[TUHS] Help Preserving 8in LSX Floppies?

[Charles H Sauer (he/him) via TUHS]

I've been hesitant to jump in to the discussion since what I say 
probably won't be useful, but if anyone has access to a working IBM 
Displaywriter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Displaywriter_System), 
that machine might be useful. I presume in terms of numbers that IBM 
shipped far more of those than any other product that used 8" diskettes. 
Though primarily (a pretty nice) "word processor," it was 8086 based and 
could run MS-DOS. (I don't remember if DOS was publicly available or 
not, but I had a copy for my unit. I mostly used mine for 3270 emulation 
to access VM/370. That environment seemed nicer to me than a real 3277.)

Charlie

On 7/14/2026 5:49 PM, Mary Ann Horton via TUHS wrote:
> Hi, Matt.
> 
> A couple decades ago, someone abandoned an 8" floppy drive on my 
> doorstep. I haven't done anything with it, but it's still in my museum.
> 
> It's labelled Honeywell, but Google says it's an OEM CDC 9404/9406. It 
> has two quarter-sized DIN connectors on the back (for "power" and 
> "logic"). The floppy door in front does not latch. It weighs about 17 
> pounds. There are no cables (not even a power cable).
> 
> I doubt it's very useful, but if you're up for hardware restoration and 
> interface I'll work with you to get it to you.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> /Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am)
>        Keynote Speaker on Inclusion and Innovation
>        Award Winning Author
> maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com>
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/10/26 17:12, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
>> Hello, exciting news, I've just received a whole bunch of 8" floppies, 
>> among them are two labeled:
>>
>> UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM LSX
>> SYSTEM MASTER (10-29-77)
>>
>> There are two disks, the second of which additionally bears:
>>
>> /USR FILE SYSTEM
>>
>> so presumably the root and usr disks for LSX.  Both are typed labels.  
>> Along with these are 6 with printed listings and hand-written labels 
>> indicating snapshots of the /usr directory from one or multiple LSX 
>> systems (some are labeled "original", some "development").  Two of the 
>> disks are source dumps of a kernel, with one looking like the file 
>> listing of a typical V6-ish kernel and the other having some extra 
>> LSX-ish bits, but its just path names so couldn't say what is 
>> contained therein.
>>
>> I currently have no means to extract 8" floppies, so wanted to ask if 
>> anyone on list is able to?  I can't speak to the FS details although I 
>> imagine something like a V6-ish filesystem is involved.  Raw dumps of 
>> the disks should allow decoding the FS at a later date.  There are 
>> other floppies too, among them some snapshots of UNIX game source code 
>> as well as a smattering of RSX-11 and/or RT-11 stuff.
>>
>> Anywho, if anyone has the machinery, I'll happily pay for the shipping 
>> and your time.  In the meantime I'll keep these safely tucked away.  
>> I'm primarily focused on the LSX stuff but maybe the other bits could 
>> be interesting too.
>>
>> - Matt G.

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