At long last (three years since V1.28), new version of PUTR.COM is now
available from:
http://www.dbit.com/putr/
-or-
ftp://ftp.bit.com/pub/putr/
PUTR (Peripheral Utility Transfer Routines) is a file transfer utility which
runs under DOS (or in a DOS session) and can exchange files and/or disk images
with DEC file systems and/or media. It has a simple command language which
feels sort of like a stripped-down DOS command interpreter, but extended so
that files on PDP-8 and/or PDP-11 volumes may be accessed the same way as
native DOS files, using familiar commands like DIR, TYPE, COPY, DELETE, etc.
It also can perform more basic functions, like formating DEC-style floppies,
and copying container files to or from real disks.
It supports most of the major PDP-8 and PDP-11 file structures (although the
Files-11 support is currently read-only), and a bunch of minor ones too.
Volumes may be located in PC container files, on PDP-8/PDP-11 floppies (most
DEC formats, including SSSD 8" disks on a suitably equipped PC), raw SCSI
drives (including Zip and MO), TU58 cartridge tapes (connected through a COM
port), and raw CDs.
As always, MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DATA BEFORE USING PUTR ON IT. PUTR V2.0 has
many brand new features which have been tested by only one person, so you may
find ways to trip it up that I wouldn't have thought of, and in any case it
always makes sense to be unusually cautious when writing on a foreign file
system. You have been warned!
New features since previous version (V1.28, 06/11/1998):
* Reads Files-11 disks (RSX, IAS, P/OS).
* Reads TSS/8.24 disks.
* Reads/writes RSTS/E disks (RSTS support was read-only in V1.28).
* Reads/writes DOS/BATCH disks.
* Reads/writes XXDP+ disks.
* Reads/writes TSS/8 DECtapes in PUTR.SAV format (but not COPY.SAV format).
* Many new disk drive types (RAxx, RDxx, RMxx, RPxx).
* Image file sizes over usual 2 GB DOS limit (on FAT32 systems only), up to
(almost) 4 GB.
* Raw CD-ROMs may be accessed through MSCDEX (used to support SCSI CDs only),
on real DOS anyway (Windows 95/98 MSCDEX emulation is buggy).
* FORMAT /MSCP command now accepts BLOCKS, MB etc. keywords in file size (so
you don't need a calculator to convert blocks to bytes).
* Bugs fixed.
----------
Also, a new version of the "ST.EXE" SCSI tape utility is now at:
ftp://ftp.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/st.exe
-and-
ftp://ftp.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/st.txt
This is a simple utility for manipulating SCSI tapes, including DEC TZ30 and
TK50Z-GA tape drives, SCSI 9-track drives, and other tapes with 9-track-ish
semantics, like DLT or 4 mm DAT. It provides many of the same basic commands
as the UNIX "mt" utility (space N records in either direction, write a tape
mark, rewind, etc.), but also has IGET and IPUT commands which copy between a
real tape, and a tape image file in Ersatz-11's format (which is also used by
some other emulators).
Changes since V1.0:
* IGET and IPUT now take an optional record length parameter.
If this value is specified, then the image file is assumed *not* to contain
blocking information and all bytes are treated as data, at the specified
fixed record length (so it works like the UNIX "dd" utility).
* Source code is now available.
John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Thu Jun 14 2001 - 23:54:55 BST