_______________________________________________________________________________ OK, here's another kind of boundary delimiter: 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F6 F3 CC 33 CC 33 FF FF ...........3.3.. 00007400 F6 73 00 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 1A 8E 47 04 21 B1 .s.......s..G.!. 0000E800 6E 75 01 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 41 B1 80 CA 37 28 nu.......sA...7( 00015C00 82 92 02 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 16 8C C6 E6 60 68 .........s....`h 0001D000 B0 8C 04 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 00 B0 D0 03 F0 01 .........s...... 00024400 CC AE 05 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 7F E0 40 40 03 02 .........s..@@.. 0002B800 0B 51 06 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 00 02 98 07 40 80 .Q.......s....@. 00032C00 D5 F1 06 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 44 8F 96 40 51 B3 .........sD..@Q. 0003A000 25 72 07 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 08 2D C9 C4 C4 78 %r.......s.-...x 00041400 6D DC 07 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 2F 31 5C 0E 76 1B m........s/1\.v. 00048800 B4 5B 08 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 41 B1 01 08 92 33 .[.......sA....3 0004FC00 9F 23 09 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 18 0C 06 63 20 68 .#.......s...c h 00057000 C9 7A 0A 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 7F E0 43 A0 1C 00 .z.......s..C... 0005E400 65 AA 0B 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 00 00 C0 18 18 E6 e........s...... 00065800 36 12 0D 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 00 0F 80 18 10 0E 6........s...... 0006CC00 A4 5A 0E 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 3B 19 45 C0 D2 09 .Z.......s;.E... 00074000 43 3B 0F 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 7C 84 0E 41 06 8B C;.......s|..A.. 0007B400 9C 1D 10 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 0F 80 40 03 70 00 .........s..@.p. 00082800 57 E6 10 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 13 23 0A E0 24 70 W........s.#..$p These are all 0x7400 (29696d) apart. These must be ECC'd tape segments. .... 00D89000 09 F8 6D 01 00 00 00 00 F6 73 10 32 CE E7 06 D1 ..m......s.2.... 00D90400 1D 6E 6E 01 00 00 00 00 F6 73 1A 9F D5 AF A2 73 .nn......s.....s 00D97800 45 E5 6E 01 00 00 00 00 F6 73 41 07 DF 0E 40 11 E.n......sA...@. 00D9EC00 8B 51 6F 01 00 00 00 00 F6 73 00 00 18 40 5C 20 .Qo......s...@\ This is the last of the data. 00DA5FF0 FC 58 E1 20 30 47 21 7C 00 00 00 00 00 0C 00 02 .X. 0G!|........ If so, there are 0xda5e0e sectors on this tape record. I am beginning to think this is all word (16-bit) swapped (by 8-bit byte). For instance Let's look at the start of the last segment. That is set to 0x6F01. While the second segment is labelled 0x0100 in the same spot. It makes a lot more sense if these are word swapped, i.e. 0x0001 to 0x016F. If we look at some of the data presented in the data stream this also makes a little more sense. For instance, the start of a File Set Directory is 0x33cc33cc but that persistently shows up as 0xcc33cc33. Also, at the beginning of the data (in the root directory) there's a "beginning of data" signature 0x99669966 that is referred to as 0x66996699. Thirdly, it looks to me like the text data comes accross as 0x4500 (assuming a 16-bit boundary) when it should be 0x0045. I think my next step here is to rewrite the file data, word swapping, and stripping out the segment information. This is also supposed to be in some sort of 1024 sector format. I'll see if that comes out in the next iteration. of the data. It looks like this whole process starts over for a new file (volume?) on the same tape that isn't a continuation of that file (volume). 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F6 F3 CC 33 CC 33 FF FF ...........3.3.. 00007400 F6 73 00 00 00 00 00 00 F6 73 59 B0 D5 2C 54 F3 .s.......sY..,T. and so on. There are only 0x11ff segment on this volume. The volume is zero padded to make up the end of the segment. Did the other one just end that gracefully? No, it looks like the last few segments are directory entries. Hmmmmm. _______________________________________________________________________________ Lets look at a different volume to see if it's laid out similarly. This starts out a little differently: 00000000 00 00 00 00 FA F3 0A 1D 90 88 6D 2F 8D 9E 00 00 ..........m/.... 00007400 FA 73 00 00 FA F3 04 00 00 0C 48 59 50 45 52 54 .s........HYPERT 0000E800 F4 E7 00 00 FA F3 43 41 50 49 32 30 30 2E 44 4C ......CAPI200.DL 00015C00 EE 5B 01 00 FA F3 8F CC 00 00 00 09 44 43 32 39 .[..........DC29 0001D000 E8 CF 01 00 FA F3 53 2E 43 41 54 0A 07 30 F2 90 ......S.CAT..0.. 00024400 E2 43 02 00 EF 73 66 0C F0 40 28 3A 90 44 1B 45 .C...sf..@(:.D.E 0002B800 77 FF 02 00 EE 73 0B 14 8F 8A 12 81 F1 D0 92 00 w....s.......... 00032C00 47 96 03 00 EF 73 1C 0F 87 0F F7 F9 00 70 41 1C G....s.......pA. ... 04066800 E8 56 62 08 EE 73 44 91 9F C0 B6 01 D0 96 8B 2F .Vb..sD......../ 0406DC00 20 01 63 08 EE 73 5C 00 40 0C 96 5B FC 1C FC 09 .c..s\.@..[.... 04075000 DF AF 63 08 EF 73 00 1A 8C 88 B6 32 64 A4 50 44 ..c..s.....2d.PD 0407C400 E2 9C 64 08 EF 73 40 14 13 4F F7 F8 00 00 89 23 ..d..s@..O.....# ... 040837F0 12 0A 40 38 00 00 2E 54 54 46 0A 07 B4 56 1D 2D ..@8...TTF...V.- 04083800 Again, I think this is word swapped. The size of each segment is still 0x7400 (that's a standard of the format I believe). But if you look at the sequence number (which comes at the end of the segment as above) it appears to be word-swapped (going from 0x0100 to 0x6408 and should probably be 0x0001 to 0x0864). Here at the beginning of the segment also, it's either 0xf3 or 0x73 as in the above file (assuming word swapping). It's beginning to appear to me that I should be able to strip out all the tape formatting and come up with a standard MTF or QIC113-ish file. _______________________________________________________________________________ I've come across yet a third format. Let's see if I can make heads or tails out of it and if it can be "converted" from a tape format to a raw file of some sort. A few of these dumps claimed a block size of something other than 0. I will have to go back and check, but I think that's these. OK, lets see if there's a repeating pattern on 0x7400 boundaries. 00000000 76 23 91 73 05 57 F0 33 01 00 00 00 73 79 73 74 v#.s.W.3....syst 00007400 6A BD E4 18 51 01 FA 19 51 5A 26 17 7A DF FE 4E j...Q...QZ&.z..N 0000E800 D2 DA EB 73 F2 03 A9 58 12 9E 40 D2 A6 1B 70 61 ...s...X..@...pa 00015C00 42 AC 5F 33 FC 0C 4C 1E 34 8E B4 27 36 00 ED 70 B._3..L.4..'6..p OK, I'm not seeing anything. It must be a totally different beast. It might be compressed, and as such will require a different approach I'm sure. _______________________________________________________________________________ It seems simple now, to create a conversion program to take the 0x7400 byte segments and convert them into files without the tape formatting.