Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 6/17/20 2:30 AM, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk wrote:

On Wed, 2020-06-17 10:29:08 +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk 
 wrote:

On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via cctalk 
 wrote:

Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.


active discussion and coding going on here
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?75527-TU58-dump-tool/page4

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk]

On Wed, 2020-06-17 10:29:08 +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk 
 wrote:
> On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> > Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
> > machine? I have the drive of course.
> 
> I had a look at the TU58 documentation, it doesn't seem too hard to
> wire it up as a BUSE or NBD block device, though it'll be slow by
> today's standards. If I ever get my hands on a drive and a few tapes
> (at least one with known content!), I'll give it a try.

As the tapes are so small, it would probably even make sense to just
cache the whole tape upon starting the block device simulation and
just write to the tape as needed.

  Now, as I'm curious about it, I need such a drive. :)

MfG, JBG

-- 

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk]

On Wed, 2020-06-10 21:06:40 +0200, Mattis Lind via cctalk 
 wrote:
> Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
> machine? I have the drive of course.

I had a look at the TU58 documentation, it doesn't seem too hard to
wire it up as a BUSE or NBD block device, though it'll be slow by
today's standards. If I ever get my hands on a drive and a few tapes
(at least one with known content!), I'll give it a try.

MfG, JBG

-- 

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk]

On Thu, 2020-06-11 10:55:02 -0600, Eric Smith via cctalk 
 wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 AM Jan-Benedict Glaw  wrote:
> > I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or BUSE[2] (which seems to
> > hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
> > avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
> > pretty straight forward.
> 
> Yes, that could certainly be done, but it's a fair bit more work than just
> writing a tape dump program.

I'm not sure... But I guess it's quite pointless to attempt to work on
something like this without being able to test it with actual
hardware. :-(

  Just for the fun of it, I just checked eBay for drives, but there's
nothing viable around right now.  Maybe I'll come back to it at some
later time?

MfG, JBG

-- 

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux? (Mattis Lind)

[John Klos via cctalk]

Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.

There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.


It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.

I have approximately 80  11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
need reading.


Just a thought - if the TU58 connects via serial, then what about running 
SIMH and giving it a serial device which is connected to the TU58? That 
could fix both problems - how to talk to the device, and how to deal with 
the data on the tapes.


John

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 8:18 AM Jan-Benedict Glaw  wrote:

> I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or BUSE[2] (which seems to
> hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
> avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
> pretty straight forward.
>

Yes, that could certainly be done, but it's a fair bit more work than just
writing a tape dump program.

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk]

On Wed, 2020-06-10 16:04:38 -0600, Eric Smith via cctalk 
 wrote:
[...]
> A real TU58 drive hooked up to a system running Linux does not look
> anything like a block device. Linux has no idea what it is; it's just
> something hooked up to a serial port. To read tape blocks, it would be up
> to a user space program to send the TU58 the right MRSP commands and
> interpret the responses.

I don't have a TU58, but using nbdkit[1] or BUSE[2] (which seems to
hook up as a NBD device as well) it should be quite easy to make it
avaliable as a block device. For reading and writing, this should be
pretty straight forward.

  Another route might be to use it as an actual tape device. ISTR that
these offer a few extra ioctls which might be interesting to have to
also support software that expects to talk to actual tapes. Both ways
would have their PROs and CONs... I'd probably go the nbdkit route,
but .. no hardware. ^^

MfG, JBG
[1] https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit
[2] https://github.com/acozzette/BUSE
-- 

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jun 10, 2020, at 5:33 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On 06/10/2020 02:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
>> Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
>> machine? I have the drive of course.
>> 
>> There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
>> be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
>> there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
>> 
> Wait, isn't a TU58 actually connected by plain serial port?  That should be 
> fairly easy to write a
> dump program for.
> 
> Jon

Yes, it connects to a serial port.  But on that serial port it speaks some sort 
of protocol that implements a block access service.  So what you actually have 
to do is implement that protocol.  I have never looked at it (never wanted to 
touch a TU58), but it's been done, so there's probably code that can be used.  
With that, the next step is to tie it to an implementation of the RT11 file 
system, which is a simple matter.

paul

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 3:30 PM John Forecast via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> You could try my “fsio” utility  from the SIMH simtools repository:
> 

I originally wrote it to read/write SIMH disk images in various formats
> (including RT11). I’ve
> never tried it with a tape drive but if it looks like a block device it
> should work.
>

I get a 404 when I click on that link. I think you may have meant:
https://github.com/simh/simtools/tree/master/converters/fsio
That looks like it would be useful to me for a lot of other things, but
probably not for reading from actual TU58 drives.

A real TU58 drive hooked up to a system running Linux does not look
anything like a block device. Linux has no idea what it is; it's just
something hooked up to a serial port. To read tape blocks, it would be up
to a user space program to send the TU58 the right MRSP commands and
interpret the responses.

There are a number of programs that solve the opposite problem, and make a
PC pretend to be a TU58, but those don't help when what you want to do is
talk to an actual TU58. I haven't seen a program for that. Perhaps some
code from the NetBSD kernel could be useful, but I'm guessing that dealing
with that would be more trouble than just writing a new program.

There are some undocumented MRSP commands, but the documented commands
should be sufficient to read a tape.

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 06/10/2020 02:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:

Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.

There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.



Wait, isn't a TU58 actually connected by plain serial port?  
That should be fairly easy to write a

dump program for.

Jon

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[John Forecast via cctalk]

On Jun 10, 2020, at 3:06 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk  
wrote:
> 
> Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
> machine? I have the drive of course.
> 

> There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
> be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
> there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.
> 

You could try my “fsio” utility  from the SIMH simtools repository:



I originally wrote it to read/write SIMH disk images in various formats 
(including RT11). I’ve
never tried it with a tape drive but if it looks like a block device it should 
work.

   John.

> 
> It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
> Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
> already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.
> 
> I have approximately 80  11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
> need reading.
> 
> /Mattis

TU58 dump tool on Linux?

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.

There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.


It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.

I have approximately 80  11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
need reading.

/Mattis