DECMate II Archive Project

[bolex]

I was given a few box sets of DECMate II manuals and software today. These box sets have about 13 disks between all of them. These don't exist on the Internet Archive, but maybe they exists somewhere else. If you think these exists somewhere else, let me know.

My plan is to get these scanned and the floppy disks archived this weekend and uploaded to archive.org.

Should I upload each box set as a single archive or should I split each manual and disk out to it's own download? What is the best format for the disk images? I was just going to do IMD, but maybe there is a more appropriate disk image format I should use.

 

[djg]

I would do it so each manual can be separately downloaded. I think IMD is fine.

I've seen a few WPS manuals online but I don't think many of yours have been scanned. The ones I scanned are earlier.

 

[tradde]

I received a bunch of these Decmate II boxes just like these with mine. I'll have to post pictures to see if they are not available online. I have no way to scan though.
I also have some Rainbow 100 boxes similar to these. Likely with disks. And a box full of other disks for both the Decmate, Rainbow, and Pro-350.

 

[BitWiz]

I have an original set of WPS/8 V2.1 Floppys. I can image and you can add then to your archive

 

[tradde]

These are the boxes I have. Separate disks will have to be done in batches as there are so many. Maybe just provide the titles to see if any are not available?

 

[bolex]

I only got around to scanning 4 of the manuals.

The LQP03 Printer Programmer Reference Manual
The DECmate II Word Processing Quick Lookup Guide
The DECmate II Users Guide, Volume 1 - Basic Word Processing
The DECmate II Users Guide, Volume 2 - Advanced Word Processing

I started looking at the disks and they physically look great, but the disk dumps are horrible. I'm not sure if I'll be able to archive the disks. I'll get the rest of the manuals scanned this week sometime.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Would it be inaccurate to say that the DM II is like the DM I but with 5.25" (RX50) instead of 8" (RX01) drives? The data on the disks I've seen certainly bears that out. Instead of using 3x128 byte sectors to represent 256 words, the DM II uses 512 byte sectors, to store 256 12-bit words.

Or so I've found. The WPS internals appear to be the same.

 

[tradde]

How are the disk dumps horrible? What does one have to do to dump these RX50s?

 

[Chuck(G)]

How are the disk dumps horrible? What does one have to do to dump these RX50s?

They can be imaged on a 1.2M 5.25" drive under DOS using IMD.

 

[bolex]

How are the disk dumps horrible? What does one have to do to dump these RX50s?

I just had a ton of read errors. I was thinking about it this morning and I tried another 96tpi disk that I know is good and was getting the same kind of read errors. I'll switch out my 96tpi drive and try again. I bet that will resolve the issue.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've processed a lot of DEC-corporate origin media and found it to be pretty reliable, unless it was contaminated.

 

[bolex]

I swapped out the drive with a different 80 track drive and those initial disks all look really good now. Here are the System Test disk and the System Overview disk (I think it's a tour of the system). I'll get these up on the internet archive this week along with the others.

 

[bolex]

I added all the remaining scanned documents and disk images to archive.org. It's a bit messy, but I'll go back in and edit the descriptions a bit better.

Disks:
DECmate II System Test Diskette
DECmate II System Overview Diskette
DECmate II Introduction to WPS
DECmate II Introduction to WPS SORT
DECmate II Introduction to WPS LIST PROCESSING
DECmate II Introduction to WPS MATH
DECmate II Introduction to WPS COMMUNICATIONS
DECmate II Advanced WPS Training

Documents
DECmate II installation Guide
DECmate II Owners Manual
DECmate II Word Processing Using SORT
DECmate II Word Processing Using LIST PROCESSING
DECmate II Word Processing Using MATH
DECmate II Word Processing Using COMMUNICATIONS
The DECmate II Word Processing Quick Lookup Guide
The DECmate II Users Guide, Volume 1 - Basic Word Processing
The DECmate II Users Guide, Volume 2 - Advanced Word Processing
The LQP03 Printer Programmer Reference Manual

 

[bolex]

These are the boxes I have. Separate disks will have to be done in batches as there are so many. Maybe just provide the titles to see if any are not available?

Hey Tradde! I'd be glad to scan and archive the disk sets on anything DECmate II that you have that's missing. I think the WPS and CP/M software would be great to archive.