tom@astro.as.arizona.edu (Thomas J. Trebisky) (02/13/91)
I tried mailing this, but herbert@flp.uucp didn't cut it. I have a public domain thing called RX50DRVR that I use with the 1.2 Meg drive on my AT to read (and write) the RX50 floppies from my rainbow. Works great (and especially handy because the AT is on the net). I don't know if the Pro350 RX50 drives are compatible, but I bet they are. This driver will read and write the RX50 floppies fine, but you must format them on your DEC machine. I got this anonymous FTP from somewhere ... lemmee see now. OK, I got it from drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu 128.2.232.11 on the internet. cd [anonymous.info-dec-micro] they even had the source, rx50src.zip. Of course you need the usual unzip tools to unpack the stuff (and of course you should set binary before the retrieve) let me know if you have any trouble. BTW - it isn't public domain software if the source code isn't distributed. Tom Trebisky ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu (Internet) Steward Observatory University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona -- Tom Trebisky ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu (Internet) Steward Observatory University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona
steve@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Steve Mitchell) (02/13/91)
tom@astro.as.arizona.edu (Thomas J. Trebisky) writes: >I tried mailing this, but herbert@flp.uucp didn't cut it. >I have a public domain thing called RX50DRVR that I use with the 1.2 Meg >drive on my AT to read (and write) the RX50 floppies from my rainbow. >Works great (and especially handy because the AT is on the net). >I don't know if the Pro350 RX50 drives are compatible, but I bet they are. Well, it will probably _read_ a Pro350 floppy, but the AT won't know what to do with it. The physical format (tracks and sectors) is the same (in fact, since DEC saw fit not to provide formatting software with P/OS lots of us Pro300 users format our floppies on Rainbows, or on AT's with suitable foreign-format software), but the logical format (placement and structure of the directory, etc) is totally different. Rather than being based on the MS-DOS filesystem with boot sectors, FATs, etc, it uses the Files-11 Level 1 format which was introduced by DEC with the RSX-11 operating system family and used in slightly modified form (Level 2) by VMS. This is a much more sophisticated file system designed for REAL computers ;{) >-- > Tom Trebisky ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu (Internet) > Steward Observatory University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona -- - Steve Mitchell steve@cps.altadena.ca.us grian!steve@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov ames!elroy!grian!steve "God is licht, an in him there is nae mirkness ava." -- 1 John 1:5