24 May
2014
24 May
'14
2:39 p.m.
On 05/24/2014 11:12 AM, Rick Bensene wrote:
The username field in the archive is of the form used
on CDC Cyber
computers running NOS or KRONOS.
University of Illinois was big on CDC machines.
I bet it is some kind of archive format used on CDC machines to
create tapes that could be interchanged with other types of systems,
e.g. IBM.
I wish I could remember more detail from my Cyber operator days, as I
do vaguely remember that there was a utility that we ran to create
takes in a format that the big IBM systems on the business side of
the company (Tektronix) could read.
WRT the tapes I have, they're long after my time (SCOPE 3.1,6/3.3 era).
KRONOS was still KRONOS and there was talk about renaming SCOPE 3.4
NOS/BE. There was a serious division within the company over which was
better.
There was a SCOPE interchange utility that I vaguely remember. Almost
unmaintained and obscure as heck. Often, it was easier to throw
together some FORTRAN do do the job. I remember doing so when
processing a DECSystem 10 binary tape (5 characters per 36 bit word).
This was pre-6RM. 7600 SCOPE 2 introduced the idea of a common record
management utility, IIRC.
My memories of 6000 tape drivers are mostly from the hated 1LT "long
tape" driver on systems that made extensive use of ECS. It was
entertaining to watch retries, at least.
--Chuck