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From: alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera)
Newsgroups: comp.os.rsts
Subject: Re: Tape drive access under RSTS
Message-ID: <691@opal.tubopal.UUCP>
Date: 14 Sep 89 18:23:12 GMT
References: <258@memex.co.uk>
Reply-To: alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera)
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Lines: 42

In article <258@memex.co.uk> scott@memex.co.uk (Scott Williamson) writes:
>Situation: PDP11/23+ running RSTS/E 7.2, 2 RL02 drives.
>
>In order to offload some data from the above system, I am
>trying to install a 1/2 inch tape drive. I have a Q-bus tape
>controller and the drive itself. After installing it into the system
>and replying "HARDWR" to the "OPTION:" prompt, the device is listed as
>a TS11 (I think, it was a couple of months ago when I tried it).
>Unfortunately, when RSTS is running I can find no way of accessing the
>tape using a variety of device names. 
>

Hi,

  sounds like you don't have the TS11 driver installed to your monitor SIL.
INIT.SYS (the boot code detecting your TS11 hardware) is independent from
the actual system 'kernel' (the monitor). If the monitor doesn't have the
driver included, it disables the hardware even if it is mounted and set up
correctly and is detected by INIT.SYS.
  Running SYSGEN (with the current monitor or the SYSGEN monitor) and answe-
ring '1' to the 'TS11 tapes ?' question should solve your problem. I don't
really know what the procedure is to 'SYSGEN' at V7.2, but it should be
something like that. We never used V7.2, (we are running 9.4), so this may
not help you very much. Sorry then.
  Anyway, if you don't plan to run the tape permanentely under timesharing,
you could use the SYSGEN monitor temporarly to copy the files (SYSGEN knows
of all tapes, at least one drive per type). Just reply 'START SYSGEN' instead
of <CR> to the 'START timesharing ? <YES>' prompt. There could come up some
error messages then during system startup, because the SYSGEN monitor may not
support all the options installed to the every day one. Ignore this messages
if they aren't fatal. The above method saves you from spending several hours
for running/retrying SYSGEN, because, as I've heard, SYSGEN is not a trivial
task under pre-V8 versions of RSTS, so maybe you should prefer this temporary
solution if you are not that familiar with the software.

  Hope, this helps a bit. Good luck -thomas.

-- 
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