Accessing a TK50 or TK70 from RT

Jerome H. Fine jhfinedp3k at compsys.to
Sat Jun 11 10:14:41 CDT 2016


 >Rod Smallwood wrote:

> I have had some success in fixing a couple of TK tape drives.
>
> They now load and unload every time you press the button.
>
> SFSG now to talk to them from RT.
>
> Using the diagnostics on the format (RX50) disk the Identify function 
> shows the drive and by inference its controller.
>
> However its calls it MUX.  I seem to remember under RT you needed to 
> do a SET or ASSIGN to link it to the driver.
>
> Anybody know the correct syntax  so I can init the tape and start to 
> read and write files to and from it.

I really don't understand the question.

Whenever I used either the TK50 or the TK70 under RT-11,
the device name was TU0: and no SET or ASSIGN was required
unless the CSR and / or VECTOR needed to be modified - which
never happened since the standard CSR / VECTOR was always OK.

By the way, while the TK50 is mostly reasonable in WRITE mode
and COPY operations, a COMPARE leaves a lot to be desired.
The TK70 solves that problem.  If you must COMPARE with the
TK50, COPY the files(s) to a scratch disk first.

To initialize the tape for files:
INIT  TU0:
COPY  SY:*.SAV  TU0:
I suggest you use the NOREWIND option between files if you
are writing more than one file per command.  If you don't, you
will quickly realize why that option is preferred.

To initialize the take for a BACKUP:
INIT/BACKUP  TU0:

You can check the results with:
DIR  TU0:

Jerome Fine


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