System/36 whining and begging...

From: Bill Allen Jr <n8uhn_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue Jan 28 00:00:00 2003

Another and perhaps the simplest way to archive
sys34 or 36 pgms to diskette or cd is to use the 5250
pc emulator card or a clone card and the pc support
pgms on the pc and sys/36.

the emulator turns a pc xt or at into a 5251 terminal
and does the ebcdic/ascii conversion for pc to 36
printer files.

there are many different versions of the emulator
cards still out there some will even run in windows.

i even saw a pcmcia version for a laptop.

you can save disk or diskette - library's,files and
members on the pc from the 36 then transfer the
diskette to a windows machine if needed and put it on
cd.

useing the same process one could even send a copy of
sys/36 pgms via email.

the labels and owner id must match the pgm
distrubition diskettes label if copying a 8 diskette.

then a person could do the reverse to get the files
back on the 36.

i have the emulator card but have not played with the
copy to pc feature yet i got all this info from the pc
support 36 manual.

i am not sure how much the ibm standards differ from
the shugart or other standards.

ibm had the 1d and 2d diskettes and both had a low and
hi density format (format 1 or 2).

do keep us posted about which process you end up
useing
as i want to archive all of my fresh 8 in copies also.

i hope the non ascii data of sys3x data (ebcdic)
dosn't go down to the binary level.

Bill


Message: 17
Subject: System/36 whining and begging...
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
From: "Colin Eby" <ceby2_at_csc.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 13:44:09 -0500
Reply-To: cctech_at_classiccmp.org


Folks --

Thought I'd continue my unreasonable begging from the
previous note
back to
Bill. I'd like to take on a little project of creating
archival images
of
S/36 media. I've made a duplicate of most of what I
own on fresher 8"
stock. But I don't think that's a long term strategy
for avoiding the
inevitable ravages of media corruption. What I had in
mind was
something
like a 'dd' dump of each disk that could be reloaded
to fresh 8" media
when
required. I haven't given this too much thought so
bear with me.... I'm
working on a list of questions and puzzles to
accomplish this goal.The
first obvious problem is media to hardware
integration. If memory
serves, I
read somewhere that IBM used an oddball disk format
(Sellam, you might
know
this). 8" Shuggart drives come on the market from time
to time but,
would
they, using low level drivers, be able to make a
physical block by
block
copy of IBM S/36 disk data? The second problem is
hardware to hardware
integration. Has anyone had luck integrating a 8"
drive with a more
recent
machine? And what are the alternatives? I presume this
could be done on
DEC
hardware and then sent to any open platform over a
network connection.
Has
anyone gotten an 8" floppy operating under an Intel
based Linux host.
That
would seem the obvious media transfer station because
of the wide range
of
hardware compatibility. Once these first two steps are
done, any basic
disk
utility ought to make short work of creating binary
dumps.

An alternative approach might be to copy the disks
directly on the
System/36 host using platform native tools then
sending the file across
some form of network connection. The problem is I
haven't a clue how
that
would need to be done. I've never read any low level
API for S/36 as a
platform. IBM seems to have kept anything harware
layer proprietary.

Any and all thoughts welcome. Thanks,
-Colin

ceby2_at_csc.com
Senior Consultant,
National Performance Engineeering Practice
CSC Consulting.
Received on Tue Jan 28 2003 - 00:00:00 GMT