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Aucbvax.4762 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Wed Oct 28 17:23:16 1981 VAX/VMS Magnetic Tape Labels >From menlo70!sytek!rob@Berkeley Wed Oct 28 14:36:16 1981 Another source to consider for VAX/VMS or any other DEC Magnetic Tape Label is the following:

"DEC Magnetic Tape Labels and File Structure Standard" By, Lois Framptom, July, 1978, #005-003-187-11.

I am not sure of DEC availability. This document defines 4 levels of magnetic tape label formats, record formats and tape-mark relationships. It seems that DEC wanted to conform (or try) to ANSI X3.27-1977, Magnetic Tape Labels and File Structure for Information Interchange.

This document attempts to set the DEC standard for RSX/IAS, RT-11, RSTS/E, VMS/RMS, TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 DEC systems. I have only worked with RSX-11/M (PIP tapes) and VMS (Ver. 1.6, 2.0 & 2.1) RMS tapes. The RSX tapes follow the standard and are not to hard to read. VMS tapes on the other hand are not even fully interchangeable between the above versions. This stems from the their handling of the HDR2 record CP16-36 System dependent file attributes field. They went from binary encoding to ASCII one time and another they added a HDR3 record (surprise). The nastiest field to figure out is the number of characters in the "fixed area" within fixed-length records format. Some files will it have and others will not even in the same VOL1 grouping.

Rob Cardoza (ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!rob)

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