Another PDP-11 Floppy Disk Question (RSTS)

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Rick" == Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> writes:

 Rick> I have my PDP 11/34 running smoothly with RSTS 9.2, on three
 Rick> RL02 drives.  I've got an RX02 floppy, and RSTS sees it, but at
 Rick> 9.0, RSTS dropped support of floppies as file-structured
 Rick> devices.  There are two utilities, called FIT and FLINT that
 Rick> come as part of the distribution, but I've not been able to
 Rick> find any documentation on these programs.  Apparently they
 Rick> provide a means to access floppies in a semi-file-structured
 Rick> method, as well as writing floppies in RSTS or IBM formats.
 Rick> All I've been able to glean is looking through the .TSK files
 Rick> with a file dumper, and looking at the text portions of the
 Rick> images, but they aren't very informative.

 Rick> Anyone got any docs on these two utilities?

RSTS NEVER supported native (RSTS format) file structures on RX01/02
floppies.  Those were always treated by the kernel as non-file
structures block devices, and intended as interchange media only.

RX50s and their successors -- 5.25 inch floppies attached to MSCP
controllers -- always were file structured and continued that way.
That takes no effort since it just uses the common MSCP machinery.

In any case...

FIT is the interchange program for reading/writing RT-11 file
structure (not just on floppies, but on pretty much any block device
that RT-11 supports).  FLINT is the interchange program for reading
"IBM format" -- not sure what that means, not PC format as far as I
can tell, since the code is full of EBCDIC handling.  So presumably
it's for some mainframe floppy format...??!!??

The documentation for both should be in the user's manual, which I
don't have.  Judging by the source code, it's roughly like this:

FIT command line: output/switches=input/switches
Switches are /rsts, /rt11 to indicate the format type of input or
output.  (Also /dos ??? for DOS-11???)  /ze to zero (reinit the file
system).  /de to delete a file (RT side only).  /li to list the
directory.  /sq to do an RT file system compress.  /watch to be
verbose (show what's going on as it happens).

FLINT seems to want a command ("directory", "toibm", "torsts", "zero"
(synonym of "erase")); it then prompts for input and output specs.

	 paul