"Alan Ackerman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > 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 >
There used to be a "TBROWSE" program on the VM usergroup you could get. that allowed tapes to be browsed. Does it still exist? > 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. The data format is very simple. There is "C" source to read both TAPE and VMFPLC2 format "tapes" (it should work on real tapes but I don't have one to try in on, only AWS files) on the H-390 VM Yahoo group. If you want a copy I can send it to you. Mail me as dave at dwade freeseve co uk (I am sure you can put the @ and . in the right place). The tricky bit is figuring out the format of the descriptor block at the end.
