SCO Xenix tar reading SUN tapes

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <87 at joymrmn.UUCP> root at joymrmn.UUCP (Marcel D. Mongeon) writes:
| I have a number of 60MB tapes which were written on a SUN. (I have
| no idea which one).  They were written in tar format.  When I use
| tar under Xenix 386, they come up as unreadable.

  To read them you will probably need a Sun to convert them to standard
format. Sun has two formats, /dev/rst0 which is probably what you have,
and /dev/rst8 which is QIC-24. QIC-24 is what the rest of the world
uses, has a higher density and transfer rate, and should be the default
for everything (but isn't).

  If the data is valuable, copy the file off into a disk file, then back
on another tape. You should be able to read under UNIX or Xenix. I have
done this reasonable often.

       $ dd if=/dev/rst0 of=/tmp/tarfix bs=127	# read the old tape
       $ dd if=/tmp/tarfix of=/dev/rst8 bs=127	# write a new tape

  Hope this helps.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me