Open larsbrinkhoff opened 2 years ago
For PDP-10 tapes, we'll also have to consider whether they are 9 or 7 track, little or big endian, etc.
Add a tool to classify tape images, especially those formats in use at MIT.
- ITS DUMP format.
- TOPS-20 DUMPER.
- Skip optional ANSI label.
- Unix tar.
- Lispm tapes.
FWIW, there are multiple formats for LispM tapes; Symbolics and MIT.
there are multiple formats for LispM tapes; Symbolics and MIT.
I can see that. I see something beginning with some ASCII text strings like
PRELUDE
VERSION 3
TAPE-SYSTEM-VERSION 429
LMFS-VERSION 428.1 RELEASED
Is that the (or a) Symbolics format? I think those are tapes from REAGAN.
And then there's something more binary looking.
I also see VMS BACKUP tapes. Hoping this will help: https://github.com/kkaempf/vmsbackup
I have some code up on a branch called lars/classify-tape. So far I try to detect:
I see some unclassified tapes that look liike Unix or Lispm. The vast majority of tapes are ITS or TOPS-20, but there are quite a few Unix, Lispm, and VMS tapes that are as of yet totally unexplored.
Detection schemes range from heuristic to hacky. I mainly look at the first record, skipping any ANSI label if present.
Hello @romkey,
I'm working on classifying tape image files from MIT's "Tapes o' Tech Square" collection of backups. Some of the files seem to be MS-DOS floppy images, or at least some kind of FAT file system. I was surprised to see that type of data on MIT backup media, especially on what should be magnetic tapes.
When I think about PC's at MIT in the 80s, I of course think of the author of PC/IP. So, do you have any idea how this MS-DOS data would appear on magtapes from MIT?
Thanks!
Classification results so far, on my limited corpus.
2136 ITS DUMP
1410 TOPS-20 DUMPER
683 Unix dump
261 Symbolics LMFS dump
236 Unknown
154 ITS DUMP (with label)
106 Unix tar
105 Error reading tape image
78 VMS BACKUP
15 TOPS-20 install
8 FAT file system
4 Unix cpio
4 TOPS-10 BACKUP
1 TOPS-10 FAILSAFE
1 MIT/LMI dump
Breakdown of platforms:
Tapes | Percentage | Platform |
---|---|---|
5202 | 100 | All |
3720 | 72 | PDP-10 |
793 | 15 | Unix |
341 | 7 | Unknown/bad |
262 | 5 | Lispm |
78 | 1 | VMS |
8 | 0.1 | PC |
Add a tool to classify tape images, especially those formats in use at MIT.
CC @eswenson1 @ams