"Bruce_G._Kahler.rochX2"@XEROX.COM (10/30/86)
Any suggestions of how to read/write tapes under VMS in the EBCDIC character set?
McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET (11/04/86)
There are two approaches to reading EBCDIC coded tapes. Either involves writing some code. You can write a program that reads tapes directly, or you can use VMS to transfer the files to disk and write a program that converts the files from EBCDIC to ASCII coding on disk. To copy any foreign file from tape to disk, mount the tape /FOREIGN, and execute COPY commands such as COPY MUA0: FILE1.DAT, COPY MUA0: FILE2.DAT, etc. COPY knows to stop at end-of-file marks. When you are done, you will have files in your account that contain the EBCDIC-coded information. If the tape was written with standard IBM labels, then some of the files will contain the label information, and some will contain data files. In a program to convert from EBCDIC to ASCII, you can use the library routine LIB$TRA_EBC_ASC, which will do the mapping of EBCDIC to ASCII codes for you. See the documentation. We use the AVATU program (from a DECUS tape) when we need to read (or write) EBCDIC tapes with standard IBM labels. Undoubtedly, other INFO-VAX readers can suggest other programs that have already been written to do certain other kinds of EBCDIC <-> ASCII conversions.
cetron@UTAH-CS.ARPA (Edward J Cetron) (11/06/86)
Another solution is to find an RSX system which will do the EBCDIC -> ASCII conversion automatically....and have it either rewrite the tape for the vax, or as I do, decnet the results over to the vax... In fact, the RSX manual set even includes a step by step example on how to read IBM EBCDIC tapes... -ed