and the winner is...

Suprtool, available for both UX and MPE platforms,  will do the whole
job, including translation of binary and packed-decimal into other
formats. 

If you have mpe and no suprtool, here are some FCOPY details:

First step, use FCOPY, treat packed decimal just as you do binary: don't
mess with them, yet.

The brown pocket guide describes the FCOPY option as
";EBCDICIN=(field[,field]...)[,EXCLUDE]", but use ; instead of , to
separate fieldspecs.  ,EXCLUDE inverts your specs of course.   

NOT from the brown book, field may be described either as
"startcolumn:endcolumn" or "startcolumn,length" (probably the reason you
need ; not , between fields).

again EBCDICany won't convert packed to display for you, but when you
get to that point, you don't want to lose the sign on the last digit:
unpacked, you'll see }ABCDEFGHI (+), {JKLMNOPQR are(-) (I might have the
braces backward).  

IIRC there are some gotchas when dealing with unsigned packed decimal,
too, at least in pre-85 Cobol, but Cobol will nicely describe any flavor
of IBM packed decimal (COMP-3) and binary (COMP).  



> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dave Waroff
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:44 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: ebcdic Conversion Question
> 
>  
> > Hi All You Gurus of Old Data Protocols :)
> >     Ok... I have EBCDIC and need ASCII, and it is on a unix box...
> > 
> >     What magic incantation can I say to convert from EBCDIC 
> to ASCII?
> > 
> 
> Yes, dd is your friend here. It will convert encodings and unblock
> records.
> You can 'man dd' or look at 
> 
> http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/linux/cmd/cmd.csp?path=d/dd
> 
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