[Simh] SIMH tape images to real tapes

[Larry Baker]

Cory,

"Fatal drive error" means the SIMH decoder failed a validation test.  Meaning, it didn't match Bob Supnik's description of the format.  If you first run TAPELOOK on the SIMH image, the same thing will probably happen.  Where did you download the RSTS tape image.  Are you sure it is a SIMH mag tape image?

It is possible that this will happen at the end of a valid SIMH mag tape image.  I didn't do anything to stop reading bytes at what would be, e.g., a Unix EOF.  That is because I am reading the file in block mode, not record mode.  For example, the tape image I was working with did have garbage at the end of the file.  But, that did not affect the MTD image creation.

If you have a valid SIMH mag tape image, my TAPELOOK program should show you what you've got.  If the conversion worked, you should see the same contents when you run TAPELOOK on the converted MTD mag tape image.

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



On 23 May 2014, at 5:40 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:

> On Tue, 20 May 2014, Larry Baker wrote:
> 
>> Cory,
>> 
>> I wrote a conversion program, SIMH2MTD, to translate a SIMH mag tape image file into my own MTD format.  I ran it on the RSX-11M-Plus SRC tape image.  Then I ran my TAPELOOK program on the result.  At a glance, the TAPELOOK scan of the MTD tape image looks the same as the scan of the original SIMH tape image.  You should be able to do the same with the SIMH tape image you've got.  My TAPELOOK program should produce the same scan of the SIMH tape image, the MTD tape image after you run it through SIMH2MTD, and the actual tape after you run that through MTD.
>> 
> 
> MOIRA::CSMELOSKY$ simh2mtd RSTSE_V10_1_INSTALL_SEP10_1992.TAP rsts-conv.tap
> Fortran Run-Time error:          140
> %SYSTEM-F-DRVERR, fatal drive error
> %TRACE-F-TRACEBACK, symbolic stack dump follows
> module name     routine name                     line       rel PC    abs PC
> 
> DO_CONVERT      DO_CONVERT                       1506      00000191 00011049
> SIMH2MTD        SIMH2MTD                         1424      00000017 00010C17
> 
> -- 
> Cory Smelosky
> http://gewt.net Personal stuff
> http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects

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