[comp.periphs] 9trk tape problem

ameyer@nsscb.UUCP (Andy Meyer) (01/17/89)

Are there any tape gurus on the net?

I've got some 2400 foot 9-track tapes, apparently written at 6250bpi on a
DecSystem-10 under TOPS-10. I'd like to be able to extract what's on the tape,
or at least see whether there's anything worth extracting from it.
Does anybody know the particulars of the Dec tape format? (blocking, etc.)

The target machine is a 3B2/4000 running Unix Sys V.
Can I check out the tape with a combination of Unix commands, or do I
need some sort of conversion utility?

Thanks, Andy

    ==--      Andreas Meyer, N2FYE
  -====---    AT&T National Systems Support Center
  --==----    South Plainfield, NJ
    ----      uucp: ..!rutgers!psuvax1!nsscb!ameyer

scott@attcan.UUCP (Scott MacQuarrie) (01/18/89)

There is an easy method to determine the block size of the info on the
tape. If you enter the dd command with a count of 1 and a huge block size
and send it to a tmp file, the size of that file will tell you the correct
block size of the information on the tape. Use that block size for another
dd command and you will be able to read the tape into a file on the 4000.
If the information is usable beyond that depends on whatever is on the
tape.


-- 
     -------     Scott T. MacQuarrie 
   -====------   Senior Technical Consultant, Toronto Branch, AT&T Canada
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