[Info-vax] Write Alpha kits on Windows PC for OpenVMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-11-06 22:28:32 +0000, David Gray said:

> Hi,
> Is there a guide to writing CDROM/DVDROM on a Windows 10 PC that I can 
> use (and boot from) on my Digital 433au?  I downloaded the following 
> after receiving my hobbyist licences.
> 
> Can I just create a new ISO in my burner (Nero Burning ROM) and extract 
> the .zipexe onto the root?

Correct.

Extract the ISO—which is not an ISO-9660-format disk—and which is 
probably better thought of as an .IMG or disk image file.

Command-line zip should be able to ignore the self-extracting zipexe 
stuff and extract the zip archive, if you're not on whatever platform 
was the target for that zipexe file.

Minimally use a version of zip 3.0 and unzip 6.0.  Those are around a 
decade old, too.

Earlier versions of zip and unzip have bugs, particularly around 
"large" zip archives.

When buring, CDBurnerXP Pro—don't install the extra add-on stuff—works 
with OpenVMS disks.

Nero has had a habit of not working, at least in various versions.

I spent years talking folks off Nero, after the users discovered the 
bugs. Even after I'd told them not to use Nero.

Hopefully, those Nero bugs got fixed, but I haven't used Windows in a 
long while, much less Nero,

Get the base image burned and across, get networking going, and avoid 
trying to use Windows as a stepping-stone through as we'd really rather 
not have to explain how to unsnarl the files that have passed throygh 
Windows, no do we want to describe thesubset of ISO-9660 supported and 
how to get there with some weird app.  Boot OpenVMS, get the network 
going, and load the files directly.

> 
> I did spent a good while looking for the answer and there are loads on 
> how to write from VMS,

Take the hint?
COPY /RECORDABLE_MEDIA on recent releases; V8.4 is what you want to be running.
There's a CD burning tool (cdtools or cdrecord, IIRC) in older releases.

> I could not find anything for Windows creating VMS format ISO (bootable).

Burn the ISO image to get started.

Otherwise, you're going to be learning way more about reconstituting 
RMS metadata, and about mixed-platform work.


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