Jon,

The way I have always done IBM tapes is on the file equate for the tape
drive is to set my record length equal to the block size and on the
FCOPY copy command use the DBLOCK function set to the true record size.
Using this method I have never had any problems with loosing a data.

Of course it has been a couple of years and an older system version, so
I may be all wet at this point.

Hope this helps.

Rich Holloway
BCBSO/HMO OREGON


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Mag tape conversion
Author:  Backuj <[log in to unmask]> at ~INTERNET
Date:    3/6/97 3:31 PM


     I have a group of Mag tapes that were created on an IBM.  All but two
of them translated nicely into HP flat files.  The two that do not translate
do the same thing so I will take specifically about one in hopes that one of
you great people will see what I am doing wrong.  The Mag Tape is labelled
with 6150 byte blocks.  Each block contains thirty 205 byte records.  I
build a like file on my HP3000, issue a file equation for the Mag drive
(FILE MAG;DEV=9;LABEL="label",IBM;REC=etc.), and then I issue my FCOPY
(FCOPY FROM=*MAG;TO="built file";EBCDICIN).  That all seems to work just
fine and I do end up with the correct number of records.  The problem is
that I loose a byte per record.  That is to say, my first record is fine,
the second record is shifted by one byte (loosing the first byte), the third
is shifted by another byte, etc.  I have done an FCOPY of a large chunk of
data from the front of the tape using the SUBSET and I can see the missing
byte in the chunk, but not in my data file.  Does anybody see what I am
doing wrong?  This procedure worked fine for 6 out of 8 tapes, perhaps these
two tapes require an additional parameter.

Thanx,
    Jon Backus
    HP Systems Manager
    AB&C Group