I _was_ told that the tape was 61 bytes with no blocking factor.
 
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Marshall Medoff                           Interstate Van Lines
Systems Manager                              5801 Rolling Road
Standard Disclaimer                      Springfield, Virginia
703-569-2121                       We Give You Top Hat Service
 
On Thu, 4 May 1995, Rudderow, Evan wrote:
 
> Richard Gambrell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >According to Marshall I. Medoff:
> >
> >> Help!
> >>
>
> <snip>
>
> >As others have said, you should be able to use FCOPY. However, if the
> >tape is written in blocks, then you will hae to tell FCOPY how to
> >deblock it. Do you know if the tape has a multiple record block?
>
> Generally when I receive tapes from a foreign system I insist that I be
> informed about records legnths, blocking factors and so forth -- it saves my
> time.  But if the tape provider gives me nothing else, he *must* give me
> both a record length and a record count: with enough trial and error I'll be
> able to figure out the blocking factor as long as I know those two pieces of
> info (although all of the FCOPY attempts with different blocking factors
> might wear out both the tape and the drive...)
>
> I encourage everyone to be polite when sending tapes out to be read by
> foreign systems:
>  - Specify:
>      - record length
>      - blocking factor
>      - number of records
>  - Think about providing hash totals
>  - Don't write tape blocks larger than 16K unless you're sure the destination
> device can handle it.
>
>  -- Evan
>