1 Apr
2020
1 Apr
'20
1:47 a.m.
On Mar 31, 2020, at 5:45 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at
ccc.com> wrote:
I've forgotten to be honest -- IIRC, no formatting was needed like a traditional tape
drive. But it is possible we may have had a program to do the formatting and I've
just forgotten it. I do remember that it was a very simple, saturation scheme. We had a
scope on the read electronics of the TA11 and decoded it all. NRZ style, 8-bit bytes, no
parity, fixed blocks with a prefix and suffix - serial encoding (unlike a 7/9-track) -
which is why the capacity is so low.
Was it really RT-11? I don't remember that it had TA11 support, and given that
it's like a magtape, not block addressable, it's hard to see how it could be the
system device.
DEC had an early software package called CAPS-11. I know nothing about it other than the
name and the fact that it was there to support the TA-11.
paul