Table of Contents

General Description

The "MkDisk" utility is used to create VAX/PDP11 standard or custom empty disk containers (disk images).

Open the CHARON Virtual Machines Manager, switch to the "Host Information & Utilities" tab and press the "Virtual Disk Tool" button:

The main dialog of the utility will appear:

Creating empty disk container

Select "VAX" or "PDP-11" in the "Select System" drop-down box, "MSCP" in the "All Controllers" drop-down box and choose the desired disk type in the "Select Disk Type" drop-down box to create an empty disk container:

Press the "Create Disk Image" button to proceed. A dialog asking to specify the name of the disk image will appear:

Browse to the target directory, specify the name of the disk image and press the "Save" button. The process of creating the disk container will start:

The target disk image is created - along with its metadata file (see below) once the process completes.

Creating disk metadata

The disk image metadata file contains important information about the target disk image structure - it is used by CHARON, automatically created with the same name with a different extension.

This functionality is needed if you have a disk image of a certain type and you want to generate a metadata file for it.

To create a metatada file press the "Create Metadata..." button:

The "MkDisk" utility will ask you to select a disk container for which to create the metadata file:

Select the target disk image and press the "Open" button. The utility will display a dialog for adjusting/correcting the disk image parameters:

Correct the desired parameters if needed and press the "Ok" button. The "MkDisk" utility will create a metadata file, having the same name as the target disk container, with extension ".avdisk"

Creating custom disk image

Select "Custom" in the "Select System" drop-down list, enter the desired number of blocks in the "Number of blocks" input box, specify the block size (if it is different from the default value of 512) in the "Block size" input box and press the "Create Disk Image" button to proceed:

Specify the location and name of the target disk container and press the "Save" button. The utility will create the disk image.

Getting information about available disk types

Information about the available disk types the "MkDisk" utility is able to create can be obtained by selecting the "Help->Disk Table" menu item. The following information dialog will appear:

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