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To: Bill/Carolyn Pechter <pechter@shell.monmouth.com>
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From: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
Subject: Re: hackers-digest V1 #1386 
References: <199608161849.OAA27138@shell.monmouth.com> 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:49:35 EDT."
             <199608161849.OAA27138@shell.monmouth.com> 
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 22:45:59 -0400
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We had some RT11 systems (really Fuzzballs for those who know what
they are) kicking around a few years back with TU58's.  A buddy had a
system with an RK05 disk clone which blew chunks and needed to be
formatted.  Lacking any working boot media... we changed the speed of
the serial interface on the TU58, plugged it into a 2400 bps modem,
and had him call it.  He booted RT11 over all this mess, reformatted
the disks, and loaded a minimal system.

It did take a while, but the alternative was unracking the drive from
a rack, putting it into a car, and driving 35 miles.

> Well, er TU55/56's were kind of reel-to-reel floppies.  512 byte sectors...
> seeking, a kind of 8 inch floppy on a 3/4 tape reel.  DECtapeII
> was something else.  Imagine the slowest seral storage device running
> over a 9600 baud serial line.  The TU58 was an RS232 controlled QIC80
> sized cartridge (preformatted only) with the same sectoring as the DECtape
> and floppy drives.  It was designed as a load media for diags, microcode,
> standalone embedded systems etc. 
> 
> Think SLOW...

Yeah.  Another buddy of mine built an TU58 emulator that ran on his
CP/M system, and used an 8" floppy drive as a virtual tape.  Sort of
the inverse of what started this discussion.  It ran *much* faster.

louie