9-track tape info (summ

[Griff Smith]

In article <570 at brazos.Rice.edu>, rwillis at 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.
...
> 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.

True for Sun, but there is a package in the AT&T Toolchest that knows how
to read most of the standard IBM tape formats.  It includes a program
generator that lets you write custom programs that translate the fields in
input records.  Translations are defined for EBCDIC, packed decimal,
binary and floating point fields.

> 	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].

The package has full support for label processing, including support for
multi-dataset tapes and multi-tape datasets.
-- 
Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
Phone:		1-201-582-7736
UUCP:		{most AT&T sites}!ulysses!ggs
Internet:	ggs at ulysses.att.com