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

[John Wallace]

On Aug 13, 10:21 pm, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> In article <444a03de-7a46-494a-8b75-b79810238... at i7g2000vbc.googlegroups.com>,
>         Steven Schweda <sms.antin... at gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> I have never tried to use it so I don't know if it is a 1.44 or a 720K
> >> but at least one of my VAXStation 3100 has a 3.5" floppy slot prominently
> >> displayed on the front panel.
>
> >    For a hint:
>
> >      http://antinode.info/dec/vs3100_diag.html
>
> I saw ST506 and RX-50 and RX-33 mentioned there but nothing even
> resembling a 3.5" disk.
>
> Like I said, never even tried it.  The most common use I know of for
> floppies is data interchange.  I doubt VMS can read a PC disk and I
> further doubt that anything else could read a VMS disk without great
> difficulty.  And when I run Ultrix or BSD the network starts and works
> by default so there really is no particular use for a floppy on a VAX.
>
> And I certainly wouldn't want to try doing backups to one!!!
>
> bill
>
> --
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> billg... at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> University of Scranton   |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

Reading a PC DISK on VMS: DEC's very own PCDISK (I have used it in the
dim and distant past)
Reading a VMS DISK elsewhere: for ODS-2 see e.g.
http://www.vms2linux.de/ods2util.html (haven't tried it but it's
derived from
http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?ODS2 which runs
on Windows and UNIX)