On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 18:03:04 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote: >Variable and U format will always be issues. > No. Why?
> ... Converting them on the PC to unlabeled AWSTAPE has similar issues. > No. Why? Labels is just bytes. The format is documented and irrelevant. We once had an offline, in-house "Tape Replication System", hardware and software supplied by an overseas vendor. At some point the decision was made to move the system, physically and logically, to an out-of-state contractor and supply electronic images rather than physical tapes. I was tasked with replicating the internal data format. (hot AWSTAPE; should have been. I was not part of the specification process and would nor have bee aware of AWSTAPE in thee day.) I reverse-engineered the vendor's data format from their source code and wrote a Rexx program to generate the vendor's format from our master tapes, mounted overriding to RECFM=U,LABEL=BLP. Worked readily. My code didn't need to understand the formats of labels, BDWs, or RDWs. Bytes is bytes. One wrinkle was that Rexx in the day didn't handle RECFM=U -- I needed to add a REPRO step to convert U to VB. >BUT I believe that IFF the original tape has standard header and trailer >files, then AWSTAPE is realistic to use. Then the AWSTAPE file can be binary >transferred to the MF and processed there with the mainframe AWSTAPE utility >(or is it a HET utility? I don’t remember now). > >The key step is to capture the binary data with no translation from degrading >9-track. Figuring out how to successfully use it can come after that step. > >PC utilities like HXD (HexEdit) can view binary EBCDIC files with ease so you >know what you are dealing with after you capture the data. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
