From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 1 8:51:33 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from albatross.prod.itd.earthlink.net (albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4063A37B402 for ; Fri, 1 Mar 2002 08:51:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from pool0251.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.251] helo=mindspring.com) by albatross.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16gqFi-0007Ym-00; Fri, 01 Mar 2002 08:51:26 -0800 Message-ID: <3C7FB160.1D153773@mindspring.com> Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 08:50:40 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dectapes (was Re: First test of GPL in court) References: <20020227135103.E64839@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020227061336.N12253@rain.macguire.net> <20020227142303.A65635@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <15484.63760.663944.125557@guru.mired.org> <20020227163501.A66574@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <15485.4354.561280.729573@guru.mired.org> <20020228020025.B65094@titus.hanley.stade.co.uk> <15485.40778.433515.165006@guru.mired.org> <20020301035636.C20774@titus.hanley.stade.co.uk> <15487.405.365982.645106@guru.mired.org> <20020301055026.GB2196@raggedclown.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Cliff Sarginson wrote: [ ... Dectapes ... ] > > > They were an interesting concept - a block addressable tape device, on > > > which you could do random access, and thus use it like a s.l.o.w. disk. > > > > Yup. They were bootable, too, so you could put / on them. > > > Hee hee, yes I remember doing that as well :) > A moderately entertaining exercise. Oh God. Ultrix when you booted off of TK50 didn't want to install on hard drives that weren't exactly the same size as DEC hard drives. You had to boot the tape, break out of the script, and then use "dd" to edit the script to include the hard drive size, and the drive table to match, so that you could install on third party hard drives. What an experience... > I also remember booting PDP 11/44's in which you had to type into the > console some magic octal numbers to get it to read the boot block. There > was a single digit difference between the incantation to "read" the > block and to "write" it :). Heh. I can probably still toggle in the front panel bootstrap on a SWTP 6800 to get it to read the paper tape reader to boot the rest of the way up... the sequence is stored in my spine somewhere. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message