.DSK Files

[David Lochlin]

Gooday, Is there a way (outside of the simh environment, say Windows or Linux) to examine, add or subtract the contents of .dsk files?

Dave

[Johnny Billquist]

Depends on which file system you have. There are tools to work on RT-11
file systems, for example.

Johnny

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Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[Richard McDonald]

Go to github.com and search for "cpmtools"  you will find a number of repositories for working with cpm disks and disk images.

The most recently updated fork appears to be https://github.com/durgadas311/cpmtools3.git

I personally use a very old clone of https://github.com/lipro-cpm4l/cpmtools.git which hasn't been updated for many years.

[Anton Lavrentiev]

Also look here:

https://github.com/open-simh/simtools

Esp. in the extracters subdirectory 

HTH

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[Johnny Billquist]

Now sure how that helps in the context of PDP-11s, as CP/M never
existed, as far as I know, on that CPU, and that file system was never
used on such computers.

Johnny

On 2024-08-03 17:02, Richard McDonald wrote:
> Go to github.com and search for "cpmtools"  you will find a numberof
> repositories for working with cpm disks and disk images.
>
> The most recently updated fork appears to be

> *https://github.com/durgadas311/cpmtools3.git*

>
> I personally use a very old clone of

> *https://github.com/lipro-cpm4l/cpmtools.git* which hasn't been updated

> for many years.
>
> On Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 10:31:00 PM UTC-7 dloc...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Gooday, Is there a way (outside of the simh environment, say Windows
> or Linux) to examine, add or subtract the contents of .dsk files?
>
> Dave
>

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[timr...@gmail.com]

The cpmtools maybe as an example of how to do it?  The simtools I would think that would be something closer.  I personally have never used either.

[Richard McDonald]

The original question did not appear to be PDP-11 specific; however, should one wish to examine a .DSK file using tools on a PDP-11, then the cpmtools would still work if compiled on a PDP-11.

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 1:31 AM David Lochlin <dloc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gooday, Is there a way (outside of the simh environment, say Windows or Linux) to examine, add or subtract the contents of .dsk files?

Sure assuming the *.DSK file is a something like a SimH Disk container file, many tools exist in the wild for Unix, Windows and Macs:

SIMH supplies a number in the "extractors" sub-directory of "simtools".  In particular, Tim Liitt's port of the vhd_util(1) will give you raw access to the sectors, and disk ods2(1) will allow you to manipulate the image as a VMS file system.  Paul Koning has supplied flx(1), which manipulates RSTS images.     There are other tools for other formats like magenetic and paper tapes for other systems.

The late 1970s USENIX distribution included rtpip(1), a Unix program to read and write RT-11 disks (warning: it is not very smart and assumes the disk is RT11 format if you run it as root on a UNIX format RK05—bad things happen, as some of us know from the old days). ISTR that these images can be used to talk to RSX and maybe DOS11.

At some point, I remember seeing a tool to read/write DOS-8 disks, but I don't have a copy or a pointer to offer you. 

Jay Logue has an awesome set of tools using the user space file system support: FUSE for Linux and MacOS: https://github.com/jaylogue/retro-fuse which support UNIX v6, v7 and 2.9BSD filesystem formats.

With the release of the PiDP-10, tools for some of the TOPS-10, TOPS-20, and ITS are appearing, but I'll let you look for these on your own.

If you do an Internet search, there are also tools for CP/M and MS-DOS that run on Unix systems at a minimum and will manipulate floppy images as well as real disks.   I would expect the same for old Mac file systems but I have yet to look (google is your friend).

I would expect some of the other simulators, such as Hecurles for IBM, DTCyber for CDC, and the Multics simulator (which is a derivative of simh), to have similar tools, but I have not played with them, so I can not specifically say.

[Johnny Billquist]

Possibly, but it seems far fetched if someone asked on a PDP-11 mailing
list about tools to examine/modify CP/M file systems.

And while I haven't looked at the code, a lot of "modern" code makes
assumptions that make the code not work if compiled on a PDP-11. Most
common ones are assuming int is 32 bits, and assuming you have lots of
memory.

Johnny

On 2024-08-03 17:27, Richard McDonald wrote:
> The original question did not appear to be PDP-11 specific; however,

> should one _wish _to examine a .DSK file using tools on a PDP-11, then

> the cpmtools would still work if compiled on a PDP-11.
>
> On Saturday, August 3, 2024 at 8:14:22 AM UTC-7 b...@softjar.sewrote:
>
> Now sure how that helps in the context of PDP-11s, as CP/M never
> existed, as far as I know, on that CPU, and that file system was never
> used on such computers.
>
> Johnny
>
> On 2024-08-03 17:02, Richard McDonald wrote:

> > Go to github.com <http://github.com> and search for "cpmtools"

> you will find a numberof
> > repositories for working with cpm disks and disk images.
> >
> > The most recently updated fork appears to be
> > *https://github.com/durgadas311/cpmtools3.git*
> <https://github.com/durgadas311/cpmtools3.git*>
> >
> > I personally use a very old clone of
> > *https://github.com/lipro-cpm4l/cpmtools.git*
> <https://github.com/lipro-cpm4l/cpmtools.git*> which hasn't been
> updated
> > for many years.
> >
> > On Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 10:31:00 PM UTC-7
> dloc...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > Gooday, Is there a way (outside of the simh environment, say Windows
> > or Linux) to examine, add or subtract the contents of .dsk files?
> >
> > Dave
> >
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> >

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>
> --
> Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
> || on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>

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[David Lochlin]

Thanks everyone, I'll digest your answers. I have had some experience with cpmtools but to re compile it would be a real challenge I think. 

Dave

[David Lochlin]

I should explain why I asked this question. I found this site which had a number of .dsk files and wanted to know what they contained.

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/rt/dsk/misc/

I downloaded a few but could not find a way to see what they contained as there did not appear to be a readme or index file on the site.

Dave

[Johnny Billquist]

The tools in the simh repository will probably be useful.

If you are running plain DOS on a PC, there is also PUTR.
http://www.dbit.com/putr/

RT-11 file systems are pretty simple, and there are multiple tools that
have been written over the years. Some BSD systems also include a
program named arff, which is also able to access RT-11 file systems.

Pretty much any DEC OS have tools to access RT-11 file systems as well.
It's sortof the file system used to move files between computers in the
DEC world. And other systems like VxWorks also used to include code to
handle RT-11 file systems. (I think they removed that at some point, so
I don't think you can find it in current versions...)

Johnny

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[Chris Jordan]

Dave,

There appears to be another page on that site which has the contents of those dsk files available directly, which will save you trouble: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/rt/misc/

Chris Jordan

[David Lochlin]

Ok, my interest is mainly RT-11. So, each system is different?

Dave