[Info-vax] Copying VMS SaveSet Under Windows

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:
> About ANSI tapes:
> 
> Question: does the tape drive itself signal end of file and end of tape
> ? Or just end of tape ?
> 
> or does the tape automatically  skip inter block gaps and return block
> after block, with only end of tape being signaled ?

there's nothing magic about ANSI tapes.
 From the tape drive's (and UNIX') point of view,
the files on tape are still sacks of bytes,
separated by single tape marks, and a double tape
mark signals the EOT.
It's just that some OS's (e.g. VMS) wraps
each tape file in an extra header
and an extra trailer file containing additional
file info (name, date, recl etc), and the whole
tape is assigned a volume label recorded somewhere
in the first header. It's not rocket science,
but of course requires some extra work to teach a Unix system
to read that information - if anybody would be interested.
I did such things about twenty years ago to facilitate
data exchange with the non-DEC world. DEC Unices
(Ultrix, OSF/1) have the "ltf" utility on board,
but iirc it has limited capabilities (i.e. no
multivolume support etc.)