[Info-vax] Old DECUS VMS SIG tapes (pre-1984)

[Alan Frisbie]

On 05/07/2015 06:11 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Alan,
>    You got all the old PDP-11 tapes by any chance?  I would love to
> have a CD's with all of them as I have very little luck finding them
> on the web.  Indexes, but almost never the actual contents.

Maybe not *all*, but a large number of them.   I don't have any RSTS
tapes (except for a v7.0 distribution) -- my interest in those days was
RT-11 and RSX, so I have both distributions and SIG tapes.   Yes, I will
be copying them and making them available to the world.   Just give me
a bit of time, since my oven only holds ten tapes at a time, and I have
to bake them 48 hours.   Even then, I occasionally find a tape that can't
be read.   I also discovered that I only have tape 2 of 2 for the RSX-11A
distribution.

One problem that sometimes shows up is with the paper labels on the tapes.
1980s ink (both my pens and DEC's printers) has sometimes faded to the
point that it cannot be read.   I have had some success by scanning the
label and using contrast enhancement to recover the text, but not always.

One tape I'm looking at is obviously a DEC software distribution tape,
but the label is completely blank now!   I need some NCIS-style TV show
technology.   :-)   I'll probably be able to determine what it is from
the contents, but the label information is lost.

Alan