Can this be? We have a new 3B5. The tape hardware seems to be limited to an 8k buffer. Since every one in the world writes tar tapes with blocksize 20 we rewrite many tapes. Chris Johnston Fone: 312 962-8440 CSNet: chris at UChicago.CSNet ARPA: johnston at anl-mcs.ARPA UUCP: ...!ihnp4!gargoyle!chris MailNet: j1.johnston at UChicago.MailNet