On Wed, 17 Oct 2018, Clem Cole wrote:
As Paul W pointed out correctly, the TK50 and its children in the DLT* family all used a fixed format 512 byte *blocks on the tape*. This
And that is wrong. The TK50 clearly uses variable block sizes. For example, have a look at a RSX11 or VMS tape:
# mtdump AQ-RAE30-01.tap Processing input file AQ-RAE30-01.tap Processing tape file 1 Obj 1, position 0, record 1, length = 80 (0x50) Obj 2, position 88, record 2, length = 80 (0x50) Obj 3, position 176, record 3, length = 80 (0x50) Obj 4, position 264, record 4, length = 80 (0x50) Obj 5, position 352, record 5, length = 80 (0x50) Obj 6, position 440, end of tape file 1 Processing tape file 2 Obj 7, position 444, record 1, length = 2048 (0x800) Obj 8, position 2500, record 2, length = 2048 (0x800) Obj 9, position 4556, record 3, length = 2048 (0x800) Obj 10, position 6612, end of tape file 2 Processing tape file 3 Obj 11, position 6616, record 1, length = 80 (0x50) [...] Processing tape file 5 Obj 21, position 7328, record 1, length = 9216 (0x2400) [...] Processing tape file 8 Obj 363, position 3061188, record 1, length = 2048 (0x800) [...] Processing tape file 62 Obj 2370, position 19735716, record 1, length = 32256 (0x7E00) [...] Christian