Creating IBM Labeled Tapes

[Karl Kleine]

In article <1991Apr23.201322.5667 at mrspoc.Transact.COM> steven at Transact.COM writes:
>williams at cac.stratus.com writes:
>
>>Does anyone know of (or advise me on how to write) a tape utility that creates
>>IBM labeled tapes in ebcdic?   I know that "dd" will convert my data from
>>ascii to ebcdic but the what about the label format?
>
>I've got a program I wrote a while back that creates these labels.  ...

I can offer another 'sltape' (standard labeled tape) utility that will
process ANSI and IBM tapes. It reads and writes single-volume-multiple-files
tapes with textual information (you could try binary, but i wouldn't guarantee
anything for that) according to ANSI X3.27 and the IBM manual 'OS/VS Tape
Labels', GC26-2795. Warning -- It's already a couple of years old, so if
IBM changed significant portions :-(. But all my experiences were very
well with sltape. Sltape handled both F and D format records, so you needn't
write all those blanks to tape with dd.

Anyhow, "Contact your IBM local branch office" are the words, just to get
hold of that manual, or a newer version of it. The format is VERY similar
to ANSI tapes, and how to get a copy of X3.27 (aka ISO-1001, ECMA-13 or
DIN 66029) you certainly know, resp. your library knows...

Please respond by email.

Karl Kleine, FZI, Karlsruhe, Germany			 kleine at fzi.uka.de