tapetools and VMS Backup tapes

[Ethan Dicks]

I slapped an AHA 1640 PCMCIA card in my Linux laptop, compiled
tapetools 0.4 and 0.6 and started shoving tapes in my TSZ07.  I wrote
these tapes myself a number of years ago, and have finally gotten
around to attempting to extract them.  Things seemed to go fine,
except that on certain tapes, I saw a page or two of partial records
reported - i.e. - these VMS BACKUP tapes were written with a block
size of 16384, and some tapes report ~2500 records of 16384 bytes
(1600 bpi), and some report a few hundred records of 16384, then a few
at a smaller number, then more at 16384, etc.  I'd think there were
some read problems, but the tape wasn't shoe-shining - it buzzed along
at full tilt.

Does anyone here have any experience with reading VMS BACKUP tapes
with tapetools?  Can you share your observations?  I haven't yet tried
reading the files - I know there were some VMS BACKUP extractors in C
years ago, and I've even used them, but I'll probably have to re-find
and rebuilt them.  I could also fire up simh and VMS, but at the
moment, my VMS install CDs are somewhere else.

I'm really just after the data for now - it's all the stuff I worked
on at Software Results years ago - all the COMBOARD software as well
as a wad of personal files (one-off programs, stuff from newsgroups,
etc.).  I still have the Fuji Eagle that was spun down a few weeks
after the backup was made, but I haven't attempted to power that up
yet to see if it still works.

Thanks for sharing any tapetools stories (and any suggestions about
'modern' VMS BACKUP extractors).

-ethan