"So a 9-track open-reel SCSI drive should work just as well as a DDS, DLT, SLT drive."
Oh wow. i had not even considered that. I have a pdp 11 with a beast of a 9 track tape drive in is's own rack, that would be interesting if i could get a scsi tape drive for the vax and use some big tapes to move data between the two. On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Johnny Billquist <b...@update.uu.se> wrote: > On 2015-12-08 17:02, Paul Koning wrote: > >> >> >> On 2015-12-07 20:36, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: >> >>> On 7 December 2015 at 14:29, Johnny Billquist <b...@update.uu.se> wrote: >>> >>>> I think all (modern PDP-11) OSes can install from TMSCP tapes. RSTS/E is >>>> more picky than some others, though, if I remember right... >>>> >>>> Yes, RSTS/E installs from TMSCP just fine (as can RSX-11/M+); I know >>> that in simh you can bring up Ultrix-11 3.1 only on TMSCP >>> (specifically a TK50), at least if you want all of the packages to >>> install. I've installed RSTS/E 10.1-L from MASSBUS, TS11, TM11, and >>> TMSCP in my various experimentation with emulation, it really doesn't >>> care what the tape is as long as your SYSGEN device is consistent. >>> >> >> One detail on "it doesn't care what the tape is": RSTS kits on 1/2 inch >> tape come in 800 and 1600 bpi versions. They have different boot blocks, >> each of them designed to work with all tape drives/controllers supported on >> RSTS that support the density in question. For example, the 1600 bpi kit >> doesn't boot on a TM11 controller, and the 800 bpi kit won't boot on a >> TMSCP controller. This matters if you try to boot one in an emulator where >> physical tape density doens't have any meaning. >> > > Unsubscribed from cctalk now, so I'm not sure if this will get through or > not. > > The RSX installation tape should boot from all tape devices, no matter > what density. The disk boot blocks are somewhat more specific. MSCP sits > together with massbus and RK06/RK07. RK05, RL01/02, RP02/03 as well as P/OS > drivers are separate boot blocks. Of those, only the RL02 is actually > supported by M+. So in practice, you only see one of two disk boot blocks > around for M+. 11M use pretty much anything, I'd think. > > Johnny > >
