RE: Extracting files off “unknown” 8 inch disks. Any thoughts…

[Rich Alderson]

From: Terry Stewart
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 2:41 PM

> Just tying up some unfinished business.  Right at the beginning of this
> thread I said...

>> Guys in the building next door to me (a Science lab) have found some 8 inch
>> floppy disks.  They want to see what’s on them, or at least to archive them.
>> They have no idea what machine these disks were used with, or the software
>> was used to write the files.  They may be CP/M, or some other format
>> entirely.

> It turns out these disks are from a VAX machine. Assuming the OS is VMS, I
> scoured the Internet for something that might read them.

Stop there.

8" floppies on a VAX are more likely to be an RT-11 file system for the front
end PDP-11/03 than anything else you can think of.

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

                                                                Rich


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:RichA at LivingComputers.org

http://www.LivingComputers.org/