[Info-vax] RMS internals?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

In comp.os.vms Bob Koehler <koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:
< 
<   Once upon a time I was told that the "universal" format was 800 BPI
<   9-tracks written in unblocked 80 byte EBCDIC records.

I believe more common is 80 bytes blocked into 800 byte blocks.
80 was just too small, even in 1964.
 
<   Fortunately, when we got our second 11/780 some nice DECcie gave us
<   a program to translate to/from EBCDIC while moving files to/from
<   tape.

I remember reading EBCDIC tapes on the PDP-10, and then VAX.
Finally after some time I managed to convince OS/VS2 to write
an AL (ANSI label) tape with ASCII data, just like VAX/VMS liked.
 
<   But the only 9-tracks drives know I can find are out of commision, in
<   the basement of a friend who would like to find parts for them.

-- glen