RE: Tape question

There is a PKzip application that you can buy for the as400.  Someone else
will know if it can unTAR a TAR.  A tar is a collection of uncompressed Unix
stream files.

If this will happen once and the files aren't too big, I would ask the
vendor to send the data as an Email attachment.  Process the TAR on the PC
then upload it to the 400 and use copy from stream file to get it into a
database file.

If you have to get it on tape, I think you want EBCDIC coding, fixed length,
blocked records.  It is easy to convert ASCII to EBCDIC.  Unblocked data
just takes up a lot of space.  However, converting from variable length to
fixed length is a real pain unless the format matches one of the conversion
types on one of those really cool CPY* commands I have seen noted here but
forgot.

Richard Jackson
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
www.richardjacksonltd.com
Voice: 1 (303) 808-8058
Fax:   1 (303) 663-4325

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Pamela Phillips
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 1:26 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Tape question


I know nobody wants to hear about a 9347, but we can't get rid of ours quite
yet. A vendor sends us data on reels, and as you can guess we have had a lot
of problems reading the tapes. The only other common medium between us
appears to be 8mm. We have progressed to the point where we have a test tape
that we can dump successfully.  The dump shows the data is ASCII, and that
it
was encoded with the UNIX tar utility.
How do we get the file off the tape? I searched the archives, and the only
solution I could find involved jumping the data through several hoops to a
PC
so we could un-tar it using winzip. That would mean pushing it back onto the
400 where the programs that need the data sit.
Is there such a thing as TAR/400? Or what should we ask our vendor do that
will give us a tape we can read just a little more easily?
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator:
david@midrange.com
+---

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---