access to 9-track reel tape drive

[Mark S Waterbury]

Does anyone know of anyone in (or near) Central Florida (private individual or company) with a working mainframe compatible 9-track tape drive capable of reading tape reels recorded at 1600 or 6250 BPI density?

I have a number of old tapes that need to be copied and archived, for "posterity."

Please advise.

Feel free to reply privately if you prefer.

Thanks in advance.

Mark S. Waterbury

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[Steve Horein]

Maybe Iron Mountain?

[Seymour J Metz]

What interface do you need, e.g., SATA, SCSI? Should they also contact you about 18-track or 36-track drives?


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3

________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Mark S Waterbury [000001c3f560aac...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, June 2, 2021 10:56 PM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: access to 9-track reel tape drive

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

There are such services available, GIYF.
Note: usually the service is to copy dataset from tape to some
contemporary medium like USB stick.
No conversion, etc.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland



W dniu 03.06.2021 o 04:56, Mark S Waterbury pisze:

[Pommier, Rex]

We went through this a couple years ago with a bunch of 3480/3490 tapes and had a LOT of tape checks resulting from bad spots on the media. I'd actually be surprised if you can get much usable info off 3420 type tapes.

If you can't find a reasonably priced service, you could check with Overland Data. At some point they sold a desktop 9 track drive that was compatible with 3420 style tapes. At a prior site, when we eliminated the 3420s we purchased one of these to allow us to get to the occasional 6250 bpi tape.

Good luck,
Rex

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[David Purdy]

Many law firms specializing in software infringement cases either have, or have access to, all kinds of tape drives.

David

[A T & T Management]

Mark

I have such a tape drive but am located in Michigan.
Scott

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

Obviously it is possible to get (buy) 3420 compatible tape drive.
However it is not so cheap. Tape drive is connected using Bus & Tag
interface, so one would need to buy ESCON converter and FICON converter.
I just checked:
$8500 for tape drive
$130 for ESCON converted (new, Optica brand, but from some broker)
$50000 for FICON converter

Of course the prices may vary significantly.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

W dniu 03.06.2021 o 18:38, Pommier, Rex pisze:

[Pommier, Rex]

That was the beauty of the Overland product. It attached to a (I think) SCSI interface into a PC and didn't have the B&T overhead. Now, if you really want the B&T feature, I have a PRISM Ficon convertor appliance and I think I still have a couple ESBT Escon to B&T convertors that I could sell somebody cheap. We stopped using them a few months ago and they're collecting dust. :-)

[Charles Mills]

I used to have an Overland Tape drive. You don't hook it up Bus & Tag <g> you hook it up to a PC. IIRC ours was SCSI-attached. It came with software, and there are APIs -- I wrote some additional software (in-house use, quick and dirty type stuff). You get the data off of the tape and then you send it off wherever you want it.

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Radoslaw Skorupka
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 1:32 AM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

Obviously it is possible to get (buy) 3420 compatible tape drive.
However it is not so cheap. Tape drive is connected using Bus & Tag
interface, so one would need to buy ESCON converter and FICON converter.
I just checked:
$8500 for tape drive
$130 for ESCON converted (new, Optica brand, but from some broker)
$50000 for FICON converter

Of course the prices may vary significantly.

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

OK, it can be connected to PC.
SCSI? Still available, but not very up to date. Nevermind, you can have
older PC.
However... what next?
What software to use? How to read mainframe datasets?
I'm sure there are such tools, but I don't know any.
Last, but not least: it would be easy to read text datasets, but things
are getting harder with binary formats or ADRDSSU/FDR dumps. Or other
tools.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

W dniu 04.06.2021 o 15:16, Charles Mills pisze:

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 15:37:18 +0200, Radoslaw Skorupka wrote:

>OK, it can be connected to PC.
>SCSI? Still available, but not very up to date. Nevermind, you can have
>older PC.
>However... what next?
>

AWSTAPE?

> ... What software to use? How to read mainframe datasets?

>I'm sure there are such tools, but I don't know any.
>Last, but not least: it would be easy to read text datasets, but things
>are getting harder with binary formats or ADRDSSU/FDR dumps. Or other
>tools.

-- gil

[Pommier, Rex]

Not sure they are even available any more. I found a 9 track Overland from Sunstar but not from Overland. We never used them for FDR or DFDSS backups, just to get at old archived application data. The tapes were EBCDIC created and restored to the PC as EBCDIC, then binary FTP'ed up to the mainframe.

Rex

The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you.

[Mike Schwab]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 9:06 AM Paul Gilmartin
<0000000433f0781...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 15:37:18 +0200, Radoslaw Skorupka wrote:
>
> >OK, it can be connected to PC.
> >SCSI? Still available, but not very up to date. Nevermind, you can have
> >older PC.
> >However... what next?
> >
> AWSTAPE?
>
> > ... What software to use? How to read mainframe datasets?
> >I'm sure there are such tools, but I don't know any.
> >Last, but not least: it would be easy to read text datasets, but things
> >are getting harder with binary formats or ADRDSSU/FDR dumps. Or other
> >tools.
>
> -- gil

AWSTAPE useable with zPDt and Hercules.
Sort can unpack binary and floating point numbers.
FTP will convert to ASCII if you are going that route.



--
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

[Farley, Peter x23353]

Assuming the PC-attached SCSI tape drive comes with software to copy data from the tape to a disk file without any translation you just have to copy the files off the actual tape in binary and then FTP in binary up to your favorite mainframe location. FTP is not binary by default but it is very easy to do binary transfers (Letter I [eye] command then just PUT pr MPUT).

I did some research on the Overland company. It looks like they were taken over by Tandberg and then by a venture capital outfit that already owned or bought Tandberg. Now the Overland-Tandberg site lists only LTO tape drives for sale, no 9-track at all.

So eBay is your only friend here unless you have a commercial service in your geographic area. I know of one in the NYC area (ElectroValue in Hoboken, NJ) but I have never tried to use them so I don’t know what prices are like for one-offs or small batches of tapes. Ditto national conversion shops in the USA like DataDesignInc in Oklahoma.

To the OP: Secure Data Recovery claims to have multiple Florida locations, might be worth checking them out.

HTH

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Mike Schwab
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 10:39 AM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

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[Paul Gilmartin]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 17:30:38 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

>Assuming the PC-attached SCSI tape drive comes with software to copy data from the tape to a disk file without any translation you just have to copy the files off the actual tape in binary and then FTP in binary up to your favorite mainframe location. FTP is not binary by default but it is very easy to do binary transfers (Letter I [eye] command then just PUT pr MPUT).
>

Block boundaries? Sometimes they matter, and RDWs and BDWs. Especially for RCFM=vBS
such as IEBCOPY PDSU. And LRECL=X.

AWSTAPE?

-- gil

[Farley, Peter x23353]

Variable and U format will always be issues. Converting them on the PC to unlabeled AWSTAPE has similar issues.

BUT I believe that IFF the original tape has standard header and trailer files, then AWSTAPE is realistic to use. Then the AWSTAPE file can be binary transferred to the MF and processed there with the mainframe AWSTAPE utility (or is it a HET utility? I don’t remember now).

The key step is to capture the binary data with no translation from degrading 9-track. Figuring out how to successfully use it can come after that step.

PC utilities like HXD (HexEdit) can view binary EBCDIC files with ease so you know what you are dealing with after you capture the data.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 1:48 PM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 17:30:38 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

>Assuming the PC-attached SCSI tape drive comes with software to copy data from the tape to a disk file without any translation you just have to copy the files off the actual tape in binary and then FTP in binary up to your favorite mainframe location. FTP is not binary by default but it is very easy to do binary transfers (Letter I [eye] command then just PUT pr MPUT).
>
Block boundaries? Sometimes they matter, and RDWs and BDWs. Especially for RCFM=vBS such as IEBCOPY PDSU. And LRECL=X.

AWSTAPE?

--

This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

W dniu 04.06.2021 o 19:48, Paul Gilmartin pisze:

> On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 17:30:38 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:
>
>> Assuming the PC-attached SCSI tape drive comes with software to copy data from the tape to a disk file without any translation you just have to copy the files off the actual tape in binary and then FTP in binary up to your favorite mainframe location. FTP is not binary by default but it is very easy to do binary transfers (Letter I [eye] command then just PUT pr MPUT).
>>
> Block boundaries? Sometimes they matter, and RDWs and BDWs. Especially for RCFM=vBS
> such as IEBCOPY PDSU. And LRECL=X.
>
> AWSTAPE?

Your brevity is excellent, but it doesn't explain what and how to do.
I just checked CBTtape - there are MVS (z/OS) tools - unapplicable for PC.
There is also Windows tool - AWS browser. Also unapplicable.

There is another requirement here: to read REAL tape using PC tools.
How to read?
a) dataset by dataset
b) whole tape => AWS tape image

I believe there are tools to read tape and understand blocks and
tapemarks, and maybe SL labels.
Less chance for AWS utility, especially there is such tool working under
z/OS.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

[Tony Harminc]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 at 14:12, Radoslaw Skorupka <R.Sko...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> W dniu 04.06.2021 o 19:48, Paul Gilmartin pisze:

> > Block boundaries? Sometimes they matter, and RDWs and BDWs. Especially for RCFM=vBS
> > such as IEBCOPY PDSU. And LRECL=X.
> >
> > AWSTAPE?
>
> Your brevity is excellent, but it doesn't explain what and how to do.

The fundamental problem is that a tape - whether 3420-type (9-track,
several possible BPIs and recording techniques), or more modern 3480,
3490, etc. - cannot be represented by a byte stream. It's not a simple
matter of binary vs character or the like; there is out-of-band data -
tape marks, block lengths, EOFs, and maybe a couple more. So AWS is a
solution (one of several) that represents a tape as a byte stream.

The original AWS format is very simple and well documented by IBM,
though there are a few incompatible extensions made by at least IBM,
Funsoft, and the Hercules developers. It is trivial to write a program
(REXX, C, COBOL?, whatever) to read an AWS file and convert it into
something useful, for example a sequential file for each tape file.
This can run on any platform, and of course the target file format
will to some extent be platform specific.

> I just checked CBTtape - there are MVS (z/OS) tools - unapplicable for PC.
> There is also Windows tool - AWS browser. Also unapplicable.

Why unapplicable?

> There is another requirement here: to read REAL tape using PC tools.
> How to read?
> a) dataset by dataset
> b) whole tape => AWS tape image

The usual approach that I've used many times is to use the Hercules
tapecopy program, which runs on any system that can host Hercules,
i.e. pretty much any UNIX-like system, or Windows. It reads a physical
tape (assuming some minimal driver support for the host OS), and
writes an AWS file. Then you write a program to process that file, or
you use one of several standard tools (awsbrowse - there are a couple
of different programs with this name, but you dismiss it for some
reason) to copy the data you want and convert it into something you
can make use of.

> I believe there are tools to read tape and understand blocks and
> tapemarks, and maybe SL labels.
> Less chance for AWS utility, especially there is such tool working under z/OS.

I don't understand what this last bit means. AWS format is so simple
that anyone can easily write a program to handle it.

But finally, the OP's requirement is unclear to me. He speaks of
archiving some tapes, so presumably there is a wish to not keep the
physical tapes which use 1960s/70s densities, are likely to continue
to deteriorate in storage, and anyway could probably all fit on a
little USB stick. No problem to use AWS format and then put the USB
stick in the vault. Or the cloud, or whatever. But what is needed when
it comes time to retrieve the archive and do <something> with the
data? PC tools? Restore to z/OS 5.9 or something in 2042? All is
possible - there are z/OS tools to read an AWS file and write to a
real tape drive. Or of course Hercules tapecopy can do the same thing
on a PC.

Tony H.

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 18:03:04 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

>Variable and U format will always be issues.
>

No. Why?

> ... Converting them on the PC to unlabeled AWSTAPE has similar issues.
>
No. Why? Labels is just bytes. The format is documented and irrelevant.

We once had an offline, in-house "Tape Replication System", hardware
and software supplied by an overseas vendor. At some point the decision
was made to move the system, physically and logically, to an out-of-state
contractor and supply electronic images rather than physical tapes.

I was tasked with replicating the internal data format. (hot AWSTAPE;
should have been. I was not part of the specification process and would
nor have bee aware of AWSTAPE in thee day.)

I reverse-engineered the vendor's data format from their source code
and wrote a Rexx program to generate the vendor's format from our
master tapes, mounted overriding to RECFM=U,LABEL=BLP.

Worked readily. My code didn't need to understand the formats of
labels, BDWs, or RDWs. Bytes is bytes. One wrinkle was that Rexx
in the day didn't handle RECFM=U -- I needed to add a REPRO step
to convert U to VB.

>BUT I believe that IFF the original tape has standard header and trailer files, then AWSTAPE is realistic to use. Then the AWSTAPE file can be binary transferred to the MF and processed there with the mainframe AWSTAPE utility (or is it a HET utility? I don’t remember now).
>
>The key step is to capture the binary data with no translation from degrading 9-track. Figuring out how to successfully use it can come after that step.
>
>PC utilities like HXD (HexEdit) can view binary EBCDIC files with ease so you know what you are dealing with after you capture the data.

-- gil

[Farley, Peter x23353]

I meant of course SMOP issues.

Without tape header/trailer files, additional programs/scripts are needed to handle V and U raw data correctly. (Note that I said DATA, not unloaded PDS/E or other backup-type tapes) With tape header/trailer files there are (or at least there ought to be . . .) available PC utilities that can copy the captured binary tape data with header and trailer to AWSTAPE or similar format for subsequent correct binary upload to MF without any loss of data or formatting. Or for distribution to archives, online or not.

Even with header/trailer files, that kind of process may also require yet another SMOP, but I haven't had to do any such tape recovery myself yet, so I could be wrong.

Assuming you meant IEBCOPY-format or other types of backup files and not U format DATA files, you’re right of course - the format is documented and available.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 5:37 PM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 18:03:04 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:

>Variable and U format will always be issues.
>
No. Why?

> ... Converting them on the PC to unlabeled AWSTAPE has similar issues.
>
No. Why? Labels is just bytes. The format is documented and irrelevant.

We once had an offline, in-house "Tape Replication System", hardware and software supplied by an overseas vendor. At some point the decision was made to move the system, physically and logically, to an out-of-state contractor and supply electronic images rather than physical tapes.

I was tasked with replicating the internal data format. (hot AWSTAPE; should have been. I was not part of the specification process and would nor have bee aware of AWSTAPE in thee day.)

I reverse-engineered the vendor's data format from their source code and wrote a Rexx program to generate the vendor's format from our master tapes, mounted overriding to RECFM=U,LABEL=BLP.

Worked readily. My code didn't need to understand the formats of labels, BDWs, or RDWs. Bytes is bytes. One wrinkle was that Rexx in the day didn't handle RECFM=U -- I needed to add a REPRO step to convert U to VB.

>BUT I believe that IFF the original tape has standard header and trailer files, then AWSTAPE is realistic to use. Then the AWSTAPE file can be binary transferred to the MF and processed there with the mainframe AWSTAPE utility (or is it a HET utility? I don’t remember now).
>
>The key step is to capture the binary data with no translation from degrading 9-track. Figuring out how to successfully use it can come after that step.
>
>PC utilities like HXD (HexEdit) can view binary EBCDIC files with ease so you know what you are dealing with after you capture the data.

--

This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.

[Bill Ogden]

For a small project I had almost 30 years ago (definitely a non-IBM
project) I purchased an Overland Tape unit. It was SCSI attached. I also
had a DVD writer attached to the PC and did a fair bit of coding to make
software that would read a 9-track tape and write the data on DVD.
Included were utilities to recover the data in a variety of formats and
write a new 9-track tape if that was what was required. The goal was to
help with "archived" data on 9-track tapes. An odd characteristic of the
programming was to accept data blocks that caused read errors (after a
number of retrys, of course) and write the data on the DVD with an
appropriate flag in my header for the data record. While writing the
programs I assumed this was an oddball feature, not realizing how many
data errors we would encounter when reading "archived" tapes. In the
locations where we used the "product" the old 9-track tapes were stored in
appropriately controlled areas, etc, etc. No obvious customer sloppy
storage or handling.

You might want to give serious thought about handling a fair number of
errors when reading old old old tapes! The Overland Tape unit worked well,
especially if the programming was such that it did not need to stop
between records. I did not associate the data errors with a drive problem;
it handled "newer" data tapes without problems.

Bill

[Seymour J Metz]

Presumably he's saying that nobody in his right mind would simply copy the data on the tape to a byte stream, and that the most obvious way to archive the tape is to convert it to AWSTAPE format. Once it's in AWSTAPE format, then it's simple to read it under Hercules, assuming that the labels and records follow OS/360 conventions.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3

________________________________________

From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Radoslaw Skorupka [R.Sko...@HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 2:11 PM

To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

[Seymour J Metz]

Converting to AWSTAPE is viable regardless of the label and record format. If MVS can handle the tape at all then it can handle the converted tape.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3

________________________________________

From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Farley, Peter x23353 [0000031df298a9d...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 2:03 PM

[Joe Monk]

"There is another requirement here: to read REAL tape using PC tools.
How to read?
a) dataset by dataset
b) whole tape => AWS tape image"

Radoslaw,

Hercules has a really cool utility called TAPECOPY! It reads a real tape
and copies it to an AWSTAPE format disk file. Of course, being written by
mainframes, TAPECOPY is sensitive to mainframe tape marks, RDW/BDW, etc.
The resulting AWSTAPE file is a mirror image of the tape.

"The Hercules tape copy program copies a SCSI tape to or from an AWSTAPE
disk file. Tapecopy reads a SCSI tape and outputs an AWSTAPE file
representation of the tape, or reads an AWSTAPE file and creates an
identical copy of its contents on a tape mounted on a SCSI tape drive.

If the input file is a SCSI tape it is read and processed until physical
EOD (end-of-data) is reached. That is, it does not stop whenever multiple
tapemarks or filemarks are read, rather it continues processing until the
SCSI tape drive says there is no more data on the tape.

The resulting AWSTAPE output disk file may be specified for the filename on
a Hercules tape device con- figuration statement. It can then be used in
order for the Hercules guest O/S to read the exact same data without having
a SCSI tape drive physically attached to the host system. This allows you
to easily transfer SCSI tape data to other systems that may not have SCSI
tape drives attached to them."

Joe

On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 1:12 PM Radoslaw Skorupka <R.Sko...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2021 05:54:17 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote:

>Presumably he's saying that nobody in his right mind would simply copy the data on the tape to a byte stream, and that the most obvious way to archive the tape is to convert it to AWSTAPE format. Once it's in AWSTAPE format, then it's simple to read it under Hercules, assuming that the labels and records follow OS/360 conventions.
>

Amen. Joe Monk's and Radoslaw's comments appear well-informed.
And with 9-track I believe there's no need to deal with the abomination
of even parity. ( knew an old CDC OS that relied on the difference to
discern filetypes, even replicating the behavior in DASD files.)

It's a pity there's no facility to process AWSTAPE directly with no need
for a step to convert to virtual or real 3480. Subsystem? ISV? Or to
generate AWSTAPE on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.

Does a dump of the first block say "VOL1"?

If the OP believes the tapes contain useful data he probably knows
which utility can process the restored images.

-- gil

[Bill Ogden]

The long-ago set of programs I wrote to read 9-track tapes on a PC
processed physical tape blocks, in binary, and added a header to each
block before writing it on the CD. Another program could read the CD and
write a new 9-track tape, if needed. My program accepted a double tape
mark to mean end-of-tape. With the tapes/data involved this was not an
exposure, although I understood that it might create problems in other
situations, If I detected blocks that might be labels, I noted their
contents in a log record file.

This was in the early 1990s and the objective was to preserve information
on old tape reels. The customer concern was the potential error
characteristics of the old tapes, and that turned out to be a substantial
issue. As best I remember, there were very very few requests to write a
new version of a tape, but it could be done ---- I assume for potential
legal reasons, etc, etc. I cannot remember exact details and I cannot
find a copy of the programs. I do remember that one bit in my header
records could indicate a data error while reading the source tape block
and the block copy on the CD contained whatever was actually read, error
and all.

The design would be different today, of course, and a different format
might be needed if the old data was actually to be processed on a regular
basis.

Bill

[Carl Swanson]

This was a fun trip down memory lane, I remember the Overland device. And if memory servers me correctly you had to load the tape through the mechanism manually, there was at least the ne I tried in the early 90's no autoloader. Why could this be important is because the most likely error these types of tapes will see is edge damage making the not readable. And every time a human hand touches, they the chances go up. Last Time I spoke with anyone about 3420 tapes was back around 2010 and they had a number of tapes that for any reason "Could Not be Scratched". Their solution was to hand the tapes to the person making that statement and saying they will not be scratched because they are in your possession. I thought it was a great solution to the issue. The likelihood of reading these tapes in my opinion is very low, they have passed their shelf life.

Carl Swanson
Mobile:215.688.1459
Email: carl.s...@verizon.net

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Sunday, June 6, 2021 12:21 PM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

Rule of thumb: you don't need old tapes, you may need old data.
In my former life I had 20 years old data, but the tapes were approx.
2-3 years old (max.). And always replicated, always in two locations.
For old media (tapes, optical, hdd's, whatever) the earlier you start
reading them the better chances you have.

--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland

W dniu 08.06.2021 o 15:18, Carl Swanson pisze:

[Radoslaw Skorupka]

W dniu 06.06.2021 o 16:20, Joe Monk pisze:

> "There is another requirement here: to read REAL tape using PC tools.
> How to read?
> a) dataset by dataset
> b) whole tape => AWS tape image"
>
> Radoslaw,
>
> Hercules has a really cool utility called TAPECOPY! It reads a real tape
> and copies it to an AWSTAPE format disk file. Of course, being written by
> mainframes, TAPECOPY is sensitive to mainframe tape marks, RDW/BDW, etc.
> The resulting AWSTAPE file is a mirror image of the tape.
>
> "The Hercules tape copy program copies a SCSI tape to or from an AWSTAPE
> disk file. Tapecopy reads a SCSI tape and outputs an AWSTAPE file
> representation of the tape, or reads an AWSTAPE file and creates an
> identical copy of its contents on a tape mounted on a SCSI tape drive.
>
> If the input file is a SCSI tape it is read and processed until physical
> EOD (end-of-data) is reached. That is, it does not stop whenever multiple
> tapemarks or filemarks are read, rather it continues processing until the
> SCSI tape drive says there is no more data on the tape.
>
> The resulting AWSTAPE output disk file may be specified for the filename on
> a Hercules tape device con- figuration statement. It can then be used in
> order for the Hercules guest O/S to read the exact same data without having
> a SCSI tape drive physically attached to the host system. This allows you
> to easily transfer SCSI tape data to other systems that may not have SCSI
> tape drives attached to them."

I stand corrected. I didn't know about this Hercules tool, nor about
Hercules support for real external devices like tape drive.
So, the solution could be 3420-compatible tape drive with SCSI interface
connected to a PC with Hercules.

[Tony Thigpen]

I have customer 3490 tapes from the 90's in my storage vault. (I also
have good 3490 drives.)

We told the customer that we do not know if the tapes were even readable
when we got them 8 years ago. The told us:

"We don't care. As long as we can tell the auditors that we have the
tapes, we are good to go. If there is ever a need to read the tapes, we
will fight the problems reading the data off the tape at that time. If a
lawyer wants data, we will then do a 'good faith' attempt to read it,
but not until then."

Tony Thigpen

Radoslaw Skorupka wrote on 6/8/21 4:08 PM:

[PINION, RICHARD W.]

Doesn't FDR's FATS and FATR have the ability to read tapes, and skip unreadable blocks? Some
data is better than no data at all.

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Tony Thigpen
Sent: Tuesday, June 8, 2021 4:21 PM
To: IBM-...@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [External] Re: access to 9-track reel tape drive

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[Tony Thigpen]

So does DITTO. I also have my own HLASM tape copy programs that use
basic CCWs for tape I-O that I could modify, if needed, to read the
readable sections of the tape.

The bigger problem is the programs that created the back-ups. For many
of the tapes, we don't even know their internal format or what software
wrote them. Or, if the software is still on the machine. We think it may
still be there, but maybe not. And, the tape manager has changed too so
the supporting information that the tape manager may have had may not
still be available either.

Tony Thigpen

PINION, RICHARD W. wrote on 6/8/21 4:26 PM:

[Bill Ogden]

>Rule of thumb: you don't need old tapes, you may need old data.
>In my former life I had 20 years old data, but the tapes were approx.
>2-3 years old (max.). And always replicated, always in two locations.
>For old media (tapes, optical, hdd's, whatever) the earlier you start
>reading them the better chances you have.

The only problem with this rule is that generations of customer management
need to understand the rule and why it exists. This "understanding" is not
always present.

The Overland drive I mentioned needed manual loading. A little slow, but
the data problems were
usually not at the beginning of a tape.

Bill