TSS/8 with modern disks?

John Wilson wilson at dbit.com
Sat Sep 19 11:44:04 CDT 2015


On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 10:50:04AM -0500, Charles wrote:
>Some years ago I recall reading about possibly modifying TSS/8 to run on more
>recent disks instead of the ancient DF32 (a whopping 32Kword fixed head disk
>with up to three more slaved platters).

Or the RF08/RS08 -- luxurious compared to a DF32/DS32!

>Did anyone actually implement the changes? I know it wouldn't work well on a
>moving-head disk without significant changes, because the swapping is more or
>less constant.

A zillion years ago, the DECUS library had a TSS/8 hack to make it run
on an RK05 (as the only disk I mean -- later TSS/8s already supported RKs
as data disks, unless I've gone senile).  No idea how they managed that --
the wordiness of the DF/RF controllers penetrates deep into TSS/8's soul.
Maybe RFILE/WFILE weren't done compatibly with vanilla TSS/8?  Dunno.

John Wilson [0,3]@SID
D Bit


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