BOB%HOWARD@CC.UTAH.EDU (09/10/87)
A few months ago someone asked about reading RT-11 files on a VMS machine... While looking through the November 1985 System Dispatch I found an interesting article. I don't know what the final answer was to the original question but this might be of some general interest. It basically says... RT-11 produces ANSI magnetic tapes with valid labels; however, the data in the data blocks of the tape are in the RT-11 record structure, which VAX/VMS cannot process. The EXCHANGE utility can be used to read an RT-11 magnetic tape file into an RT-11 virtual disk and then transfer the file from the virtual disk to a files-11 disk. The following procedure can be used to transfer files from an RT-11 ANSI magnetic tape to VAX/VMS. $ MOUNT mta0: tape-label $ EXCHANGE INITIALIZE/CREATE/ALLOCATION=32000 mt.dsk MOUNT/VIRTUAL dt: mt.dsk COPY/LOG mta0:*.* dt:/ALLOCATION=1/TRANSFER=block COPY/LOG dt:*.* DISK$WORK:[smith.rttape] exit $ Please note the "/ALLOCATION=1" on the first copy command. This is necessary so that the exchange utility is not confused by an inconsistency with respect to RT-11 tapes. If this qualifier is omitted, all copies fail because of "device full" errors. Also, when attempting to copy an individual file from the RT-11 magnetic tape, the file name must be blank padded to six letters and enclosed in quotes. For example to copy the file CKFS.MAC from the tape, the copy command is as follows: COPY /LOG mta0:"CKFS .MAC" dt: /ALLOCATION=1 /TRANSFER=block Bob Wheeler Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Salt Lake City -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in my letters are mine alone. They are not the opinions of my supervisors nor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------