[Info-vax] Backup TK50 tapes

[Chris Scheers]

supervinx wrote:
> Well, let's see again what I've understood...
> 1) Bootable VMS installation tapes cannot be duplicated easily.
> 2) Once extracted all the savesets (and the binaries) a bootable tape needs 
> to be reconstructed by hand. Physically or virtually.
> 3) A bootable tape boots with a subset of VMS which will restore the savesets.
> 3) If I want a physical tape copy I need a SCSI tape unit and another OS, 
> along with tapecopy/tapedd.
> 
> So, my idea to boot simh from 5.5 tape images and install VMS is a bit
> hard to realize...

Creating a disk archive of a bootable VMS tape is "interesting" because 
it has various files with various record sizes that all need to be 
preserved.

dd will not do the job.

BACKUP will not do the job.

You need a utility that can preserve the various record/tape mark 
attributes.

Search for information on "Supnik tape format". This is able to preserve 
the required attributes.

In general, I believe SIMH supports Supnik tape images.  I do not know 
specifically if SIMH/VAX supports them.

I do now know if there is a VMS utility to copy a tape to a Supnik 
format file, but such a file "should" be platform independent and could 
be created anywhere.

I say "should" because I have seen endian errors in some implementations.

Good luck!

-- 
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Chris Scheers, Applied Synergy, Inc.

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