[Info-vax] Reading OpenVMS SPL disks on something other than a VAX

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 10/25/2020 11:26 PM, Three Jeeps wrote:
> On Monday, October 26, 2020 at 12:22:40 AM UTC-4, Three Jeeps wrote:
>> Am cleaning out/organizing corner of my basement where my mVAXes are and came across a set of about 50 CDs (DVDs?) that are for OpenVMS June 1996 (AG-QWUYA-XE).
>> I didn't remember even having these.
>>
>> Both of my machines are mothballed so I am wondering if there is anyway to read them on a mac OSX machine, or windoz or linux machines?
>>
>> Never had the reason to ask the question about them being readable on another OS (with the right helper program)but I'd like to see if these disks are readable.
>>
>> Thank
>> John
> 
> after I made the post, the thought occurred to run openvms under simh - would that work?
> 

They would be CD disks.  1996 vintage would be OpenVMS ODS-2 format and not readable by normal methods on a Mac or Windows or Linux system.  Linux may or may not have a userland file system tool which can read ODS, seems like there might be but I can't place it at the moment.

You really have 50 disks from the one date?  Normal SPL (Software Products Library) from that era would be around 10 to 12 disks. The ODL (Online Documentation Library) might be 1 or 2 disks.

It's possible you could make simh use your Mac's CD drive.  I haven't tried it, but the more recent versions (V4) probably could.

If not, then you could rip the CD to an image file and attach it as a virtual disk to simh.

I've used something like this:
# OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2 Operating System
hdiutil create -srcdevice /dev/<your CD drive> -format UDTO <CD_Image_file_name>

You end up with a .CDR file but you can rename it to .ISO or .IMG if you like.  Technically it's not a true ISO file but that's what a lot of people call them.



-- 
John H. Reinhardt