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From: McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: VMS processing of IBM tapes
Message-ID: <8611061033.AA11056@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 3-Nov-86 20:34:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8611061033.AA11056
Posted: Mon Nov  3 20:34:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Nov-86 09:04:23 EST
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There are two approaches to reading EBCDIC coded tapes.  Either involves
writing some code.  You can write a program that reads tapes directly, or
you can use VMS to transfer the files to disk and write a program that
converts the files from EBCDIC to ASCII coding on disk.

To copy any foreign file from tape to disk, mount the tape /FOREIGN, and
execute COPY commands such as COPY MUA0: FILE1.DAT, COPY MUA0: FILE2.DAT,
etc.  COPY knows to stop at end-of-file marks.  When you are done, you
will have files in your account that contain the EBCDIC-coded information.
If the tape was written with standard IBM labels, then some of the files
will contain the label information, and some will contain data files.

In a program to convert from EBCDIC to ASCII, you can use the library
routine LIB$TRA_EBC_ASC, which will do the mapping of EBCDIC to ASCII
codes for you.  See the documentation.

We use the AVATU program (from a DECUS tape) when we need to read (or write)
EBCDIC tapes with standard IBM labels.  Undoubtedly, other INFO-VAX readers
can suggest other programs that have already been written to do certain
other kinds of EBCDIC <-> ASCII conversions.