Rule of thumb: you don't need old tapes, you may need old data.
In my former life I had 20 years old data, but the tapes were approx.
2-3 years old (max.). And always replicated, always in two locations.
For old media (tapes, optical, hdd's, whatever) the earlier you start
reading them the better chances you have.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
W dniu 08.06.2021 o 15:18, Carl Swanson pisze:
This was a fun trip down memory lane, I remember the Overland device. And if
memory servers me correctly you had to load the tape through the mechanism manually,
there was at least the ne I tried in the early 90's no autoloader. Why could this be
important is because the most likely error these types of tapes will see is edge damage
making the not readable. And every time a human hand touches, they the chances go up.
Last Time I spoke with anyone about 3420 tapes was back around 2010 and they had a number
of tapes that for any reason "Could Not be Scratched". Their solution was to
hand the tapes to the person making that statement and saying they will not be scratched
because they are in your possession. I thought it was a great solution to the issue. The
likelihood of reading these tapes in my opinion is very low, they have passed their shelf
life.
Carl Swanson
Mobile:215.688.1459
Email: [email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Sunday, June 6, 2021 12:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive
On Sun, 6 Jun 2021 05:54:17 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote:
Presumably he's saying that nobody in his right mind would simply copy the data
on the tape to a byte stream, and that the most obvious way to archive the tape
is to convert it to AWSTAPE format. Once it's in AWSTAPE format, then it's
simple to read it under Hercules, assuming that the labels and records follow
OS/360 conventions.
Amen. Joe Monk's and Radoslaw's comments appear well-informed.
And with 9-track I believe there's no need to deal with the abomination of even
parity. ( knew an old CDC OS that relied on the difference to discern
filetypes, even replicating the behavior in DASD files.)
It's a pity there's no facility to process AWSTAPE directly with no need for a
step to convert to virtual or real 3480. Subsystem? ISV? Or to generate
AWSTAPE on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.
Does a dump of the first block say "VOL1"?
If the OP believes the tapes contain useful data he probably knows which
utility can process the restored images.
-- gil
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