Hi All, Thanks for the help with LIF formats and CS80 protocol. I now have the bare bones of an application working. Currently the application runs on a PC fitted with a NI GPIB board. It reads LIF formatted hardrives (in my case one of two 9133's that I have) extracting the file catalog. A file can then be selected from the catalog and its binary image written to the PC's hard drive. This means that I can back-up the files on one of the 9133 drives before reformatting it :) That's as far as I've got at the moment - it has taken rather longer than I had first hoped but seems to be pretty stable now. I could write some more code to allow sets of files to be selected from the binary images stored on the PC and then written back to the CS80 protocol hard drive (either re-formatting the hard drive or appending the new files to the existing catalog). This would allow easy file interchange (and back-up) for people with CS80 / LIF based computers. Perhaps a database of binaries / files could be made available on the internet to download as required? What would the copyright implications be if such a database were made available? Would there be any interest from people with 9000 200 and 300 systems on the list? If there is enough interest I will look doing the extra coding sooner rather than putting it on the pile of things that I 'really shoud do one day'. Cheers Peter Brown _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail messages direct to your mobile phone http://www.msn.co.uk/mobile