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

[John Wallace]

On Aug 14, 9:05 am, Paul Sture <paul.nos... at sture.ch> wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:55:00 -0700, Steven Schweda wrote:
> >> >    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.
>
> >    Look again?
>
> >> And I certainly wouldn't want to try doing backups to one!!!
>
> >    It's been a while, but I remember seeing a fellow back up
> > a VAXstation I using its RX50 drive (and a pile of floppies).
> > The hard disk was pretty small, but it still wasn't much fun.
>
> I once installed the layered software on an 11/730 using a pile of
> floppies.  It wasn't much fun.  I also had to use the VMSä$TAILOR stuff
> to leave enough space on the undersized system disk to do anything.
>
> This was a case where the owner's son had got involved in specifying a
> system.  Of course a computer needed floppies and a BASIC compiler!
>
> <shudder>
>
> --
> Paul Sture

Who remembers the 11/725? A 730 (OK, not the world's speediest, but it
runs VMS) in a neat little pedestal package, with RC25 disks, a
removable and a fixed one on the same spindle, each holding a
magnificent 25MB? And with 2*TU58 as the other removable media.

Happy days.

Well, happy in comparison with the alternative available to me at that
time in the mid 1980s, which was some flavour of System V on a 68k of
some kind, or transatlantic access to a Gould/SEL UTX32 system via
dialup or BT X.25 (we had to phone BT every few weeks to get them to
retune the echo suppressor suppressor reed relays in the exchange so
our Racal MPS1222 modems would actually connect).

Back in 1985, System V left a great deal to be desired for software
development, whereas VMS, especially VMS V4, was quite respectable,
and certainly more productive than the System V box (even if the
System V/68K was nominally higher performance).

Try telling that to the young people of today (etc).