VMS/RSX tape backup problem

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "joe" == joe heck <trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu> writes:

 joe> Here is my dilemna.  I have 6 tapes that look like they are 800
 joe> BPI, and were most likely written on an RSX-11 system.  I have
 joe> no 800 BPI setup, and if I did, it would be on a VAX, which may
 joe> not be able to restore the savesets anyway.  That is because I
 joe> have a few more tapes that I can read (or at least dump) but I
 joe> cannot unpack the savesets. ...

Could you read them as straight streams of blocks, and produce a .TAP
file from that, which you can then feed to RSX running in an emulator?
Or write the data back out to another tape at a density that your RSX
system supports?

 joe> I also have an XXDP tape, labeled MSDP, which makes me think it
 joe> is bootable.  It would be nice to duplicate it, as it is not
 joe> easily read to disk.  The first block is 14 bytes, and the rest
 joe> look like 512 bytes.

That's a DOS format tape -- the 14 byte record is the file label.  If
it's bootable, then the next block is the boot program.  You could
read it and see if it looks like PDP11 code.  A boot block would
typically have either reset (5) or NOP (0240) in the first word.

	  paul