To read VAXEN optical disks on a linux box:

Go to snout (the linux box) in the computer room; often you will have
to borrow the monitor from another machine (feeble, perhaps?).

Put an od in the drive and turn on the drive and the pc.

It is likely that X-windows won't operate with the monitor, so use
[alt]-[F1] or [ctrl]-[alt]-[F1] to get a console window and login as
console - no password required

change to the vms directory

to read the od in the drive:

$> ./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[000000]'

This gives a list of everything on the drive.  Anything that ends in
.DIR is, not surprisingly, a directory.  So, to check out the MNI.DIR
you would do this:

$> ./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[mni]'


Then, if you see another directory you wish to view in the MNI.DIR
(e.g. RESULTS.DIR), you would do this:

$> ./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[mni.results]'


I think you get the idea for nested directories...

If you are looking for certain files, you can pass this command to
grep:

$> ./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[mni.results]' | grep keywordhere

If you only want to copy one file from the od to the present working
directory, invoke this form of the command:

$> ./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[mni.results]filename.ext'

If you want to copy a group of files matching a certain pattern:

$> set files = `./ods-2-rdr -l -n/dev/sda '[mni.results]' | grep keyword`
$> echo $files  
(This lists the files you have 'selected')
$> foreach ($files)

  foreach? echo $file; ./ods-2-rdr -n/dev/sda '[mni.results]'"$file"
  foreach? end


--
If you are starting from scratch, get thee to a linux box with a SCSI
card and a functioning C compiler.  The source lives in:

/home/bic/neelin/ftp/vms/vms_filesystem/ods-2-reader

Best to use a low-capacity SCSI optical drive to try and access such
antique disks.

While you're at it, maybe you should make CDs of this data...