2.11BSD/src/man/man4/rx.4

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.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\"
.\" @(#)rx.4 6.2.1 (2.11BSD) 1996/1/27
.\"
.TH RX 4 "January 27, 1996"
.UC 2
.SH NAME
rx \- DEC RX02 floppy disk
.SH SYNOPSIS
.ft B
.nf
/sys/conf/SYSTEM:
NRX \fIrx_units\fP # RX02

/etc/dtab:
.ta .5i +\w'#Name 'u +\w'Unit# 'u +\w'177777 'u +\w'Vector 'u +\w'Br 'u +\w'xxxxxxx 'u +\w'xxxxxxx 'u
#Name Unit# Addr Vector Br Handler(s) # Comments
rx ? 177170 264 5 rxintr # rx02
.DT

major device number(s):
raw: 17
block: 8
minor device encoding:
bit 01 specifies drive: <rx_drive>
bit 02 specifies density: single: 0, double: 1
.fi
.ft R
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I rx
device provides access to a DEC RX02 floppy disk
unit with M8256 interface module (RX211 configuration).
The RX02 uses 8-inch, single-sided, soft-sectored floppy
disks (with pre-formatted industry-standard headers) in
either single or double density.
.PP
Floppy disks handled by the RX02 contain 77 tracks, each with 26
sectors (for a total of 2,002 sectors). The sector size is 128
bytes for single density, 256 bytes for double density. Single
density disks are compatible with the RX01 floppy disk unit and with
IBM 3740 Series Diskette 1 systems.
.PP
Files with minor device numbers 0 and 1 refer to drives 0 and 1
in single density mode;
minor devices 2 and 3 refer to drives 0 and 1
in double density mode.
The standard device names begin with ``rx'' followed by
the drive number and then a letter a-b for single and double density
access to the drive respectively.
The character ? stands here for a drive number in the range 0-1.
.PP
The block files access the disk via the system's normal
buffering mechanism and may be read and written without regard to
physical disk records. There is also a `raw' interface
which provides for direct transmission between the disk
and the user's read or write buffer.
A single read or write call results in exactly one I/O operation
and therefore raw I/O is considerably more efficient when
many words are transmitted. The names of the raw files
conventionally begin with an extra `r.'
.PP
In raw I/O the buffer must begin on a word (even) boundary,
and counts should be a multiple of the disk's sector size
(either 128 or 256 bytes depending on selected density.)
Likewise
.I seek
calls should specify a multiple of the disk's sector size.
.PP
In addition to normal (`block' and `raw') i/o, the driver supports
formatting of disks for either density.
.SH "DISK SUPPORT"
The
.I rx
driver does not support pseudo-disks (partitions). Each file
.I rx?[ab]
refers to the entire drive as a single sequentially addressed
file. The physical disk sector size is 128 bytes for single
density and 256 bytes for double density. The logical block
size is 1024 bytes. Each diskette has 250 logical blocks in
single density and 500 logical blocks in double density.
.PP
The size and density of the disks are specified as follows:
.PP
.nf
.ta .5i +\w'rx00 'u +\w'minor device 'u +\w'unit 'u
disk minor device unit density
rx0a 0 0 single
rx1a 1 1 single
rx0b 2 0 double
rx1b 3 1 double
.DT
.fi
.PP
Even though the storage capacity on a floppy disk is quite
small, it is possible to make file systems on them.
For example, the commands
.nf
.RS
% rxformat /dev/rrx0a
% newfs /dev/rrx0a
.RE
and
.RS
% rxformat /dev/rrx1b
% newfs /dev/rrx1b
.RE
.fi
format and make file systems on the single density disk in the left drive
and the double density disk in the right drive with
241 and 486 kbytes available, respectively, for file storage.
Using
.IR tar (1)
gives somewhat more efficient utilization of the available
space for file storage.
The RX02 disks are primarily useful for small archives and transfer of
small systems or distributions.
.PP
An
.IR ioctl (2)
call is available is available to format RX02 disks:
.RS
.nf
.ft B
#include <pdpuba/rxreg.h>
ioctl(fildes, RXIOC_FORMAT)
.ft R
.fi
.RE
The density is determined by the device opened.
.SH FILES
.ta \w'/dev/MAKEDEV.local 'u
/dev/rx[01][ab] block files
.br
/dev/rrx[01][ab] raw files
.br
/dev/MAKEDEV script to create special files
.br
/dev/MAKEDEV.local script to localize special files
.DT
.SH "SEE ALSO"
hk(4),
ra(4),
ram(4),
rk(4),
rl(4),
rp(4),
si(4),
xp(4),
dtab(5),
autoconfig(8),
rxformat(8V)
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
\fBrx2%d: hard error sn%d cs=%b er=%b\fR. An unrecoverable
error occurred during transfer of the specified sector of the specified
disk. The contents of the two error registers are also printed
in octal and symbolically with bits decoded.
The error was either unrecoverable, or a large number of retry attempts
could not recover the error.
.SH BUGS
In raw I/O
.I read
and
.IR write (2)
truncate file offsets to disk sector size block boundaries
(either 128 or 256 bytes depending on the selected density),
and
.I write
scribbles on the tail of incomplete blocks.
Thus,
in programs that are likely to access raw devices,
.I read, write
and
.IR lseek (2)
should always deal in disk sector size multiples.
.PP
DEC-standard error logging should be supported.
.PP
A program to analyze the logged error information (even in its
present reduced form) is needed.
.PP
The 4.3BSD rx driver which supports more capabilities should be ported
to 2.11BSD.