[Simh] loading decus10 tapes

[Chris Turner]

Hello

First off thanks for some great software -
I've been using SIMH for some years to learn about
various systems-of-yore and it's great..

Anyhow -

I'm attempting to use the tops10-1.4.tar.bz2 system image
from:

http://www.steubentech.com/~talon/pdp10/tops10-1.4.tar.bz2
http://www.steubentech.com/~talon/pdp10/readme.txt

to read one of the decuslib tapes - specifically:

decuslib10-02.tap

from

http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tapes/decuslib10-02.tap.bz2

I keep getting the following error message from backup:

/tape mta0
?BKPCOM Can't OPEN mag tape

and, not being versed in the intricacies of PDP-10 tape
I am not sure where the problem might lie -
and before I start stepping through the emulation
code to try and figure it out,
wondering if anyone could read over my transcript and let
me know if they think there there has been some regression,
or let me know the obvious thing I'm doing wrong..

I've tried older simh, the backup10 Unix utilities,
setting all of the simh tape formats from the pdp10 monitor
and have not been able to get anything to work..

Also - I tried to read the 2 tapes in the tops10-1.4.tar.bz2 archive -
which, given their inclusion with the working disk images, I assume,
work -

test-sys/BB-D480C-SB_1981.tap
test-sys/advent.tap

with similar simh tape combinations to no avail - which
I'd think would rule out the possiblity of a corrupted decuslib tape
being the solitary problem..

Haven't tried another image yet.. pondering that but thought I'd
check here first..

Help welcome and thanks!

- Chris

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