search

simh / simtools

Tools useful when using or migrating to or from a simh simulator environment
48 stars 16 forks source link

docs for mtdump need an update; won't handle P7B format files #11

Open terryheidelberg opened 6 years ago

terryheidelberg commented 6 years ago

The README.md says: mtdump Dump the record structure of a SIMH, E11, TPC, or P7B

and: simtools/extracters/mtdump/mtdump.txt

also talks about processing P7B files, but the code doesn't handle such files or a -p option, at all. That needs to be fixed in the documentation.

Looking at mtdump.c, I can see that files in P7B format don't fit well in the code, as I think all of the other formats use a header that gives the record length, but P7B (aka Paul Pierce format) don't have any headers or trailers, just a stream of bytes with 6-bit char codes, a parity bit, and a 'new record starting' bit, plus a special byte value (0x8F) to signify a tape mark.

markpizz commented 6 years ago

Feel free to suggest detailed changes that are necessary to address the issue you are pointing out.

While reviewing exactly what is going on, you should also look closely at sim_tape.c in the simh repo to make sure that the details you're describing are consistent in both places.