I thought about that, but right now the reader-run signal on the PDP-12 isn't working correctly so there is no hardware flow control. On the PDP-9 the source files are not just text, they are an editor file. I didn't know if that was also true with the PDP-8.
The problem that I've seen is that when EDIT decides to dump a block to disk, it drops input
characters.
I have KERMIT12 on the PDP-12 and a version of KERMIT on my PC, but I haven't been able to figure out how to transfer files with it.
I've never gotten KERMIT12 to do anything useful.
I have never heard of that tool. I will give it a try.
I hope you like it. The doc directory has the "man pages equivalents". You will need to install Perl to run the various tools.
Basically, if you've got an image "foofoo.dsk" with an RK05 of SerialDisk image, then
$ os8xplode foofoo.dsk
will create idrectories "foofoo.0" and "foofoo.1" with exploded copies of the files from the two OS/8 file-systems. It will also create a bunch of files in there whose first character is ".", which contain the various reserved areas of the volume, and a file called "foofoo.xml", which has the information to rebuild "foofoo.dsk" from the other various files.
You can update these directories as you like, using host tools like editors, makefiles, source control, etc. Most of the files should be simple ASCII, and not a problem. Output from the cross assembler needs to be turned into something suitable for OS/8 with a command like
$ bin2bn sdsksy.bin >sdsksy.bn
which basically pads it out to a multiple of an OS/8 block so that it can pass as binary for mkdsk below.
The command
$ os8implode foofoo
will enumerate "foofoo.0" and "foofoo.1", looking for the reserved bits and files following the 6.2 rules for an OS/8 file name. It will create "foofoo.xml+", with instructions on how to assemble the new volume, including any changes you've made. You'll need to repeat this step every time the disk directory has changed -- you want to add, delete, or lengthen a file.
Now the command
$ mkdsk foofoo.xml+
will read the instructions created above, and create "foofoo.new", an updated version of "foofoo.dsk".
If you set up SerialDisk's server to use "foofoo.new" as the boot media, you can easily pass things to the PDP-8. Passing them back would involve running os8xplode on "foofoo.new", then copying stuff from "foofoo.new.0" or "foofoo.new.1" back to the corresponding "foofoo" directory.
This also works well with SIMH, provided you can fire up a connection between the server and the locally running SIMH. There are some suitable example "pdp8.ini" files in the SerialDisk distro.
Obviously, the name "foofoo" above can be whatever you want it to be.
Vince