Unibone and real RL02 on same system?

[Richard Chapman]

Hi all, 

I am getting back to my PDP-11/34a which I got to successfully boot various operating systems using the Unibone and simulated RL drives. I also  have a working  real RL11 and real RL02 drive, but no bootable RL02 disk packs. I have several good RL02 disk packs, just nothing bootable on them. Can I make a bootable RL02 using the Unibone and simulated drive to boot, then copy the simulated bootable image to a real disk? That is, can the Unibone RL simulator and a real RL11 controller co-exist?  I assume I need to change the base address of either the Unibone's RL simulator or the real RL controller, but not sure what changes I would need to make to mount the real drive also.  Thanks in advance for any advice. 

[Mark Matlock]

Richard,

   This is quite possible, but one thing you’ll run into is that most of the operating systems on the UniBone are configured for only one RL controller. You can certainly move the UniBone RL controller to another CSR address and Vector but booting the alternative CSR would require a modification to the dl.lst boot loader.  In addition the OS would need to know about two RL controllers. For RSX11M and RT-11 this would require a SYSGEN.

   My suggestion is to boot a different drive type on the UniBone and then let the OS talk to physical RL controller. For example, on the UniBone use:

/root/rt11v5.5fb_du0_34.sh to boot RT-11 on a MSCP disk. That RT-11 DU0: bootable should fit on an RL02 so you can make your physical RL02 bootable by:

.COPY/SYS DU0:*.* DL0:

   For RSX11M, it is similar but I’d have to check to see if the UniBone distribution has a RSX11M with a UniBus MSCP controller. If it is there then there is a good chance it will have a RL SYSGENed in and you would use RSX BRU to move the system files and make the RL02 pack bootable, There are RSX11M disk images on RL02 that if moved to a MSCP (DU:) disk could be copied to the RL02: then using SYSVMR.CMD a RSX11M.SYS could be made and cross booted to make a bootable RL02. If RSX is your interest I can work through the various ways to get that done.

  On UNIX or RSTS I think the same approach is possible (boot a MSCP system disk and the create your bootable disk with the utilities they have) but I don’t know those OSs well enough to know the process.

Best,

Mark

On Sep 6, 2024, at 11:51 AM, Richard Chapman <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all, 

I am getting back to my PDP-11/34a which I got to successfully boot various operating systems using the Unibone and simulated RL drives. I also  have a working  real RL11 and real RL02 drive, but no bootable RL02 disk packs. I have several good RL02 disk packs, just nothing bootable on them. Can I make a bootable RL02 using the Unibone and simulated drive to boot, then copy the simulated bootable image to a real disk? That is, can the Unibone RL simulator and a real RL11 controller co-exist?  I assume I need to change the base address of either the Unibone's RL simulator or the real RL controller, but not sure what changes I would need to make to mount the real drive also.  Thanks in advance for any advice. 

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[Richard Chapman]

Thank you! I think this will work. Successfully booted RT11 this afternoon from DU0. Monday I will cut the NPG wire on a free slot and put the real RL11 into the backplane  along with the Unibone. 

[Joerg Hoppe]

Hi, 

another approach was done on VCF Berlin 2021:

Direct copy of physical RL02 platter to SimH image.

A 11/34 with physical RL11/RL02 was equipped with a Unibone RL11/RL02.
A small assembler program was loaded with PDP11GUI to the 11/34, which just copied the RL02 track by track in high speed.
It was the project of Angelo Papenhof, I remember a whole cartridge took 10 minutes.

We wrote a note about this, but where? here? on https://forum.vcfed.org ?

Joerg