[HECnet] RT-11 filesystems, was Re: DECnet-RT?
Clem cole
clemc at ccc.com
Wed Apr 1 16:29:19 PDT 2020
The notch was in the center on the top of the cartridge
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
> On Mar 31, 2020, at 6:16 PM, Mark Pizzolato <Mark at infocomm.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 2:45 PM, Clem Cole 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. Again, I've forgotten, we had
>> the prints for the TA11 controller and its very possible the format info was in
>> there -- I really don't remember. It was just a stream of bits down the tape, not
>> serpentine like a QIC tape (which has a head that switches 'tracks' and writes a
>> long stream turns the tape around and then switches to the next head and
>> writes it backward. I've forgotten if you got one to two passes on TA11.
>> Traditional Phillips tape could be flipped over (side 1 and 2). I don't remember
>> if TA11's worked that way.
>
> From what you've described earlier about the special notch in the cartridge, I
> suspect that the notch only existed on one side so you couldn't actually flip it...
>
> - Mark
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