[Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 77, Issue 20

[Larry Baker]

Michael,

I found lots of useful RSTS manuals at http://wjh.conflux.net:16080/RSTS-V9/web/manuals.html 
.  From what I read, RSTS supports both DOS-11 and ANSI tape label  
processing.  If you use ANSI tapes, you have to choose between no  
format conversion or record conversion.  The former writes a "U" for  
the file format (an extension to the ANSI spec) in the tape labels.   
The manuals say that these tapes can only be read by RSTS systems.  If  
you choose format conversion, a "D" is written for the format in the  
tape labels.  Unlike RSX-11 and VMS, RSTS does not support ANSI tapes  
and format conversions in the file system -- RSTS only writes the  
labels for you, you have to perform the format conversion.  The PIP  
utility or the DCL COPY command is the most promising way to read/ 
write tapes -- they will do the format conversions.  As far as I could  
tell, RSTS supports FCS (File Control Services) and RMS-11 (Record  
Management Services) file formats.  FCS text files are like RT-11  
format: the line starts with a LF and ends with a CR.  I think that is  
the format you would use to write DOS-11 format tapes (each file has a  
14-byte label followed by 512-byte blocks and a tape mark) or ANSI "U"  
format tapes.  Just like with FTP, getting text files from one system  
to another can be troublesome.  Kermit occurred to me as a viable  
alternative.  It sounds like you may already be on to that.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
baker at usgs.gov

On Apr 30, 2010, at 9:00 AM, simh-request at trailing-edge.com wrote:

> Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:06:44 +0800
> From: Michael Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Simh] Making tape/disk images
> To: simh <simh at trailing-edge.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<x2nee970b291004291906z309253aaob39d17eb0d30c88c at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Have I mentioned recently how much I love this community?
>
> Thanks for all the pointers, code, information and offers guys!   
> I'll go
> over everything, figure out what's working best and report back my  
> findings.
> If that means writing a tar-alike I'll also post the code.
>
> (I'm also going to put up a tape image with a fully-functioning  
> Kermit-11
> for RSTS and, maybe, RSX-11 and RT-11 (if I have the time) so others  
> don't
> have to go through this mess.)
>

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