<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>I have the green plastibands and the clear bands. I have found
that the clear bands have too much tension and can lift material
from the tape. The tension of the green bands vary and it seems
like there is a window where they work best.</p>
<p>The tapes came with a Sun 3/160 based Model 32, and some are
clearly for it. My goal is to restore the CADDStation and I hope
all of the software is there on the tapes.</p>
<p>Where can one find copytape for SunOS?</p>
<p>I was able to use tapetool to extract a file called tapedir from
two different tapes</p>
<p>alan</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/14/26 11:35 AM, Clem Cole wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAC20D2Pi3Yf=tmf9yyLTKCESOHfrSaM-L_SJ7JP3mFzKYh+KPw@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">First, what are
you using for bands? (size and manufacturer).</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">With regard to
the tape itself, given that these are old tapes, assume you
will get one shot in the transport. So I
>>highly<< recommend using the old 1985 copytape
utility <span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">from the</span>
USENET (pdf of its man <span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">page of</span> the
command and the format it <span class="Q6ibn ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">writes</span>
attached), and creating a tape image you can decode without
needing to touch either the tape or the transport. If you
don't have it, send me an email off-list, and I'll be happy to
provide it to you.</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span
class="Q6ibn ng" style="border-style:none;background:none">copytape</span>
will attempt to read 262144 (256K) bytes at a time. On a QIC
drive, which has fixed-size (512-byte) records, that <span
class="Q6ibn ng" style="border-style:none;background:none">will
equate</span> to 512 <span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">blocks (on</span>
a 9-<span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">track,</span>
which used variable-sized records, each 256k read, will return
as many bytes as were written on that tape record, which can<span
class="Asgive ng" style="border-style:none;background:none">
be a small integer to no more than 65536</span> (64K
bytes). Copytape will read tape marks. Tape "files" are
delineated by tape marks. On drivers that were written
properly, the last "tape file" will have a second tape mark [<i>i.e.</i>,
two in a row] to delineate EOT. Note that many of the QIC
drivers do not do that (and neither did Ken's original 9-track
tape driver for Fifth Edition and IIRC Sixth, but by then a
number of us had rewritten to 9-track drivers <span
class="Asgive ng" style="border-style:none;background:none">to
be </span> much smarter, but I digress)<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Once you have a
copy of the tape in "copytape" format, you can decode it much
more easily.</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><span
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">A</span><font
face="arial, sans-serif">s for the format itself, it
depends on which Computer Vision system wrote it. Their
early systems were based on DG Novas and ran RDOS (similar
to DEC's RT11). From the late 70s until the mid 1980s, they
replaced RDOS with their own OS called CGOS (<span
style="color:rgb(10,10,10)">Computervision Graphics
Operating System), and by the late 80's, early 90's, they
had ported their CADDS system to run on UNIX and started
shipping it on Suns. Finally, <span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none">they got
bought by Prime, and then</span> moved it again to
PRIMOS.</span></font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)">Given
that this is a QIC tape, the time frame says either late
CGOS or SunOS, although Prime might have supported QIC; I
never saw anything but 9-track on their systems.</span></font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)">So
... if it was written on an early CV system, it is likely
to be in what DG called MTIO format or possibly in the DG
backup format. </span></font>Data General\u2019s RDOS natively
used raw, streaming sequential blocks without a complex,
metadata-heavy file system structure, such as ANSI labeled
tapes (DEC often used a superset - embrace and extend - ANSI
tape format). I don't know what CGOS used, but I suspect it
was similar to the DG style. If it was written on a Sun or
other UNIX box, it is likely to be TAR (hopefully) or CPIO.
If the latter, there is a slew of different CPIO on tape
formats - this is historical because<span class="Asgive ng"
style="border-style:none;background:none"> it</span> was
created for PDP-11s and was a binary format.<font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)">
It could also be one of the many UNIX backup formats, so
you will need to do a little examination to determine
which one. Modern versions of the original V7 Unix
file(1) >>might<< be able to identify the
format. Finally, l</span></font><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(10,10,10)">ike
DG, Prime opted not to use DEC-style (pseudo-ANSI) labeled
file structures natively. Instead, they also created their
own proprietary, streaming binary format deeply tied to
PRIMOS\u2019s unique disk architecture and </span>character
encodings. I've never seen documentation on this format.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style=""><font
face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(10,10,10)"> </span></font></div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 14, 2026 at
9:44\u202fAM Alan Perry via rescue <<a
href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I
seem to have found a working combination of drive and
replacement's bands to be able to get images of the dozens of
Computervision install tapes that I have.<br>
<br>
They are QIC-24 from the late 80s and aren\u2019t in the
\u201ccollection of tar files\u201d format that I usually use mt fsf and
dd to read. Each tape starts with a file with a \u201ctapedir\u201d
record with permission and other stuff, followed by a bunch of
records that look like a number followed by a topic or title.
What am I looking at and what do I use to get the info off of
the tape?<br>
<br>
alan<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
rescue list - <a
href="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>