Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!news.Brown.EDU!agate!spool.mu.edu!torn!nott!nrcnet0!amtsg0.ime.nrc.ca!johnston
From: johnston@amtsg0.ime.nrc.ca (Daniel F. Johnston)
Subject: Copy (legal) of VAL-II system disk?
Message-ID: <1993Nov25.130312.15395@nrcnet0.nrc.ca>
Sender: root@nrcnet0.nrc.ca (Operator)
Nntp-Posting-Host: amtsg0.ime.nrc.ca
Organization: National Research Council of Canada
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 93 13:03:12 GMT
Lines: 33

We have an older Unimation-6000 robot with the LSI-11
VAL-II controller.  The system usually boots up from the
non-volatile memory, but sometimes (after axis re-calibration)
we have to boot VAL from disk.

We only have the one, old, system disk.  The disk itself
is a 5.25 in. floppy.  The drive is a serial line driven
unit.  I cannot find any way to make a backup copy of
this disk.  You can copy/delete robot programs and data
but cannot copy the VAL-II executable file.

Does anyone have a program that would run on a PC (or
any system) that could read this disk and write a copy?
We do NOT want to start selling copies, we just need
a backup system disk for ourselves.  Has anyone 
decoded the serial control for this floppy and
written a program for a PC of Workstation to control
the drive from there?

Thank for any help!

-- 
      ___|__    |
      /  |  \   ||\      Daniel (Dan) Johnston
     /___|___\  || \     Dan.Johnston@nrc.ca
    _____|____  ||  \    National Research Council of Canada
    |    |    | ||   \   Institute for Advanced Manufacturing Technology
\___|    |    | ||____\  Tel: (613) 993-6627   Fax: (613) 998-2771
 \_o_\___|____|_|______\_ 
  \                o /    These opinions are my own! Not those of NRC.
   \________________/

 More Tall Ships - Fewer Computers!               
