On 2015-09-21 18:34, Paul Koning wrote:
On Sep 21, 2015, at 12:28 PM, Jay Jaeger <cu...@charter.net> wrote:
On 9/21/2015 4:30 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2015-09-21 02:11, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Note that the RX50 was the same. DEC finally changed
their marketing policy with the RX33 drive which used the
same 3.5" HD floppy media as the PC. It was actually
possible to FORMAT those floppies under RT-11.
No, DEC actually did support users formatting RX50 floppies on their
own, but only on the Rainbow.
Johnny
There was also a standalone PDP-11 diagnostic program available that
could do it.
For RX50? On standard PDP11s, those used an MSCP controller, which means the
controller would have to do it. Did it? The only MSCP controller I remember
that did formatting was the UDA50.
For Unibus, the controller would be the RUX50. MSCP, as you say. And I
suspect that one didn't do formatting.
For Qbus, it would be the RQDX, which was MSCP, and did both the RD
disks and RX50. I'm not sure, but I think the RQDX could perform some
sort of low level formatting for the RD anyway. Not sure what it would
say if you pointed it at the RX...
I suppose you could on a Pro, since that had its own particularly disgusting
junk controller. But I haven't seen RX50 formatting there. My impression was
that they came factory formatted, with the DEC-specific 10 sector per track
format.
Ugh! The PRO controller probably was weird enough to not allow you, even
though as far as I understand, it was also way more primitive than MSCP.
Johnny
