> 
> > I would probably like to mount the hard disk into a i386 Linux or
> > i386 *BSD box around here.

There will be little use to the files - in unix every file is a byte
stream; on VMS every file can have many differnt formats.

> 
> First issue is electrical compatability. :-)
> 
> > What format/filesystem would be on the disk?
> 
> Back when I used VMS, the filesystem was called FILES-11 and was almost
> completely undocumented.  I saw bqt, who quite likely knows more than I
> about it, say ODS-2, which may or may not be another name for the same
> thing.  If anyone can find docs on the on-disk layout, I'd be
> interested in hacking together some tools; somewhere, I ought to have a
> disk image from my VS2K's disk before I destroyed the VMS install in
> favor of NetBSD/vax....

You can get decnet for linux if your VMS does not have TCP/IP (was called UCX
in the old days) and use that to get files if you have a LAN.There are some
tools available to read the disk on other systems - I do not find it now, if
you need it, mail me.