PDP 11 Hacking: GOT IT WORKING!!!

[Vintage Computer Festival]

Son of a biatch!  I finally got it working.  I think it may have been bad
disks all along.

Ok, so I put a disk labeled "DIAGNOSTIC" in the drive and tried to boot.
No go.  So I pulled it out and I noticed it had dust on the disk surface
(at the head window).  Hmmm, doesn't look like it was even spinning.  So I
tried it a few more times observing the head window and it didn't change
at all.  To be sure, I aligned the index hole on the disk with the index
hole on the sleeve and re-tried.  It definitely didn't move.  Drive 0 is
not spinning the disk!

So I tried with Drive 1.  This time, I actually got something!

$DY1
?BOOT-F-No boot on volume
Ç

Hmm, no DOS?  So I tried one of the RT11/RX02 disks:

$DY1
?BOOT-F-No boot on volume
Ç

Same thing.  Then another:

$DY1
?BOOT-U-No boot on volume
Ç

Same thing.  And another:

$DY1
?BOOT-U-No boot on volume

And then finally another:

Ç»Hê=DY1
?BOOT-F-I/O error
000726

Ok, a little better!  One more time on this one:

@ 
$DY1
?BOOT-F-I/O error
000726

Ok, so it's bad (or the drive heads are really dirty...gotta clean those
at some point).  In the meantime, let's try this OTHER disk:

@
$DY1
RT-11SJ    V03B-00

Hey!

.R SST


** U.T. -SUPER- STAR TREK **

LATEST UPDATE-  15-FEB-77

FREE MOVE SCHEME CHANGED.  FREEZE IMPLEMENTED.
COMPUTER ADVICE FOR MOVE TIME AND ENERGY ADDED.
"SRSCAN CHART" INPLEMENTED.

WOULD YOU LIKE A TOURNAMENT OR FROZEN GAME ?

Well whaddya know?  It works!  And it has a way sweet Star Trek game on
there to boot.  How cool!

Well, no more time to play around tonight.  Will get back to it tomorrow
to investigate why drive 0 is not spinning up and to clean the heads.

Thanks for all the help!!

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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