CD-ROM on RT-11?

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Tue Mar 12 15:46:55 2002

> While waiting and hoping for my SCSI controller, I was curious if
> anyone knows if its possible to burn a CD-ROM of the OS and my program, to
> boot my 11/23 from a SCSI CD-ROM. I would assume the controller/OS would
> just see this as a regular disk. The only problem I can think of would be
> if something tried to write to the disk, which obviously wouldn't work.
> My program doesn't write any files to the disk. As far as I can tell, the
> OS doesn't either. Has anyone ever tried this?
>
> I was mainly thinking CD-ROM would be nice option because if the
> drive fails, the data is unaffected, and its easy and inexpensive to copy
> CDs.

Yes, it is possible. The real trick is finding a SCSI CD-ROM that will work
with your SCSI Adapter! In my case I'm using a Viking QDT with a DEC RRD-42
drive (I think that's the right drive, it's the one that uses standard
caddies). I feel a lot safer being able to restore from CD's rather than
old flakey TK50's. Basically you just burn a disk image of a HD that's been
built on that controller to a CD-R. I've done this for RT-11, RSX-11M, and
RSX-11M+. Of the three RT-11 complains the least about being on CD. The
two RSX's I tried *really* don't like it, but appear to come up enough that
I should be able to copy them to a real HD.

                Zane
Received on Tue Mar 12 2002 - 15:46:55 GMT