pdp11xfer is a command-line program that allows the user to write disk image files on a modern computer to a real disk drive in a PDP-11, or read a real disk drive in a PDP-11 and create an image of that disk on a modern computer, both over a serial console port.

pdp11xfer downloads a short driver and communcations program into the target PDP-11 via the console port. It accomplishes this by interacting with an M9301 or M9312 console ROM, or console ODT in the LSI-11 processors, and performing a series of memory deposit commands as if they had been typed by a user. This is a fully automated process.

This program was inspired by the disk imaging function in Jörg Hoppe's excellent PDP11GUI package for Microsoft Windows. His downloadable PDP-11 drivers are included in and employed by this software, which implements the transfer protocol that he devised for this application.

The pdp11xfer code base includes an extensive testing and validation suite. This suite performs end-to-end testing of the protocol implementations and the downloadable PDP-11 drivers, by interacting with an instance of the simh PDP-11 emulator that is configured to run a copy of the M9312 Console ODT PROM.

pdp11xfer builds and runs on recent Linux distributions. MacOS X support is under development. Download the source code using the button below.

pdp11xfer has only been tested with a few hardware configurations. Bug reports, or success reports, are always appreciated; email bug-reports@lssmuseum.org.

This package is at revision 1.0.

(accelerated playback)