[Simh] Initializing disks (triggered by the "Something Strange with RK05" chain

[Henk Gooijen]

See below …

Van: Ken Hall<mailto:kjhall55 at gmail.com>
Verzonden: woensdag 12 februari 2020 18:30
Aan: simh at trailing-edge.com<mailto:simh at trailing-edge.com>
Onderwerp: [Simh] Initializing disks (triggered by the "Something Strange with RK05" chain

I’ve played with RT11 on and off over the years, but the one thing I’ve never been able to do is properly initialize an empty disk.  If I create a DL2: for example, and try to run initialize on it, I get back:

.dir dl2:
?DIR-F-Error reading directory

.init dl2:
DL2:/Initialize; Are you sure? YES
?DUP-F-Size function failed

This seems similar to the issues Henk Gooijen has been having with RK05’s, and it’s been so long since I’ve dealt with the real hardware I don’t recall exactly how this is supposed to work, but it seems to me it should just “work”.

Has anyone found a solution to this?


I can check that tomorrow. Maybe that is the reason you can download
an empty but initialized RL02 image (zipped) from DBIT.
If RT11 cannot figure out the size (5 MB or 10 MB / RL01 or RL02), maybe
the command (in SIMH) .SET RL0 RL02 helps. You specify that RL0 is an
RL02. Likewise, you can say .SET RL0 RL01. On a real PDP-11 with RL drives
the system will recognize what type RL01 or RL02 is connected/loaded.
You can have a mix of RL01 and RL02 drives on one RL11 controller.
The .SET RLx RL01 (or RL02) command is not of RT11, but of SIMH. Give it a try 😊

For the write protect command for the RK drives, this is probably also a
SIMH command. .SET RK0 WRITEENABLE *is* in SIMH (as is .SET RK0 LOCKED).

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