Writing CDs for VMS

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 ...

Jump to the sections:

Introduction
Where to find general information on CD-R
CD-R device connected to VMS system: CDWRITE software
Writing CDs using the VMS system and the Infoserver
CD-Writer controlled by PC, data on separate disk or Infoserver partition
MOUNT /FOREIGN and ftp whole disk
Using a unix system
How I did it: Creating a container file / external image
Bootable CD
Copying CDs
More Software for CD-R on VMS systems DFY$VMSCD
Acknowledgements
Latest Additions

Introduction

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).

Where to find general information on CD-R

See Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ at one of the following locations:

CD-R device connected to VMS system: CDWRITE software

There is a VMS program by Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann for writing CDs. The latest version can be downloaded by anonymous ftp from v36.chemie.uni-konstanz.de in [.cdwrite]. Or just click here: ftp://v36.chemie.uni-konstanz.de/cdwrite/. It is also in the DECUS collections (OpenVMS collection Spring 1997). Two places are ftp://mvb.saic.com/vmslt97a/net97a/ and ftp://ftp.montagar.com/decus/vmslt97a/net97a/. Look for filenames starting with cdwrite, esp. cdwrite.doc.

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.
The sources are downloadable from ftp://v36.chemie.uni-konstanz.de/cdwrite/.
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.
Eberhard

==================================================
Dr. Eberhard Heuser-Hofmann
Univ. Konstanz
Fakultaet fuer Chemie
Universitaets-Strasse 10
D-78464 Konstanz
Germany
Phone: +49-7531-88-2026, FAX: +49-7531-88-3139
email: vaxinf@chclu.chemie.uni-konstanz.de
==================================================

Writing CDs using the VMS system and the Infoserver

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.

See

ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/SPD/33-20-XX.txt Infoserver Software Product Description

CD-Writer controlled by PC, data on separate disk or Infoserver partition

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).

MOUNT /FOREIGN and ftp whole disk

Wolfgang Moeller gives a method similar to the one I chose (see below), but also has a solution if there is no virtual disk driver software available:

Write data to a reserved disk
MOUNT /FOREIGN the reserved disk

ftp transfer:

ftp <PC or unix host with CD writer>
binary
put <reserved disk>: raw.cd

write the CD in raw mode using the image raw.cd
The very last blocks of the disk are probably lost this way

Using a UNIX system

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).

How I did it: Creating a container file / external image

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.

Bootable CD

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.

Copying CDs

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.

More Software for CD-R on VMS systems

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.

Acknowledgements

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.

Latest Additions

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:

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