plp@houdi.UUCP (P.PFAUTZ) (03/09/87)
I'm considering the acquisition of some speech data which is, alas, available only on tapes in "VAX/WMS copy mode" (6250 bpi). My system runs (surprise) UNIXtm. Is there any relatively simple (or even somewhat complex) way of getting the info into good old UNIX files?
cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) (03/10/87)
In article <1021@houdi.UUCP> plp@houdi.UUCP (P.PFAUTZ) writes:
->I'm considering the acquisition of some speech data which is, alas, available
->only on tapes in "VAX/WMS copy mode" (6250 bpi). My system runs (surprise) UNIXtm.
VMS copy format is nothing but ANSI standard 'D' format labelled tapes.
So.... you should be able to read them with ansitar or ansitape - I've used
both and they work just fine. Note, it will likely be useful to enable file
name case wrapping so all your filenames don't SHOUT AT YOU.....
-ed cetrontihor@acf4.UUCP (03/11/87)
VAX/VMS copy mode means (1) ANSI standard headers per spec # whatever... tools like ansitar or ansiw/ansir or the like, (2) HDR2 and HDR3 records with the RMS format information in them. What you need to find out is what format the data in the files is being copied in since decrypting the RMS headers is a bitch. If you were getting text in a known language it would be easiest to take the resulting file and just look at it to figure out the format since the most common file formats a real trivial to read, since they come out as ANSI standard varioable length counted records, 4 ASCII digits followed by that many chartacters, flipping over block boundaries with carefree abandone. The speach data may be in a fixed block format in which case its just the blocking factor they specified when writing the tape. Ask their systems people what RMS format the file was in before copying to tape and what the first few records are. That should be enough to get it. [Me, I'd use a VMS system to read the tape but I'm a notorious lazy person. Or a CDC Cyber if I am feeling perverse. Aren;t ANSI standards wonderful. Aren;t "standard operating systems" that ignore them more wonderful.]