Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!sdcsvax!ucbvax!JASPER.PALLADIAN.COM!dp From: dp@JASPER.PALLADIAN.COM (Jeffrey Del Papa) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: How to read non-initialized 6250 tapes in vms? Message-ID: <870529142136.4.DP@BANFF.PALLADIAN.COM> Date: Fri, 29-May-87 14:21:00 EDT Article-I.D.: BANFF.870529142136.4.DP Posted: Fri May 29 14:21:00 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 31-May-87 19:45:57 EDT References: <1177@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Jeffrey Del Papa Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 25 Date: 28 May 87 15:50:42 GMT From: hearn@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (hearn) We have several machines here. One of them puts out 6250tapes in a standard oil industry format that can't be read by vms. I've been told that this is because the the tapes arent vms intialized. I can transfer 1600 ttapes. I can also read the tapes on an ibm (cms). But vms just finds 0 length records. Any ideas anyone? tom hearnZZ if the tapes are really just headerless, you should be able to mount them foreign and issue qio's to the drive. however there may be something much worse wrong with them. the problem is likely that the tape has no inter-record gaps. This seems to be a seismic industry specific perversion. There exist special tape drive/controller combinations (that have several internal buffers) for reading such things. Among other side effects, the tape will be either 800bpi, or 6250bpi, as the 1600 format can get lost if there is just the wrong kind of bad spot on the tape (this isn't a problem with normaly recorded tapes as it can re-synch at a record gap)