If the record length and blocking factor are as you state, the HP3000 would
not be able to read a single block- which would be over 1million bytes.

Could it be that you meant block length where you stated blocking factor?

In any case, I believe the problem you may be having has to do with the
recording format on the IBM side of things.

IBM has 2 kinds of variable length formats - one of which is called
"spanned" record format, and the other closer to the way variable length is
defined on MPE.

However, FCOPY - particularly when using the EBCIDICIN option - will be
incapable of dealing with either of the variable length record formats
because the 2-byte block length indicator at the beginning of each block,
and the 2-byte record-length indicator at the beginning of each logical
record would improperly be translated by the EBCDICIN option.

I think you have 2 options here.

Option 1, if possible, create the tape on the IBM side with a fixed record
length format.

Option 2 would be to write your own program on the HP3000 to deal with the
tricky record format that you are being confronted with.


At 02:41 PM 2000-06-27 -0500, Carl McNamee wrote:
>To the gods of the 3k list.  I have an IBM formated tape that I cannot
>figure out how to read into our system.  This is especially frustrating
>since we do this type of thing on a daily basis.
>
>Specifics:
>The tape has 290,000 records that are 10,003 bytes each.  The blocking
>factor is 10,007.  I tried the following just to get a few records off the
>tape for analysis.
>BUILD FILE19A;REC=-10003,1,F,ASCII;DISC=2000
>FILE T1;DEV=TAPE;REC=-32384,1,U,ASCII;LABEL=018460,IBM
>FCOPY FROM=*T1;TO=FILE19A;DEBLOCK=-10003;EBCDICIN
>
>The FCOPY command gave me the error:
>*143*WARNING: FROMFILE IS EMPTY
>
>Now I know that the fromfile is not empty because we dumped it onto onto one
>of our AS/400 systems.
>
>Any thoughts on how we can read this tape on the 3k?
>
>Carl McNamee
>Systems Administrator
>Billing Concepts
>(210) 949-7282
>
>
>
>
>Billing Concepts Corp., a NASDAQ listed Company, Symbol:BILL

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Gilles Schipper
GSA Inc.
HP3000 & HP9000 System Administration Specialists
300 John Street, Box 87651   Thornhill, ON Canada L3T 7R4
Voice: 905.889.3000     Fax: 905.889.3001
Internet:  [log in to unmask]
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