[Info-vax] Disk image viewable in Windows/Linux

[Paul Sture]

In article <j1iuf0$n4d$1 at speranza.aioe.org>,
 Wilm Boerhout <wboerhout-remove at this-gmail.com> wrote:

> Neither PersonalAlpha nor CHARON-AXP nor CHARON-VAX nor SIMH add 
> metadada to disk containers. These containers are interchangeable with 
> LD-created containers. It's just a load of bytes.
> 
> So you can create a container with LD, $INIT it and fill it with data, 
> then dismount and disconnect the container, ftp /binary it to the 
> outside world, where all mentioned products (and probably a few others) 
> will happily see it as a disk container file.

I think we've found the cause of the confusion.  The OP seems to think 
that these products create something akin to the container files used by 
VMware, Virtual PC, VirtualBox et al.

The VAX and Alpha emulators just allocate a bunch of blocks and present 
them to VMS to do with as it wishes.

Provided that the original VMS disk is a model recognized by the 
emulator you are using, I see no reason why you could not put it on a 
*nix system and use "dd" to create a file containing a physical copy, 
and use that in an emulator.

@Sum1:

I would recommend that after creating your LD container you perform an 
INIT/ERASE to ensure that the container is pre-filled with zeroes, and 
doesn't just pick up a load of garbage.

-- 
Paul Sture