SCSI Tape to TAP utility

[Chuck Guzis]

On 08/09/2015 03:03 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:
> No, the OS did the drive assignments, and then prompted the operator
> to do the mount of the appropriate VolSer on a given drive.  The
> label was of course checked as part of the OS/360 open process, and
> if there was a label, and it was not expired, one could not write
> over it, or, whether reading or writing, that the label matched the
> requested DSN.
>
> (Remember that OS/360 never heard of the 3480 tapes and their
> autoloaders - things presumably changed then, along with tape
> library management software, but by then I had moved on from
> mainframes, and what little I did with them didn't involve tape).
>
> The operators I worked with almost never mismounted a tape.

I'd pretty much left the 360 world after DOS/360 (that really dates me), 
so I couldn't comment--except that I never trusted an operator to mount 
tapes, if I could do anything about it.   A lot of the tapes came from 
customers who supplied them to demonstrate a problem.  Losing one meant 
a lot of apologies and begging.

Much of my big-iron days were spent in operating system work, so I 
needed the machine all to myself in any case---you know, 
middle-of-the-night block time, after the CEs were through.  Build a 
tape, deadstart it, watch the machine crash, get a dump, punch some 
cards, lather, rinse, repeat. Come home to grab a shower and dinner and 
be back in time for the 9AM status meeting.

Those years have affected my sleep habits all the way to my "golden 
years".  They didn't do much for my social life either.

--Chuck