Perhaps the work could be split up: reading the track waveforms is the one step that requires special hardware (and the skill to handle the tape with minimal damage). Given a collection of recovered waveforms, the data recovery can then be done by anyone.
paul > On Aug 5, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Jay Jaeger via cctech <cct...@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > I know Paul well (we were contemporaries at U. WI). He does not do that very > often. He did not indicate any issue with a fire at the building that > contains his collection when I last spoke with him. > > He does not actually read "blocks". He reads the tape in an *analog* > fashion, and then processes the results with software. That is how he > recovered the IBM 1410 system tapes and diagnostics, for example. > > To be honest, I doubt that this content would be such that he would be likely > to volunteer. > > JRJ > > On 8/4/2021 3:11 PM, Van Snyder wrote: >> Paul Pierce <p...@teleport.com <mailto:p...@teleport.com>> read some 7-track >> and 9-track tapes for me about twenty years ago. He was in Portland, OR at >> the time. His "lab" was on the east side of the Willamette river, so maybe >> it didn't get burned down. >> I don't know whether he still has a setup to read tapes. His software would >> read blocks forward and backward, including the parity frames, and make >> corrections. >> Van Snyder >> On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 09:25 -0500, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote: >>> James, I am located in Madison WI. I would need to fire up my SCSI 9 >>> Track drive (software on Linux) and test it as I have not used in a >>> couple of years, but I have done recovery of old tapes from this era >>> before, and have a primitive setup for "baking" tapes before trying to >>> read them. >>> >>> Assuming my HP 9 track is still happy, I can produce AWS format tape >>> images, raw block files and extract individual files (translated into >>> ASCII if that is desirable). >>> >>> I don't remember exactly the time period when tape coatings were such >>> that reading them without "baking" them is very risky - this might be >>> before that era - Al Kossow would probably know - so I'd likely "bake" >>> it first before trying to read it. >>> >>> Given the name "IEBUPDTX" this tape was certainly intended to be used on >>> a 360 or 370, as you described below (IBM has a utility IEBUPDTE). >>> >>> So, if you haven't found somebody to read this thing yet, feel free to >>> contact me. >>> >>> JRJ >>> >>> On 8/2/2021 10:11 AM, James Liu via cctech wrote: >>>> Thanks for feedback and offers to assist. I received the tape from >>>> one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made >>>> around 1978 at SLAC. >>>> >>>> For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's >>>> at CERN on the CDC 6600. My understanding is that he more or less >>>> insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high >>>> level languages would just get in the way and slow things down. The >>>> code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but >>>> its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware. >>>> >>>> In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM >>>> S/360 and S/370. It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I >>>> gathered. The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an >>>> intermediate PL/I like language. But then, instead of using the IBM >>>> PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I >>>> like language in IBM assembly. This conversion was never fully >>>> completed for reasons unknown to me. >>>> >>>> Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where >>>> I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated. But >>>> the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k >>>> assembly. (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have >>>> been the natural language of choice.) Moreover, he insisted on >>>> developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc). This was >>>> before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to >>>> just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac, >>>> NeXT, and others I am not familiar with). We have a pretty good >>>> collection of m68k code >>>> ( >>>> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html >>>> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html> >>>> ), but nothing >>>> earlier. >>>> >>>> Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like >>>> code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion. It may also have CDC >>>> source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents. The >>>> CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it >>>> exists on the tape. >>>> >>>> - jim >>>>