rwillis@bbn.com (Robert Willis) (07/29/89)
I previously asked for information about reading and writing 9-track tapes in various formats. Here is a summary of the information which I received. Besides finding out some machines at BBN that have magnetic reel tape drives, I received the following information: 0) General information: It is always possible to read a 9 track tape on a Unix machine; the recording method is standard. The only thing is decoding the format of the blocks. 1) About available hardware: Sun sells Fujitsu 9-track tapes as a quite standard part of their product line. 2) About software distributed by Sun (and most other Un*x vendors): dd(1) [or possibly ddx(1)] is it. It doesn't know about any vendor-specific formats, although it can do EBCDIC <-> ASCII conversions. In the last resort you can write your own program. The interface is simple. read(2) returns the next tape block on the tape and the length of the block read. So call read with a large enough buffer. A tape mark looks like an EOF. Two tape marks indicates logical end of tape. If there are multiple files on the tape, use the tape device that does not automatically rewind the tape. You will need a separate dd(1) command for each file on the tape [in most cases]. 3) Other relevant software: Also, a stop by your local sources archive should get you ansitape, a utility which reads and writes ANSI standard labeled tapes, which happen to be what VMS uses in case you need to read VAX tapes. There was a package called MAG written by Dick Grune at the University of Amsterdam, which was on comp.unix.sources about a year ago. You should be able to get it from the archives. It handles the IBM, and Cyber formats, does ebcdic to ascii, ascii to ebcdic, etc. All in all it's a real nice package. There have been a number of UNIX utilities written and posted to the net to handle this format; some of them depend on BSD magnetic tape "ioctl"s, but SunOS supports them. They have names like "ansitape", "ansitar", "vmstape", etc.. VMS 'backup' tape readers are rumored to exist 4) This is not Sun related, but: Ultrix comes with an excellent ANSI tape program (binary only) that can even read VMS magtapes.
ggs@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) (07/29/89)
In article <43486@bbn.COM>, rwillis@bbn.com (Robert Willis) writes: > I previously asked for information about reading and writing 9-track tapes > in various formats. Here is a summary of the information which I received. > ... > 3) Other relevant software: A package called tape-tools that is in the AT&T tool chest. An EBCDIC to ASCII translator knows about most IBM tape formats. There is also a program generator that can build custom programs for translating data that is in EBCDIC, binary, floating point and packed decimal. -- Griff Smith AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill Phone: 1-201-582-7736 UUCP: {most AT&T sites}!ulysses!ggs Internet: ggs@ulysses.att.com
frank@croton.dec.com (Frank Wortner) (07/31/89)
In article <43486@bbn.COM>, rwillis@bbn.com (Robert Willis) writes: > 4) This is not Sun related, but: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I'm willing to overlook that ... ;-) > Ultrix comes with an excellent ANSI tape program (binary > only) that can even read VMS magtapes. FYI, the program in question, ltf (Labeled Tape Facility) can also write ANSI-compatible ("VMS") tapes. Regards, Frank