[Info-vax] Attaching an actual 3.5" floppy drive to SIMH-VAX RXV21 device?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-08-09 06:31:10 +0000, sampsa said:

> Can I attach a Linux floppy device (/dev/fd0, high density 3.5" 1.44
> MB drive, attached to an old-school onboard FDD controller on a Dell
> Inspiron 8000) to the RXV21 device on SIMH-VAX?
> 
> Just wondering, not thinking there's any practical use for this, it'd
> be more for the retro value.

AFAIK, simh doesn't "do" physical device presentations.  There's no 
direct device I/O pass-through mechanism.   Nor would that pass-through 
really work, as there would need be something to convert the OpenVMS 
I/O activities within the address range that OpenVMS "thinks" is the 
controller chips, since how a VAX accesses its floppy drive junk I/O 
controller is undoubtedly different than how a PC box accesses its Junk 
I/O path.

The easiest working approach for reading the media contents would be to 
dd the floppy contents over into disk images, and connect those disk 
images.

You might also be able to put a disk image on the floppy drive to allow 
VMS to flash the light and scrape what's left of the oxide off the 
floppy media, but that's not going to allow you to read a VMS-format 
floppy loaded in the drive.

You might try asking this question over on the simh mailing list, or 
(better) search the simh mailing list archives for "floppy" or some 
such search target, as there's a reasonable shot you're not the first 
one that has considered this.

Retro?  Retro would be sticking the floppy disk distro onto the file 
cabinet with a magnet.  That'd definitely be retro.  But I digress.

Check the simh mailing list archives.  That's a better spot for simh 
questions, in general.




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