VMFPLC2 puts the FST information in the front of the data, TAPE puts it in the back, (or did I get that backwards?) Originally VMFPLC2 blocked the tape in larger blocks but eventually TAPE was changed to also support the larger block size. I don't know what VMFPLC did. If you want to post some sample data somewhere, we can probably write a Pipe to read it.
I'm surprised that VMFPLC2 cannot read it. Perhaps they just changed the first character of each record? Are you sure you have the right kind of tape drive? I'm not so surprised that VMFPLC will not run. If you have DITTO give that a try. If not, try PIPE tape 181 | > fn ft fm and then XEDIT fn ft fm and see if you can figure out the format. Source code for VMFPLC2 and TAPE might help -- if you are an assembler programmer or know one. I remember the format as being very simple. I used to spend a fair amount of time extracting good data from bad tapes -- but not for years! I'm sure glad tape operations here insisted on getting DITTO.
