[Simh] Ts11 on pdp11

[Paul Koning]

> On Sep 16, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Gene Irwin <girwin1215 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Very useful info. Thanks!
> 
> I was using the ts to install rsts 10.1 because others said they could not with other drives but I tried with te16 drives it worked so now I can use more than one drive again.

Since all magtapes take a .TAP file, it doesn't really matter what type of drive you use.  (I'm ignoring 7 track tapes here...)  You can use whatever type of drive you like that the OS you're using supports.

For RSTS, that means TU10, TU16, TS11, or TMSCP (TK50) depending on version (TMSCP appeared around V9 if I remember right).  They should all just work.

There's one additional consideration: if you need to boot the tape (for an installation tape, for example), you have to use the right type of controller for the bootstrap in question.  For a while, RSTS came with 800 and 1600 BPI distribution tapes.  You can put an 800 BPI tape on TU10 or TU16, but not TS11.  You can put a 1600 BPI tape on TU16 or TS11, but not TU10.  The reason is that the bootstraps are multilingual, but only for the types of tape drive that supported the density in question.  As of V9.1, though, RSTS got a universal bootstrap: a tape from that release or later will boot on any tape drive RSTS supports.  There were still multiple physical release tapes because of the need to record several 1/2 inch densities plus TK50 cartridge, but the content is the same for all.

	paul