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Hi folks, looking for some TK50 based OS install media for my 11/73 and 11/83 please.
RT-11 and or RSTS/E would be welcome as would BSD
Thanks in advance
Of course if anyone knows another way to create such a tape with my machine boot strapping via serial port or something fancy like that - please point me in the right direction.
I'm being very polite here when I ask you why you want to use TK50.
We all abandoned it many years ago due to the unreliability of the tapes. Anything you find already written is highly unlikely to survive the first read. Anything you write from NOS media will also fail in short order.
Well, thanks for the reply. Simply because I want to install an OS and currently have no other way to do it without a convoluted and lengthly serial port based lash up.
The machine was supplied with a bunch of backup/recovery tapes all of which have an RSTS/E bootstrap and every single one of them is able to reliably boot the machine - but none of them has a full install that will allow me to set the machine up the way I want it.
That seems fair.
I checked my stash of tapes (they are mostly for show for mentioned reason) and I don't see any genuine install media. Just backups.
Sure. Send me a tape and I can cut you an OS. However you will probably need two of them, first one with say BRU64K to get BRU up and running, then the OS itself as a backup. Probably same for RT11.
There is nothing wrong with the TK50/TK70 once you know the service issue: The critical part of the system is the two capstains, the rear one has an optical tachometer and tells the controller how fast the tape is moving at the head. The controller uses that info plus the speeds of the takeup and transport motors to determine tape tension and keep everything working.
As the drives age the oil in the capstain bearings evaporates, they drag, and the controller goes completely haywire and refuses to load tapes, spins the tapes out, etc. The solution is to remove them (I described how so as to not screw up the height and skew), clean/oil the bearings, and put it back together again for years of reliable life.
They make great backup devices for the RD series disks.
Hi folks, looking for some TK50 based OS install media for my 11/73 and 11/83 please.
RT-11 and or RSTS/E would be welcome as would BSD
Thanks in advance
Of course if anyone knows another way to create such a tape with my machine boot strapping via serial port or something fancy like that - please point me in the right direction.
Do you have a scsi card ?
If yes, f.e. you could make an bsd tape ( f.e. DAT ) on an Linux machine with a drive and then install that onto your 11.
DDS3 works fine on different controllers, f.e. i have RQZX1 with DDS3 up and running here.
How to create an bsd install tape is documented at various sites where you also can get the tar files...
Hmmm, i did not try this up to now;
but eventually it may be possible to transfer drive images with linux on a peecee with mfm controller to the drives ( RD54, ST225(RD31), ST251(RD32), etc.)
At least for rt11 i made drives in simh with RD31, RD32 and RD54.
If that helps i can upload the images onto a drive and give you the link.
That is another way to do it: You could download the RD54 or whatever you have as an image using pdp11gui, then load an OS onto the image using SIMH then copy it back over the serial line using pdpgui again. I did this with a 150ishmb Fujitsu ESDI disk to back out an error I did in a VMR 20 years ago. Fixed now, running properly again.
