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Imaging RX01/02 disks on a Linux laptop.

jdreesen

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
414
Location
Switzerland
Not possible ? Yes, it is, if you have an older laptop with a real printerport, a DSD440 drive and a bit of TTL circuitry between the printerport and the DSD440.

pp_dsd.jpg

While not yet ready for primetime, maybe someone may want to look if the following binary image makes sense ?

ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/DSD/disk.img

( RX01, 77 tracks of 24 sectors of 128 bytes each )
 
As Al correctly said : it only works if you have a DSD440 drive. That handles the RX02 magic. My TTL interface is the basically a copy of the PDP8 /Omnibus to DSD440 interface, reduced to the max.

Modula 2 floppies are in excellent condition, that should not be no problerm. Still seem to have some unexplaind issues in my controller though...

Writing ? maybe, the interface should handle it, it should be a firmware issue only.
 
Not possible ? Yes, it is, if you have an older laptop with a real printerport, a DSD440 drive and a bit of TTL circuitry between the printerport and the DSD440.

View attachment 1242988

While not yet ready for primetime, maybe someone may want to look if the following binary image makes sense ?

ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/DSD/disk.img

( RX01, 77 tracks of 24 sectors of 128 bytes each )
RX01 is 77 tracks of 26 sectors of 128 bytes for 256,256 bytes total
RX02 is 77 tracks of 26 sectors of 256 bytes for 512,512 bytes total

so you are missing two sectors per track it appears
 
RX01 is 77 tracks of 26 sectors of 128 bytes for 256,256 bytes total
RX02 is 77 tracks of 26 sectors of 256 bytes for 512,512 bytes total

so you are missing two sectors per track it appears
OOps, you are right of course...
I corrected & updatet the binary dump on my FTP site.
If someone could check if that image makes sense ? It is a RX01 disk with a RM03 diagnostic program from DEC (DXDP+32)
I have no running PDP11 at the moment...
 
OOps, you are right of course...
I corrected & updatet the binary dump on my FTP site.
If someone could check if that image makes sense ? It is a RX01 disk with a RM03 diagnostic program from DEC (DXDP+32)
I have no running PDP11 at the moment...
Well if it is XXDP filesystem I should be able to read it.
But I can't access your ftp site, wants a username and password.
 
If someone could check if that image makes sense ?
Code:
ENTRY# FILNAM.EXT        DATE          LENGTH  START   VERSION

    1  HSAAA0.SYS    19-NOV-1979         24    000050
    2  HUDIA0.SYS    19-NOV-1979          6    000100
    3  HDDXA0.SYS    19-NOV-1979          3    000106
    4  HELP  .TXT    19-NOV-1979         26    000111
    5  HMDXA0.SYS    19-NOV-1979         17    000143
    6  ZRMAC0.BIC    19-NOV-1979         38    000164
    7  ZRMBB0.BIC    19-NOV-1979         49    000232
    8  ZRMCB2.BIC    19-NOV-1979         76    000313
    9  ZRMDC0.BIN    19-NOV-1979         72    000427
   10  ZRMEC0.BIC    19-NOV-1979         76    000537

FREE BLOCKS: 74
 
I have a greaseweasel and drives and the parts to build the power supply but I just need to put it all together.
 
Seems to work reliably now.... Should I put in the extra effort for .IMD compatibility, or just keep straightbinary dumps ?

Interface schematic appended...
 

Attachments

  • LPT2DSD.pdf
    106.8 KB · Views: 19
depends on how you want to deal with the situation of bad blocks.
in the .imd case, at least you have the information that there is a bad block, and where it was
it also has simple space compression, though that isn't a big deal
 
Seems to work reliably now.... Should I put in the extra effort for .IMD compatibility, or just keep straightbinary dumps ?

Interface schematic appended...
Guess that depends on who would be using them.
RX01/RX02 direct images would be useful for mounting in SIMH or using with the RX02 emulator, for example.
I really don't know what use .IMD files would be; never used them. Is there a translator program to/from an RX direct image file?
 
I'm attempting access with "anonymous" and my email address as password. I get:
Timeout detected. (control connection)
Connection failed.

I have also tried enter and "anonymous" as password with the same result.

Update: Seems to be a Windoze problem. When I try from Linux (even WSL Linux), it seems to be working.

Vince
 
Last edited:
For completeness sake : here is the final schematic for the LPT <-> DSD440 interface, and the Linux driver software I used to create these images.
 

Attachments

  • dsd.c.txt
    8.4 KB · Views: 16
  • RX02_rdr.pdf
    106.8 KB · Views: 15
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