SUMMARY: Reading a VMS-floppy on Tru64

From: Lindström, Tony <tony.lindstrom_at_tekla.fi>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:37:28 +0200

Sorry, but better late than never...


I got a few answers, but my customer did not succeed with any
of these. Fact is that nobody even knows how the floppy was made...

Here we go:

Alan:

        It depends on how the floppy was written. The most natural
        way on OpenVMS would have been to write a Files-11 file
        system, mount it and copy the files. Unfortunately, this
        isn't very portable. I don't know whether VMS has the
        ability to write the MSDOS format, which would be readable
        by the mtools. If it were mounted foreign, it could be a
        BACKUP saveset, which is as hard to read as Files-11. If
        it was just one file, then it could just be raw blocks,
        which are trivially readable, but you'll need to know the
        file and transfer size.

Dr. Tom Blinn:

        Gee, that depends on how the OpenVMS server wrote the floppy. At
the very
        simplest level, the answer is "with any application such as 'dd' or
even
        with the 'vi' editor (read it as a raw disk)". If it's got an
MS-DOS file
        system, then you can use the "mtools" utilities included in Tru64
UNIX as
        part of the base OS product (but in an optional software subset)
since the
        V4.0D release (you are running at least V4.0D, right?). If it's got
some
        kind of OpenVMS file system and you want to read the file system as
a file
        system, then you're probably out of luck, because as far as I know,
there
        is no software available for Tru64 UNIX that can read any of the
native
        OpenVMS file systems (e.g., ODS-2 with Files-11). (You might also
try the
        "od" utility to see what data is on the floppy, although it's not
perfect,
        you would need to know how to decode the output.)

Jim Jennis:
        
        I've never done this with a floppy, but VMS tcpip services support
NFS so
        you should be able to put the floppy in a VMS machine, mount the
floppy on
        VMS and NFS export the file system for the Tru64 box to access.

Joe Fletcher:

        Unless it was written in DOS format, in which case mtools will do
the job,
        the only way I know is to use dd to dump the entire contents of the
disk
        to your Tru64 box and see what you can salvage from the results.
        Best of luck.

Regine Polnick:

        please try
        http://www.openvms.digital.com/freeware/ODS2-READER

        getvms

        perhaps it helps


-- 
Tony Lindström * System Manager * Tekla Oy
tel:+358 9 887 9441  gsm:+358 40 762 0768
http://www.iki.fi/tonyk/ mailto:tonyk_at_iki.fi
Received on Tue Feb 22 2000 - 08:37:21 NZDT

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