Randall R Schulz wrote:
Yes. We used them for backups at my university computer lab. I worked there for several years doing such menial tasks. I remember one time I had to do a backup and got the order of the arguments to the "dump" command backward. (Scripts you say? The shell then was a feeble shadow of its current self!) Not good. There was little validation of arguments or of device content. I trashed the boot and super blocks. I had a lot of file system reconstruction to do that night!
I worked on one system where the command to copy a file was: XFER source > destination And the command to delete a file was: XFER source > This meant that if you accidentally hit the "Enter" key (actually carriage return), you'd delete the file you were trying to copy!
By the way, I think it's 6250 BPI for high-density mode.
Yes, that sounds about right.
Lessee now, the device address on Data General computers was 22, hit the program load switch and watch the reels spin... ;-)
We were a DEC shop (PDP11s of all sorts), but it was similarly straightforward to program those devices.
The good old days...
We had several PDP-11s, a few VAX 11/780s and one, count 'em one PDP-8i. Remember the RIM loader? We also had a bunch of various Data General Eclipse & Nova models and some Pr1me and Collins computers.