Magill@CIS.UPENN.EDU (CETS Operations Manager) (08/17/86)
Unless DEC has stupid tape drives.... A dual density tape drive will READ the tape at the correct density indepentdly of whatever density you tell it. (Assuming of course that your tape is written at a compatible density). (Also assuming that you have a drive which allows software selection of density, and does not rquire a manual switch setting.) In theory, it should not be possible to write multiple tape densities to the same tape. I know this is true for software selectable tapes, and for the few manually selectable drives I have seen. I have seen the same problem around here ... once several months ago. And I don't remember what we determined was the cause... as for the tape, backup simply could not read it, therefore it was unrecoverable unless someone wished to write a program to read it. FLAME ON: I really wish DEC would support standard labels under BACKUP, then many of this type of problem would vanish. Any tape MOUNTED/FOREIGN is not using standard label processing. Backup does not write standard labels.