> 3. attach a blank tape tm0 to simh and dd if=myfile of=/dev/rmt0, then 
> on the host deblock the tape and dd if=tapefile of=myfile
> This seems to work, but I'm not sure it's ok to do this. It doesn't 
> appear to work as well in the other direction.
>
> Host to Unix v6 on PDP11 SimH:
> 1. copy a file into the copy buffer on the host and in the unix 
> terminal window, paste the text.
> Wow, this is tricky. It seems like you can only paste a few lines at a 
> time. It does strange things if your text contains special characters 
> like #, @, (, and so forth, which makes it pretty annoying as 
> practically every file of interest is c source or something. However, 
> with patience this does sort of work, but it's just for text files.
>
> 2. use Wolfgang's enblock - enblock < myfile > myfile.enb and then 
> attach to tm0 in simh and dd if=/dev/rmt0 of=myfile
> This is problematic, resulting in read errors and when diff'ed against 
> files on the simh unix instance, produces errors about incomplete 
> lines.  I am fairly sure that there is a good reason why it sort of 
> works, but not fully. i.e. The resulting file is 99% ok.
>
> Ideally, I would be able to tar up some files and convert the tar to a 
> storage format that unix v6 could then access and untar. One problem 
> is that v6 doesn't have tar. So, maybe ar could be used, or tp, or 
> whatever other command is available on v6. Regardless, the underlying 
> issue is that a file needs to be converted to a storage format that 
> unix v6 can handle. This leads to the questions.
>
> * I don't have a deep knowledge of storage formats, so it may be that 
> what I'm asking isn't feasible, if someone could share the why along 
> with the how or how not, that would be great.
>
> 1. Is there a simple, known, way to convert a single file, or multiple 
> files at once, on a *nix host to a tape image that can be read by simh 
> and unix v6? Perhaps something along the lines of - on the host, 
> convert_util myfile tape.simh; in simh, attach tm0 tape.simh; on unix, 
> dd if=/dev/mt0 of=myfile
>
> 2. Is it appropriate to read directly from a simulated tape device 
> using dd, or is dd going to read the tape marks (whatever those are) 
> as part of the file data?
>
> 3. Is the tape device the best to use for something like this, or 
> would another device be more straightforward?
>
> Grateful for any assistance,
>
> Will
>
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