<Ah... you needed the scripts I wrote eleven years ago... they would <build a console TU58 with EXCHANGE and sling the files out to the tape <in the right order. The benefit was that apparently the microprocessor <in the TU58 (at least on the 11/730, don't know about the 11/750) would <buffer the directory so that the only seeks were to *read* files, not to <*locate* the files. The majik was to assemble a freshly inited tape with the files in the correct order, or you end up doing rewind/seek operations and they are slow. There were other TU58 tricks for RT11 like putting "bad" blocks at the ends so the tape would not have wraparound files. Ya know, 3 blocks at the end and then rewind completely to get the next four. Allison