OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa?

That's an interesting way to phrase this particular question, since the contents are already in the form of "files" -- that is, if you ask the set of drivers that got them to the disk in the first place. :) I believe it's possible (though it would be slow) to interpret a bit-for-bit image directly on a tape and extract any given file, along with attributes, etc. In fact, any operation that would be possible on a disk, in this case, could be handled on a tape. The clincher is that it would involve a lot of seek/rewind/seek/etc/etc.. The underlying O/S need not even know the difference between the disk and tape, except to know that the tape is removable (...that's not absolutely required), and perhaps that it's incredibly slow. The worst that would be required is a device abstraction layer or the like. You could write one yourself which would make the tape device "look" like a disk device, for systems which don't have such a thing, and that would be enough. How would you like to be able to mount your backup tape, and use a file-manager on it? ;) If you mean that it didn't store attributes, or that sort of thing, you may be right (never paid attention.) On the other hand, you're also right to say that it wouldn't particularly matter under MS-DOS. Regards, Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '