[Simh] Problem with reading tape with PDP-11 SIMH

[Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm]

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Alan Frisbie wrote:
> On 05/21/2015 12:47 PM, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote:
> >  > sim> set ts0 format=tpc
> >  > sim> show ts0
> >  > TS0     not attached, write enabled, TPC format
> >  >         unlimited capacity
> >  > sim> attach -n ts0 newrsx11s.tpc
> >  > File open error
> >  > sim>
> >
> > Simh does not support writing tapes in TPC format.
> 
> Darn.   Can I attach a raw SCSI tape device (TSZ07 on an Alpha/VMS
> system)?

No.  There is no RAW tape support on any platform.  In theory it could be added, but it would be a project.

Since you are messing with tpc format tape images within your RSX environment, why not move those image files to the VMS host over the network?  Better yet, make the tape in the standard simh format and convert it on the host to TPC with the mt2tpc.c program from the simtools.zip file on simh.trailing-edge.com.  

I'm in the middle of updating the github repo with the latest simtools.zip from trailing-edge and now will also add the things Rialto mentioned.

Please follow Timothe Litt's suggestion and get back to me with the minimal value of DEP TS TIME which produces reasonable results for the original TPC problem you saw.

Thanks.

- Mark