scott@memex.co.uk (Scott Williamson) (09/11/89)
Situation: PDP11/23+ running RSTS/E 7.2, 2 RL02 drives. In order to offload some data from the above system, I am trying to install a 1/2 inch tape drive. I have a Q-bus tape controller and the drive itself. After installing it into the system and replying "HARDWR" to the "OPTION:" prompt, the device is listed as a TS11 (I think, it was a couple of months ago when I tried it). Unfortunately, when RSTS is running I can find no way of accessing the tape using a variety of device names. Note that I have very little knowledge of RSTS, and do NOT have access to the RSTS distribution tapes (the system does not belong to me and was installed many years ago by a company which no longer supports it). Am I out of luck? Any pointers would be received gratefully. Scott Williamson scott@memex.co.uk
alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera) (09/15/89)
In article <258@memex.co.uk> scott@memex.co.uk (Scott Williamson) writes: >Situation: PDP11/23+ running RSTS/E 7.2, 2 RL02 drives. > >In order to offload some data from the above system, I am >trying to install a 1/2 inch tape drive. I have a Q-bus tape >controller and the drive itself. After installing it into the system >and replying "HARDWR" to the "OPTION:" prompt, the device is listed as >a TS11 (I think, it was a couple of months ago when I tried it). >Unfortunately, when RSTS is running I can find no way of accessing the >tape using a variety of device names. > Hi, sounds like you don't have the TS11 driver installed to your monitor SIL. INIT.SYS (the boot code detecting your TS11 hardware) is independent from the actual system 'kernel' (the monitor). If the monitor doesn't have the driver included, it disables the hardware even if it is mounted and set up correctly and is detected by INIT.SYS. Running SYSGEN (with the current monitor or the SYSGEN monitor) and answe- ring '1' to the 'TS11 tapes ?' question should solve your problem. I don't really know what the procedure is to 'SYSGEN' at V7.2, but it should be something like that. We never used V7.2, (we are running 9.4), so this may not help you very much. Sorry then. Anyway, if you don't plan to run the tape permanentely under timesharing, you could use the SYSGEN monitor temporarly to copy the files (SYSGEN knows of all tapes, at least one drive per type). Just reply 'START SYSGEN' instead of <CR> to the 'START timesharing ? <YES>' prompt. There could come up some error messages then during system startup, because the SYSGEN monitor may not support all the options installed to the every day one. Ignore this messages if they aren't fatal. The above method saves you from spending several hours for running/retrying SYSGEN, because, as I've heard, SYSGEN is not a trivial task under pre-V8 versions of RSTS, so maybe you should prefer this temporary solution if you are not that familiar with the software. Hope, this helps a bit. Good luck -thomas. -- Thomas Cervera | UUCP: alderaan@tubopal.UUCP SysMan RKOpdp (RSTS/E) | ...!unido!tub!opal!alderaan (Europe) D-1000 Berlin 30 | ...!pyramid!tub!opal!alderaan (World) Motzstrasze 14 | BITNET: alderaan%tubopal@DB0TUI11.BITNET (saves $$$)
herbert@gr8ful.enet.dec.com (Kevin Paul Herbert) (09/15/89)
The on-line device name for TS-11 classs tapes is MS. If this is unit zero, try accessing MS0:. If the monitor was built to support TS-class tapes, it'll work, otherwise you'll get an error (?Not a valid device, I think). You'd need to re-build your monitor to add this support, which you'd need a distribution kit to do. Alternatively, if you just want to use this for backing up your system, you could use off-line SAVRES, which will support all devices in your configuration. Again, the device name will be MS0. Kevin --- Does your corporation know you're reading this? Do you care? ---