[pups] Re: RL and RK Last Cylinder Warning (RE: VTServer)

[Warren Toomey]

In article by Jay Jaeger:
> Something I thought is worth warning folks about.  For RL01, RL02, RK06 and 
> RK07 (at least), the last cylinder is RESERVED for bad blocks and the pack 
> serial number.

Jay, I've added your warnings to the new version, vtserver2.3a-20010404.tar.gz,
which I just put out a few seconds ago. This also contains a patch to the
ODT download code from Charles H Dickman <chd_1 at nktelco.net>:

	I made some changes to the source to wait for the current memory
	value and trailing space to be echoed by ODT. I also had a bit
	of trouble if the output values were not padded with 0's. I think
	this is because any character other than a valid octal digit or
	a return or a ctrl-j is illegal in that context and causes an error.

ftp://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/pub/PDP-11/Vtserver/vtserver2.3a-20010404.tar.gz
 
> (PS:  FYI I am currently working on a flavor of the "vt" driver that will 
> work over a DR11C.  With the proper cabling (it takes different cables for 
> input and output) you can manage over 1MB per minute that way -- about 20 
> times faster than a serial port.  The code is pretty simple and should work 
> on any old "plain jane" parallel port.  (I do not know how it would behave 
> on a modern serial port)).
> 
> I had this working a long time ago, and VTServer prompted me to dredge it 
> up again and test it.  It still works with my PIII 350 under Win98 (it is 
> old DOS code that accesses the old style parallel port directly).  Within a 
> few weeks I expect to provide a "pt" device driver for pdpvtstand, and 
> cabling information and some source code for the PC side (which would be an 
> example only).  The protocol as I currently use it has no 
> checksum.  However I plan to modify "copy" to provide that information so 
> that the results can be checked after the transfer.
> Jay Jaeger

Jay, if you could write a ptboot.s bootstrapper and a pt.c driver
which speaks the same protocol [should be easy - just use vt.c and
rewrite vtgetc() and vtputc()], then I'll happily add it to the
next version.

Cheers,
	Warren

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