18 Oct
2018
18 Oct
'18
6:23 a.m.
On Oct 18, 2018, at 4:31 AM, Christian Corti via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Oct 2018, Clem Cole wrote:
Different point. You're talking about the host programming interface; Clem was
talking about the physical representation of the data on the tape. Clearly it's easy
to accept random-length blocks from the host and translate them to a sequence of 512 byte
blocks on the media. SIMH is an example of how that is done: it stores tape images as a
count field plus data, laid down in a disk file that internally consists of a sequence of
fixed length (512 bytes, traditionally) sectors.
paul
As Paul W pointed out correctly, the TK50 and its
children in the DLT*
family all used a fixed format 512 byte *blocks on the tape*. This
And that is wrong. The TK50 clearly uses variable block sizes. For example, have a look
at a RSX11 or VMS tape: ...