Formatting disk on rt11

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Fri Jun 4 20:18:29 1999

>Allison J Parent wrote:

> <How can I format a rd54 disk on a rt11 5.3 ?
> You cannot unless you write your own utility.

Jerome Fine replies:

For novice PDP-11 folk, this part is incorrect, as Allison
surely knows, but probably just answered too quickly.
Technically, I suppose Allison is correct, but I have
never heard of anyone writing their own version of ZRQC??

> <(disk & floppy are on RQDX3 controller)
> You need the XXDP diag for that.

As Tim said earlier, the utility that is used is ZRQC??

> <.FORMAT DU0:
> <
> <i get "device not supported, ...)
> From RT-11 you can INIT (setup directories) the disk and an RD54 to be
> useable complely will have to be partitioned (LD) as Rt-11 has a 32mb
> limit and rd54 is 159mb.

Just a note of clarification (again, Allison this is not a flame that you used LD,
but just correcting your "spelling" - anyone who knows realizes and anyone
who doesn't understand - it doesn't matter). Allison was referring to the
SET DUn: UNIT=u, PART=p
commands which are done right within the DU (MSCP) device driver.
Remember that if DU is the resident device driver, the SET commands
don't take effect until after a boot. Plus, if you do a:
"SHOW DEV:DU"
command, the old values will be shown if the DU is LOADed or is
the resident device driver (permanently LOADed).

In V5.3 of RT-11 up to V5.7 of RT-11, for a partition to be hardware
bootable, the "n" and "u" have to be the same and the "p" has to be zero.
Exceptions are allowed, but are complicated to explain. Also,
DEC distributed MSCP device drivers did not allow a software boot
of a partition when "p" was non-zero (changed in V5.6 of RT-11).
Other restrictions also apply to DEC distributed MSCP device drivers
(patches are available to remove most restrictions).

Anyone who is really interested, please ask for additional directions.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Fri Jun 04 1999 - 20:18:29 BST