🚀 go-pugleaf

I use the RX50DRVR on my AT which allows my 1.2 MB drive to read RX50
diskettes.  What this does is to create a new driveletter (F:) which
spins the HD drive as if it were an RX50 drive.  

RX50DRVR does not know anything about the directory structure on 
the disks.  If I do 'dir F:' it assumes DOS directory structure,
which works fine on Rainbow diskettes, since they use the DOS
directory structure.

To read RT11 formatted diskettes, there is a utility called RT11
which groks the RT11 file structure.  I have not yet found a similar
utility which handles the RMS-11 file structure of the PRO 3xx series.

I can use Norton Utilities with RX50DRVR to examine the RX50 diskette
in the F: drive, but then I am accessing the diskette sector by sector,
not by logical file.

I haven't explored the new utilities from the gentlemen in the Former
Soviet Union who have announced some DOS environment tools for
manipulating RX50 diskettes.

Using RX50DRVR in combination with the RT11 utility program, I can
low-level format a blank HD diskette as an RX50 diskette, then
put it in the PRO and do a high-level RMS-11 style Initialization.
This allows me to create new RX50 diskettes out of plain old unformatted
or recycled 1.2 MB HD diskettes.

Using Venix on the PRO, I can do a raw image copy of a diskette in one 
drive to a blank diskette in another drive.  (This kind of copy will fail
if the target diskette has any bad sectors, since there is no attempt
to rearrange sectors to detour around any bad blocks.)

Finally, by hooking up the PRO to a Unix or DOS machine via the
COM port (or to a Unix host via Ethernet/DECnet if you have a DECNA
card), you can transfer files via any number of techniques, ranging
from straight ASCII upload/capture using ordinary terminal emulators,
Kermit file transfers if you have Kermit on both machines, or by
DECnet file transfer using NFT or dcp utilities.

None of this is particularly trivial to implement, but the bottom
line is that there are many ways to pull files off RX50 diskettes
and transfer them to Unix or DOS machines.

Barry Kort