PDP11/23+ goes on

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> thank you all for the tips around my harddrive desaster. Next time I 
> will be wiser.
> I have cleaned my removable disk's heads. Used isopropanol and a match.
> Tried the crashed disk pack, crashed again immediately. Had to clean one 
> head again. Took another pack. No crash, no error display etc. Hope that 
> it stays ok.

It sounds like you have been _very_ lucky...

> 
> Now I did:
> > $dm4
> .. And dm0,1,2,3 work same way....
> 
> Computer says:
> > 
> >  **THIS VOLUME DOES NOT CONTAIN A HARDWARE BOOTABLE SYSTEM ***
> > 
> > 000034
> > @
> 
> I would be glad if that is a message read from the disk partitions (like 
> the bootsector message on non-system disks in my pc).

I haev an idea it _does_ come from the disk boot block :-)

> What is the "modern way" to get software into the PDP11?
> Is there anything like a RIM or BIN loader?

It depends on what you already have on the machine. If you have an OS 
that supports the TU58 tape drive (don't worry that you don't have such a 
drive), you can emulate the TU58 on a PC (or unix box). It's a 
block-structured device that works like a (very slow) disk.

There's also something called VTserver that I believe is a way to 
bootstrap software onto a PDP11. I've never used it, though.

-tony