On 10 August 2016 at 15:22, <asw...@t-online.de> wrote: > I successfully took a (factory new) DEC TSZ07 SCSI tape drive into operation > using a Sun SS20 and a Linux box. > > Now I do have a big pile of CDC, DEC, HP, Convex and IBM tapes and I'd like > to create tape images to file to save the tapes content. > > What is the to be preferred procedure to image the tapes, which software to > use and which kind of format to store the images?
fwiw, I made my own format when I archived all my old tapes. A very simple one: - I read the tape record by record - The output disk file contains a 4-byte integer in big endian format, followed by one record. - The 4-byte integer contains the physical record size as read from the tape. - Then another 4-byte value plus a new record, and so on. - End-of-file markers are encoded by using 0 as the value for the 4-byte integer, with no record following (logically enough).
