So I'm working on restoring a Compaq DeskPro/XE system to allow me to
use the 5.25 floppy to copy files from my 3.5 floppies which will come
from my Windows 10 system so that I can extract on the Deskpro/XE using
teledisk the .td0 files that make up a RX50 floppy disk set so I can
load POS 3.2 on my Pro/380 and see if the DECNA card works.
What a pain in the rear.
So far the XE boots but has no setup. Setup requires a special floppy
(Diagnostic disk) which mine was bad after 30 years so I'm trying to
create a new one. I have the official Compaq disk creation thing for a
floppy but it's in QRST format and the QRST under DOSBOX on Windows10
can't properly access a floppy even if "mounted" with a -t floppy extension.
Before I drag out my rusty and trusty Windows 95 Toshiba 660AV laptop,
is there another way to get this onto a floppy? I have an endless supply
of Rpi's, and doing a DD from a .img file works fine but this of course
is a QRST file.
Thoughts?
CZ
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:27:52 +0000
From: silcreval <silvercreekvalley(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-8/A FPP8/A
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <4EF3AB13-972C-4EE0-8105-C11128DA4BFA(a)yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>Hi Bob
>Thanks - thats very interesting. I guess there was quite a >bit of overlap with the 11 and the 8/A so 'marketing' >stepped in :-)
Exactly what happened, you are correct. We did want to sell more 8 systems into labs... where small memory models made sense (256K words or less) and kept having this dream of a Fortran Machine that went fast for the times.
I don't recall exactly but I think one of the 11 models with FPU that got blown out of the water was the 11/60 (a harvard arch implementation by O'Loughlin iirc) that was a decent and very very reliable 11 (used pairs of them for a critical system and they were exceptionally reliable when compared with disk drives!!)
The 8A was (and still is) a good machine but some of us wanted to build a 10Mhz clock 8 but the cost would have put it in the wrong price range for the types of customers we were allowed to have.
bb
