TK50, was: Re: [TUHS] Ultrix Tape: Block Size?

[Christian Corti]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2018, Clem Cole wrote:
> 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:

# mtdump AQ-RAE30-01.tap
Processing input file AQ-RAE30-01.tap
Processing tape file 1
Obj 1, position 0, record 1, length = 80 (0x50)
Obj 2, position 88, record 2, length = 80 (0x50)
Obj 3, position 176, record 3, length = 80 (0x50)
Obj 4, position 264, record 4, length = 80 (0x50)
Obj 5, position 352, record 5, length = 80 (0x50)
Obj 6, position 440, end of tape file 1
Processing tape file 2
Obj 7, position 444, record 1, length = 2048 (0x800)
Obj 8, position 2500, record 2, length = 2048 (0x800)
Obj 9, position 4556, record 3, length = 2048 (0x800)
Obj 10, position 6612, end of tape file 2
Processing tape file 3
Obj 11, position 6616, record 1, length = 80 (0x50)
[...]
Processing tape file 5
Obj 21, position 7328, record 1, length = 9216 (0x2400)
[...]
Processing tape file 8
Obj 363, position 3061188, record 1, length = 2048 (0x800)
[...]
Processing tape file 62
Obj 2370, position 19735716, record 1, length = 32256 (0x7E00)
[...]


Christian