[Simh] RSTS/E and TPC formatted tape images

[Shoppa, Tim]

There are multiple types of tape images out there. Commonly the ones with 2 byte record
Lengths are called “TPC” and the ones with 4 byte record lengths are called “TAP”.

There’s also a subdivision of the 4 byte record length ones into SIMH and E11.

But I think it would be foolhardy to assume that all TAP’s use the .tap extension and all
TPC’s use the .tpc extension.

Can you try the SIMH attach options (page 8 of
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/simh_doc.pdf) and see if it helps?

Sometimes tape images are corrupted by moving them in ascii instead of binary mode by ftp, too.

From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Michael Richter
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 10:37 AM
To: simh
Subject: [Simh] RSTS/E and TPC formatted tape images

I'm running RSTS/E 9.6 courtesy of Bill Heaton's excellent and helpful site.  I've got a few TPC files lying around that I've attached in SIMH and am trying to mount in RSTS.  When I do this, I get the following error back from RSTS:

$ mount _MM0
?Incorrect density or uninitialized tape

Looking at the TPC file itself, I'm not seeing the problem.  This is how the tape starts (where ^<foo> is, of course, a single binary character):

P^@VOL1SOURCE                           D%B44310011971                            3P^@HDR1INIT.DIR         SOURCE00010001000100 8512
3 85123 000000DECRSTS/E           P^@HDR2U0051200000                     M             00                            ^@^@^@^B
 Name .Typ    Size    Prot     Name .Typ    Size    Prot    DU2:[170,42]
INIPFX.MAC      81   < 60>    DSKDEF.MAC     101   < 60>
DISKDF.MAC      31   < 60>    TAPDEF.MAC      16   < 60>
INIDFN.MAC      31   < 60>    ODTPFX.MAC       3   < 60>
SILNDX.MAC       7   < 60>    INIFIP.MAC     105   < 60>
INIDSK.MAC      89   < 60>    INITTY.MAC      68   < 60>
INIBOO.MAC      22   < 60>    INIDSI.MAC     211   < 60>
INILOA.MAC      26   < 60>    INICOP.MAC     146   < 60>
INIHAR.MAC     107   < 60>    ^@^BINIDEF.MAC     295   < 60>
INIBEG.MAC      12   < 60>    STACOM.MAC       9   < 60>
INIBLD.MAC       4   < 60>    INISTA.MAC     199   < 60>
INILDI.MAC       3   < 60>    FLC   .MAC       6   < 60>
INILDR.MAC      35   < 60>    INIDST.MAC       3   < 60>
INIINS.MAC     128   < 60>    INIONE.MAC     193   < 60>
INIREF.MAC     103   < 60>    INICLN.MAC     177   < 60>
INISET.MAC      71   < 60>    INIIDS.MAC      19   < 60>
INIMCP.MAC       4   < 60>    INIODT.MAC     134   < 60>
BLDBOT.MAC      16  ^@^B < 60>    INIBBR.MAC       3   < 60>
ROOT  .MAC     303   < 60>    INIPAT.MAC     105   < 60>
INIIDE.MAC      16   < 60>    ASMONE.CMD       1   < 60>

To me this looks like a perfectly fine bit of data.  What am I doing wrong when I'm mounting it?  Is this perhaps not a tape file but instead a different class of device?

--
"Perhaps people don't believe this, but throughout all of the discussions of entering China our focus has really been what's best for the Chinese people. It's not been about our revenue or profit or whatnot."
--Sergey Brin, demonstrating the emptiness of the "don't be evil" mantra.
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