[HECnet] BRU tapes, extract on UNIX?

[Clem Cole]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 2:28 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
I obviously don't know what Tom might have done. It's definitely possible he did. But depending on when this was, it might have been another format called DSC (Disk Save and Compress), which is what RSX used up until V3.something. Which is, I think, almost mid-80s.

Johnny,

As I said, neither do it and I don't have the code on-line to look anymore, but given the dates you mention, DSC sounds more reasonable.    His work would have been 82/83 ish IIRC.   I seem to remember that the tapes from Mitel came from an RSX system that one of our officemates/fellow grad students brought with him, telling us the tapes were an RSX backup format.    When we mounted them and started to poke around, the tools we had would not work without modification.    Since I was getting ready to bug out/graduate, I remember Tom dealt with it, I just don't remember how he did it.

This is a good example of knowing enough to be dangerous.    I know a little about RSX, but never dived in deep enough to be sure of any of some of those details, so if you suggest that it was likely DSC, I definitely bow to your knowledge.

That said, a quick look at:   http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/rsx/decus/rsx86a/301050/bruformat.txt

and, assuming no tape errors .... I suspect that it should not be that hard to take any of the UNIX ansi tape readers that are available and hack this format in them.   Interesting to see the RAD50 stuff in there.   That takes me back to painful times.

It also looks like the tape directory is in the front few blocks of the tape, which was pretty typical of a number of tape formats, particularly ones for backup. [This makes writing the tapes easier (faster) but it also make recovery harder if you lose blocks in the directory].

Clem