[Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

The old netnews copytape program from the 80s did the same thing.  Somebody
has a GitHub version of it: https://github.com/halfmanhalftaco/copytape


ᐧ

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:47 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

> Zane - unless I remember wrong, there is a tool from DECUS to copy tapes
> to a file image, and then get that back to a tape again. The RSX version is
> called TPC, and I'm pretty sure it also exists for VMS.
>
> Using that, pull your physical tapes into files, copy the files over to
> the simulated machines, and write them back out to simulated tapes there.
>
>   Johnny
>
> On 2018-01-25 16:17, Zane Healy wrote:
>
>> Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a virtual
>> tape drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or a Physical
>> machine.  I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract files (and I have
>> with some of the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.
>>
>> Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were in
>> the 20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not something
>> most of us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m looking to go this
>> route.
>>
>> Zane
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:39 AM, Tim Shoppa <tshoppa at gmail.com <mailto:
>>> tshoppa at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> A couple of the tape image utilities I wrote or updated in the 1990s
>>> have that limit. Let me see if they are still in the SIMH utility tree.
>>> They never would’ve bitten me back in the 90s because the biggest reels I
>>> ever dealt with were 3600 feet at 6250 BPI, less than 250 Mbytes.
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:23 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se <mailto:
>>> bqt at softjar.se>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just process
>>>> records and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.
>>>>
>>>> Johnny
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tim Shoppa <tshoppa at gmail.com <mailto:tshoppa at gmail.com>> skrev: (25
>>>> januari 2018 00:53:34 CET)
>>>>
>>>>     Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit
>>>>     integers to carry offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte
>>>>     tape image sizes.
>>>>
>>>>     I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image
>>>>     formats used by SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image
>>>>     tools you might find from 20 years ago.
>>>>
>>>>     Tim.
>>>>
>>>>     On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy <healyzh at avanthar.com
>>>>     <mailto:healyzh at avanthar.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I
>>>>         was looking through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me.
>>>>    Is there a size limit?
>>>>
>>>>         Thanks,
>>>>         Zane
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
>                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>
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