[Simh] 8" Floppy disk image getting HALT error

[Tom Morris]

In addition to everything mentioned by everyone else, you might want to
take into account the type of "report" that you saw. If it's more a
document type report than a line printer listing report, you might have a
diskette from a DEC WPS-8 word processing system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS-8

Tom

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Walker Sampson <Walker.Sampson at colorado.edu
> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
>
>
> Let me preface this by saying that I’m unfamiliar with the original PDP
> machines. I work as a digital archivist and have received 8” floppy disks
> from which I need to recover data.
>
>
>
> I believe I have recovered at least partial data from these disks; I’ve
> connected a Y-E Data 8” floppy drive to a KryoFlux floppy disk controller
> and gotten positive sector results setting the format to a DEC RX02 sector
> image. When I investigate the resulting disk image in a hex editor, I am
> seeing clearly a report document, so I don’t believe I have a false
> positive.
>
>
>
> Outside of observing in a hex editor however, I don’t know how to access
> the disk or its contents. Using SIMH, I haven’t gotten the virtual machine
> to boot the floppy disk image.
>
>
>
> Commands “AT RK01 <disk_image>” and then “BOOT RK01” give me a “HALT
> instruction, PC: 000002 (HALT)” message for the PDP-11 program. The PDP-8
> stalls indefinitely and the PDP-10 outputs “Non-existent device” as well.
>
>
>
> I can’t go back to the donors and ask what machines these 8” floppies were
> used with, so I’m not sure how to begin troubleshooting.
>
>
>
> Any advice in that area is much appreciated!
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Walker
>
>
>
>
>
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