Usenix archives?

Usenix archives?

[Tim Shoppa]

A rescue yesterday yielded several 9-tracks claiming to be Usenix
collections from the late 70's and early 80's.  Are there any Usenix
collections online that might be interested in copies?  If not, would 
this material be appropriate for the PUPS archive, possibly in a trimmed 
or edited form?

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa at trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd		   Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927

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From: Warren Toomey <wkt@henry.cs.adfa.edu.au>
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Subject: Re: Usenix archives?
In-Reply-To: <990502174247.20c01252 at trailing-edge.com> from Tim Shoppa at "May 2, 1999  5:42:47 pm"
To: SHOPPA at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa)
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:03:24 +1000 (EST)
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In article by Tim Shoppa:
> A rescue yesterday yielded several 9-tracks claiming to be Usenix
> collections from the late 70's and early 80's.  Are there any Usenix
> collections online that might be interested in copies?  If not, would 
> this material be appropriate for the PUPS archive, possibly in a trimmed 
> or edited form?

Hi Tim, yes I think those tapes would be excellent material for the
PUPS Archive. We already have some Usenix tapes in the archive:

2616    Applications/Usenix_77/ug091377-ar.tar.gz
10208   Applications/Spencer_Tapes/del.tar.gz
2688    Applications/Spencer_Tapes/tor79.tar.gz

but of course more would be welcome. I'd be happy to take them untrimmed :-)

Thanks!
	Warren

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Subject: SunOS 0.4 tape
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When sorting through old things in the machine room here recently,
Job Bogan came across an early QIC tape of SunOS.  The label reads:

    Sun UNIX 4.2* Software Release 0.4
          (*Berkeley Beta Release)
    1/4" Boot Tape 1 of 2 700-0585-01
    copyright (c) 1983 Sun Microsystems

Unfortunately, when I attempted to read the tape, all I got was a
tar file of a Fortran program dating from 1989.  It didn't get very
far into the tape, though, so parts of the original software may
still be present -- but I don't know how to get past the end-of-tape
mark to get at them.  Any ideas?

By the way, the Sun 1 that this tape goes with still exists, elsewhere
on campus, but hasn't been in usable condition in years.

eric

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Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 12:29:16 -0400
From: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA@trailing-edge.com>
To: PUPS at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au
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Subject: Re: SunOS 0.4 tape
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>When sorting through old things in the machine room here recently,
>Job Bogan came across an early QIC tape of SunOS.  The label reads:
>
>    Sun UNIX 4.2* Software Release 0.4
>          (*Berkeley Beta Release)
>    1/4" Boot Tape 1 of 2 700-0585-01
>    copyright (c) 1983 Sun Microsystems
>
>Unfortunately, when I attempted to read the tape, all I got was a
>tar file of a Fortran program dating from 1989.

So presumably someone decided to re-use this tape - and we hope they
didn't reformat the tape first.

>  It didn't get very
>far into the tape, though, so parts of the original software may
>still be present -- but I don't know how to get past the end-of-tape
>mark to get at them.  Any ideas?

QIC tape formats have physical sectors that the controller (in your
case, most likely the SCSI controller that interfaces the drive to
your SCSI bus) presents to the rest of the system as a series of
logical tape records and tape marks.  You can't get past the logical
end-of-tape because the SCSI controller (not host adapter!) "knows"
there's nothing past the logical end-of-tape.  If you bypass this
by going straight to the physical sectors, you can read the data
following logical end-of-tape, assuming that the cartridge was
never reformatted.  Most SCSI QIC tape controllers will let you
get at the physical sectors, but this is rarely supported by the OS
and isn't always consistent from model to model and manufacturer
to manufacturer.

QIC tape standards are pretty well documented at http://www.qic.org/.
For details on how your SCSI QIC drive can be forced to access
physical sectors, it's best to go straight to the drive manufacturer's
technical manuals.

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa at trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd		   Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927