That was the point I was inferring, that Eric asked for something that would convert to ASCII. Such a conversion via FTP would corrupt the binary data. Not converting it would preserve the binary/packed decimal but wouldn't accomplish the ASCII conversion. Eric's post stating the possibility of getting a SCSI-attached 3490 tape and doing it in-house looks to me like the best solution because they would have access (hopefully) to the record layouts and so be able to preserve the data without corruption.
Another option would be just hoping you don't need any of this data, and if so, find a service bureau (or a friendly z-based shop) that would contract to migrate data on an as-needed basis. Rex -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chase, John Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 2:36 PM To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Convert 3490E Tapes to CD or DVD > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Pommier, Rex R. > > What will FTP do to any packed data in the datasets? Standard answer: "It depends." 1. If transferred as a "plain" ASCII transfer, packed decimal fields will get corrupted. 2. If transferred as a "binary" transfer, packed decimal fields are preserved (indeed, the whole file remains EBCDIC). Given Eric's description of the nature of the data, I'd probably do a binary transfer and worry about translating it to ASCII (with packed-decimal preservation/translation) when retrieving it on the ASCII machine. -jc- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
