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

[Ken Hall]

Going by the size of the disk image files, I believe there’s a mix.  These are downloaded disk images I pulled (literally) years ago, DL0 seems to be RL01, while DL1 is RL02:

 

5235200 Dec 21  2011 rt11dat.dsk

5235200 Feb 12 12:18 rt11run.dsk

10475520 May 10  2006 rtv53_rl.dsk

 

The one I’m trying to initialize is rt11dat.dsk, it’s “empty”.  The other two read/access just fine, but I’ve never tried to initialize them

 

Startup cmd file is:

 

SET CPU 1M

ATTACH RL0 rt11run.dsk

ATTACH RL1 rtv53_rl.dsk

ATTACH RL2 rt11dat.dsk

SET RL2 BADBLOCK

BOOT RL0

 

I think that “BADBLOCK” option came from some suggestion way back, like I said, it’s been a long time since I touched this.

 

 

 

 

From: Simh <simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com> On Behalf Of Henk Gooijen
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2020 2:27 PM
To: simh at trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] Initializing disks (triggered by the "Something Strange with RK05" chain

 

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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