Chester asks:
...
> will work. I have tried TCOPY from the TELESUP account and it failed.
> Doing a RESTORE/STORE is not possible. Some of these tapes are part of
> multi tape STORE sets. My current efforts are directed at using the
> POSIX shell. Create a link file with the mknod command for each drive
> and then use the dd command in an attempt to copy from one to the
> other. I would appreciate any other suggestions or help. We have close
> to 30 tapes to copy.

There's a chance that no free tool available to you will work ...
depending upon how the STORE tapes were generated.

STORE is capable of using very large buffers, bigger than the file
system can handle.  (This is the MAXTAPEBUF option of STORE)

(From ":HELP STORE, ALL"...)

   MAXTAPEBUF       Directs STORE to use the maximum available buffer
                    size during the store operation.  Currently, the
                    maximum tape buffer sizes for the following tape
                    drives are (in Kilobytes):

                    7974      16      7978B     32   DDS       32
                    7976      16      7979      32   MO        32
                    7978A     16      7980      32   3480      32

                    This option is also available by setting the CI
                    variable HPMAXTAPEBUF to TRUE.

Unfortunately, the file system won't let you open a tape with a
recordsize of 32 KB.

Now, I don't know under what (if any) conditions STORE will use
MAXTAPEBUF without you asking it to ... perhaps none.

So....if you have a STORE tape created with 32 KB records, and you
use an ordinary program to try to copy it (e.g., TCOPY or FCOPY, or
the shell's "dd"), you'd silently lose 1/2 of every record ...
something which VSTORE / STORE;VALIDATE *might* detect (and then
again, it might not detect it...and you'd have a tape that's useless).

OTOH, if the max record size is 16 KB or less, ordinary programs should
work well.  One technique is to use FCOPY, with the source/destination
file equates something like:
   file fromtape;dev=tape;rec=8192,1,u,binary
   file totape;dev=tape;rec=8192,1,u,binary
   fcopy from=*fromtape; to=*totape;files=99999
(Note: I haven't tried this)

One solution, which I don't think I have a financial interest in
(but I'm not sure), is to use XOVER, from Bering Industries.
XOVER can copy an n-reel STORE set to a k-reel STORE set, where
n and k may be different.  It can copy reel-to-reel to DDS, or
vice-versa, or DDS to DDS, or ...
(XOVER can read tape records larger than the file system maximum.)

<plug>
If you're desperate, email me ... Allegro has an internal tool (TAPETAPE)
that uses privileged calls to bypass the file system and can copy
arbitrary size tape records.
</plug>

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html