VMS and CD writing (CD-R), Software, Hardware, how to do it
Updated 06-Jul-1999 ("CD Copy Station")
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About this page
Some time ago, I posted a summary about the topic on comp.os.vms (see Introduction).
Since now and then people ask how to burn their CD-Rs, I have put the summary
here. If you have comments or contributions or if you would like me to add a
link to your page on the same topic, feel free to send an email. Anyway, it may take some time to put
your info here on the page.
This page badly needs a redesign. Latest info has not yet been added or has
just been put in the Latest
Additions section. I hope I will find the time to do some work on this page
...
On comp.os.vms, I asked for information on how to write
CDs with the ODS-2 format of VMS. I received several answers and offered to post
a summary.
Note: I have tried to compile a summary of the information I
received from others. I could not try all the proposed solutions myself. Some of
these require an Infoserver or other special hardware I don't have. Sometimes
you might like to have some more detailed information, but sorry, I just tell
you what I have learned from others and I do not know more than you find here.
However I will give a description of the solution that worked for me. You may
find the description useful even if you do not use the same equipment.
Some of the names and terms contained in this document may be trademarks or
may be proprietary to any company or whatever.
Thanks to all the people who have helped me (see acknowledgements).
Anyway, when writing the CD directly from the VMS system, make sure there is
not too much workload on the system (I/O!). Otherwise the data flow to the CD-R
device could be interrupted, resulting in an unusable CD!
New version of CDWRITE! See Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann's email
message of 28-Jan-1998 below (just a little HTML reformatted and a slash added
to the ftp URL):
After two weeks of hard work I want to release a
new version of my cdwriter-program CDWRITE14_VMS.
Two parts are new: a version that works on a VAXstation 2000 (Thanks to
W.J.Moeller) + support of the Yamaha CDR400 drive. The program has been tested
on a DEC-(now DEQ?)-3000-300-Alpha-Machine OpenVMS 7.1/scsi02-patch. A writing
speed of four works without problems.
In order to produce an executable for a specific drive one must define an
adequate parameter. "CDD2000=1" , "CDD2600=1" , "HP4020=1" , "HP6020=1" ,
"CDR100=1" , "CDR400=1" are valid definitions for the compilation:
$ cc/prefix=all/define=("CDR400=1") cdwrite14_vms.c
$ link cdwrite14_vms.obj
as an example. You'll find the rest of how to setup the program in
the small readme-file.
Some remarks: If you want to get a support of other drives than
mentioned above, I'm willing to help. There is a good chance for all
SCSI-drives that are supported by the excellent written cdrecord-program
provided by Joerg Schilling.
So I see two possibilities for that task:
Get the cdrecord-program and run it on a SUN/SGI/LINUX-system. If you
modify the code slightly you'll get all data I need - reverse engineering.
Send the drive to me if you accept all the risc that is involved into
such a procedure.
If you have further questions, please let me know.
As far as I know there is no commercial CD writer software
that allows to write CDs with a writer connected to the VMS workstation or
server. As Stephen 'Hoff' Hoffman pointed out, host activity during the writing
process can be a problem. Therefore the solution is to connect the CD writer to
an InfoServer and use appropriate InfoServer software.
Bystrik Krchnavy has successfully applied the
following method:
Make a partition (660 MB) on the InfoServer
Initialize and write the partition from the VMS system
Mount the partition from the PC with the CD-writer
Make a "raw" copy of the partition to the CD
Bystrik Krchnavy
expects the same method to work using a separate disk:
Connect a reserved fixed disk to the VMS system
Initialize and write the disk from the VMS system
Connect the disk to the PC with the CD-writer
Make a "raw" copy of the disk to the CD
Michael Zoellner suggests
a similar method:
Connect a reserved fixed disk to the VMS system
Initialize and write the disk from the VMS system
Connect the disk to the PC with the CD-writer
Copy the disk contents sector by sector to a file on the PC
Use the file as an "external image" to write the CD (The CD writer
software "Gear" offers the option "external image", I don't know if there are
other names for the same thing).
Dan Wing told me that he and his
colleagues at TGV have created ODS-2 and ISO-9660 CDs using "a mix of custom
software and off-the-shelf Unix software from Young Minds." I haven't got more
information on that, but it is probably similar to the method I used (see
below).
Installation of Glenn Everhart's virtual disk driver, following the
installation instructions. For the Alpha, it is available as VDSTEP2.ZIP on
the Freeware CD (V3.0). First, I did not use the maximum capacity of the CD.
The size of the container file was only 1086000 blocks. Wolfgang Moeller gives
very useful information on the capacity of the CD:
74 minutes: 1331976 blocks
60 minutes: 1133976 blocks.
The container file
must be contiguous. Its size should be a multiple of 2048
bytes (sector size of the CD). Gotfryd Smolik says there is driver software
(FDdriver, also by Glenn Everhart as far as I know), which allows using
non-contiguous files. I haven't tried it, though.
Because the file had to be transferred by ftp later, I did a SET FILE
/ATT=(RFM:FIX,RAT:NONE,LRL:512,MRS:512) <containerfile>, as advised by
Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann.
Mounted the virtual disk, copied all the files to the virtual disk,
dismounted the virtual disk.
Transferred the container file by ftp (binary, of course!) to a PC. Had to
be very patient ...
The CD writer I used is a Sony CDU924S. The writer software was "Gear"
running under Windows NT. (There are versions of Gear for Windows 95, 3.1 (?),
OS/2, Unix, and for the Mac.)
Selected the container file as an "external image".
Used settings (others will probably work as well): Mode I, 2048
bytes/sector, the box "Use physical image" was not checked,
"Disc at once" selected, fixation after write.
Though advised, I did not do a test run. Using a separate disk drive for
storage of the external image is recommended. I didn't have an extra disk and
did not run into any problems. On the other hand, there has been no other
activity on the PC.
At this point, it may be a good idea to disable the screensaver. Some of
them keep the CPU so busy that the writing process might be disrupted. (Thanks
to Uwe Leinberger for this hint!)
Burned the CD.
The method of writing an external image might be the same as using "raw
mode" with other software , but I'm not sure. Please correct me (on comp.os.vms or by sending email) if I am wrong.
On the virtual disk I installed a
minimum VMS (usually used for standalone backups). After burning the CD I could
boot from it (though I don't like to because it's so slow). Anyway, because
SYS$SYSTEM:AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM is intended for use with magnetic disks
that are not write locked, I got an error (SYSINIT-E-error mounting system
device, status = 007282EC) during boot. Also SHUTDOWN.COM complains about the
disk being writelocked, thus not allowing SHUTDOWN.TMP to be created. I did not
try to avoid those errors, though I think it is possible. But the CD is bootable
anyway.
Most CD writer software packages allow to
copy CDs. According to Michael Zoellner, this should be possible with Gear by
creating the external image with "Copy Track" from the menu Tools / Disc
Information.
István
Dósa is the author of DFY$VMSCD, a program for creating image
files for CD writing (it creates the VMS filesystem). DFY$VMSCD runs on Alpha or
VAX under (Open-)VMS. I don't know much about DFY$VMSCD, but it may save you
a lot of time. It is used for creating an image file which can then be written
to the CD. See http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/vms.html
for more info and for downloading.
Thanks to all the people
who supplied information, in particular to Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann, Bystrik
Krchnavy, Michael Zoellner, Wolfgang J. Moeller, Robert Panholzer, Stephen
'Hoff' Hoffman, Gotfryd Smolik, Uwe Leinberger, Tony Scandora, Dan Wing, and
also to Glenn Everhart who wrote the VDDRIVER package.
As István Dósa told me, DFY$VMSCD V1.6 and V1.7 can make bootable CDROMs
for Alpha VMS. For more info, see the section called "More
Software for CD-R on VMS systems".
CDRECORD is another program for writing CDs. The version at ftp://v36.chemie.uni-konstanz.de/cdrecord_1_8a9/cdrecord_1_8a9.zip
is ready for testing. Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann is looking for support with
porting cdrecord to VAX, with error handling and buffering. Please see the URL
above if you can help.
An email from Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann about copying CDs:
Date: 22-APR-1999 13:42:56.66 Subj: Announcement CD-Copy-Station
Programm Suite for OpenVMS/AXP
Dear VMS-People!
This is an announcement of an Add On to the cdrecording suite
cdrecord/cdwrite for VMS.
I've written a 85 lines command procedure that calls two programs:
A diskreader-program, that copies all data into one single file on
another disk. I've used some code fragments from cdwrite Version 2.2
written by John Vottero.
The cdrecord/cdwrite-program. Uses the single file produced in step
one as an input file.
As a result, it is now possible to produce n copies of your original CD
or disk.
Please send corrections or remarks to
Eberhard.Heuser-Hofmann@uni-konstanz.de.
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