From: will.senn@gmail.com (Will Senn)
Subject: [TUHS] Determining what was on a tape back in the day
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2017 10:39:08 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <e8e3e990-6b54-9ceb-bf2c-1857de4e2211@gmail.com> (raw)
[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1846 bytes --]
So, I came across this tape:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/TU_DECtapes/unix6.dta
I was curious what was on it, so I read the description at:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/TU_DECtapes.txt
UNIX1 PURDUE UNIX TAPES
UNIX2
UNIX4
UNIX6
HARBA1 HARVARD BASIC TAPE 1
HARBA2 HARVARD BASIC TAPE 2
MEGTEK MEGATEK UNIX DRIVER
RAMTEK RAMTEK UNIX DRIVER
Cool, sounds interesting, so I downloaded the unix6.dta file and fired
up simh - after some fiddling, I figured out that I could get a boot
prompt (is that actually from the tape?) if I:
set cpu 11/40
set en tc
att tc0 unix6.dta
boot tc0
=
At that point, I was stuck - the usual tmrk, htrk, and the logical
corollary tcrk didn't do anything except return me to the boot prompt.
I was thinking this was a sixth edition install tape of some sort, but
if it is, I'm not able to figure it out. I thought I would load the tape
into v7 and look at its content using tm or tp, but then I realized that
I didn't have a device set up for TU56 and even if I did, I didn't know
how to do a dir on a tape - yeah, I know, I will go read the manual(s)
in chagrin.
In the meantime, my question for y'all is similar to my other recent
questions, and it goes like this:
When you received an unmarked tape back in the day, how did you go about
figuring out what was on it? What was your process (open the box, know
by looking at it that it was an x rather than a y, load it into the tape
reader and read some bytes off it and know that it was a z, use unix to
read the tape using tm, tp, tar, dd, cpio or what, and so on)? What
advice would you give a future archivist to help them quickly classify
bit copies of tapes :).
Thanks,
Will
--
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF
next reply other threads:[~2017-11-18 16:39 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 47+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-11-18 16:39 Will Senn [this message]
2017-11-18 18:57 ` Clem Cole
2017-11-18 20:03 ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-18 22:37 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-18 23:16 ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-18 23:35 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-11-19 0:35 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-11-19 0:42 ` Don Hopkins
2017-11-19 1:04 ` Clem cole
2017-11-19 16:20 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-11-20 2:33 ` Lawrence Stewart
2017-11-18 21:26 ` Will Senn
2017-11-18 22:39 ` Clem Cole
2017-11-18 18:34 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-18 18:37 ` Ronald Natalie
2017-11-18 18:40 ` Ronald Natalie
2017-11-18 21:51 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-18 21:07 ` Will Senn
2017-11-18 22:53 ` Clem Cole
2017-11-19 1:47 ` Will Senn
2017-11-18 19:23 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-18 21:32 ` Will Senn
2017-11-18 21:49 ` Warren Toomey
2017-11-19 13:41 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-19 14:55 ` Clem cole
2017-11-19 21:00 ` William Corcoran
2017-11-19 21:19 ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-19 22:00 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-19 22:38 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2017-11-19 22:40 ` Ronald Natalie
2017-11-19 23:41 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-20 1:02 ` Ronald Natalie
2017-11-20 1:18 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-20 18:12 ` Random832
2017-11-20 23:22 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-11-20 23:35 ` William Pechter
2017-11-21 0:01 ` Ron Natalie
2017-11-20 19:02 ` Paul Winalski
2017-11-19 14:55 ` Will Senn
2017-11-19 17:49 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-19 18:35 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-11-19 18:45 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-19 20:46 Steve Simon
2017-11-20 16:01 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-20 17:37 ` Will Senn
2017-11-20 17:00 Noel Chiappa
2017-11-20 19:42 Noel Chiappa
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=e8e3e990-6b54-9ceb-bf2c-1857de4e2211@gmail.com \
--to=will.senn@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).