9 Jul
2017
9 Jul
'17
11 a.m.
The conversion program I have somewhere is just a plain C program, if I
remember right. It just sucks the data bytes out of the image.
If noone else have it, I can start searching around where I might have
placed it.
Johnny
On 2017-07-08 21:03, Lee Gleason wrote:
I don't have the capability to read teledisk
images, and a brief
google search showed the programs I saw available to do so all seem to
run on Linux and DOS...two OSes I don't have available...
-----Original Message----- From: Tim Sneddon
Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2017 10:51 AM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE ; Lee Gleason
Subject: Re: [HECnet] DECmate II and OS/278...
On 8/07/2017 11:31 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Ah! Teledisk images.
Basically, that's a proprietary format which is intended to be able to
restore the disk including the low level format. It's a bit difficult
to deal with if you are not using Teledisk. I know I have a tool
somewhere that can extract the actual data from such an image, which
is what would be more useful when you are writing it on an actual RX50
drive. I believe I found it somewhere on the internet many moons ago,
but hopefully others have it too.
Yeah, I saw some details about the format described. I was only browsing
so I didn't notice a tool, but there were details of the file structure.
In addition, RX50 drives in general only accept preformatted media,
and RX50 low level format is unlike any other disk format, so you
either need real RX50 floppies, or else some machine that is able to
format RX50 floppies. Of DEC equipment, only the Rainbow were actually
able to format RX50. Generic PCs can sometimes do it, if you have the
right type of controller and drive, and appropriate floppies. But
success with that have been a bit random when I've read about it. But
I suspect it's your best chance, since getting genuine RX50 floppies
nowadays is even harder.
I have genuine RX50 floppies that have been used in DECmate II and
PRO350 systems. I believe they should be adequately formatted.
Regards, Tim.