8 Jan
2025
8 Jan
'25
7:22 p.m.
Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:20:33 +0000 (UTC)
From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
I've got a 7 track tape here that was written on a
PDP-10 TENEX setup.
It's identified as a "mini-dump" tape. I can extract the data (PDP-10
5 char/word) successfully, but the format of the block headers (seems to
be about 6 words) eludes me. I'd like to be able to use the original
file names.
Does anyone have information on the mini-dump
structure?
Chuck,
I never got the opportunity to use TENEX, so never encountered "mini-dump"
format tapes. However, a quick browse through the TENEX manuals at Bitsavers
tunred up a program called TAINT which accompanied TENEX but was intended for
execution on Tops-10, specifically to read mini-dump tapes under the DEC OS.
This program does not appear in Tim Shoppa's archive of PDP-10 tapes (not
surprising, since most of them are DEC images).
I asked a friend who is not on the list if he was familiar with anything TENEX
(he was a systems programmer for SAIL), but he did not know.
A 7 track tape should have the 36 data bits across 6 frames, unlike the 9 track
usage of 5x8 with zero padding in the 5th.
Someone familiar with the TENEX file system (i. e., TOPS-20 lite) should be
able to decipher the block headers easily enough. There's at least one of us
on the list.
Rich
...still programming PDP-10 systems for money in the 21st Century...