[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-08-07 20:45, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <pkajsi$u2a$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk> writes:
>>
>> Ok, but that's a pretty special case, though who knows what systems
>> programmers have to deal with from time to time :-). If you are on a
>> unix machine, then there are other utils, like dd to investigate low
>> level disk and tape formats...
>>
> 
>     dd would not tell me what desnity a 9-track tape drive was written at.

True. But it's very seldom a piece of information I ever cared about. :-)
Tape drives normally autodetected the density. It was more a thing I had 
to care about when writing tapes. And then I had to choose it.

And if the tape was in a density my drive couldn't read then I couldn't 
read it no matter, and I could not find out what the density was.

Fortunately, most people wisely enough wrote down on a sticker on the 
tape what density it was written at.

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol