AATAPE.HLP                                                          (30 Oct 86)

                    COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY KERMIT DISTRIBUTION


In October 1986, the Kermit distribution grew so big that it wouldn't fit on
two 2400' reels of tape at 1600 bpi.  Three tapes are now necessary.  The files
have been divided into three groups: one group for microcomputer/workstations
Kermits (Tape A), one group for mainframe/minicomputer Kermit implementations
(Tape B), and one tape for "esoterica" -- less popular versions, redundant
versions, large documents, mail archives, etc (Tape C).  See the file
AAFILES.HLP for an explanation of where the files are and what they're called.

All tapes are 9-track, 1600 bpi, odd parity, 2400-foot half-inch reels.
Blocksize is marked on the external label, and will be between 2K and 10K
depending upon various factors.

Your tape is in one of the following formats, as you requested.  The format
should be clearly marked on the external label.

ANSI -- ANSI standard label, volume label KERMIT, ASCII encoding, format D,
  variable length records.  Readable by most computer systems, should be
  readable by all since it's a national standard format.  On VAX/VMS, readable
  with the DCL COPY command. The ANSI tape format is described in detail below.

OS -- IBM OS standard label, volume label KERMIT, EBCDIC encoding, format
  VB, variable length records.  Format described in detail below.  First file
  on OS tapes is a 370 program to read OS tapes under CMS.  For MVS, use JCL.

CMS -- IBM VM/CMS VMFPLC2 format, read using VMFPLC2 LOAD command.

TAR -- Unix Tar format, produced on a VAX running 4.2BSD Unix, 10K blocksize.

DUMPER -- DEC-20 DUMPER format.

BACKUP -- DEC-10 Backup/Interchange format (NOT VAX/VMS Backup!).

The CMS, TAR, DUMPER, and BACKUP formats are internal formats for specific
operating systems.  The DUMPER and BACKUP tapes may include savesets containing
certain binary files; the CMS tape may contain the CMS Kermit MODULE file.
The other formats contain only "printable" files -- program source, binaries in
"hex" or other printably-encoded format along with conversion programs,
documentation, etc.

Each Kermit distribution tape, A, B, and C, comes with a directory listing
showing names of all the files that are on it, in the order in which they
appear on the tape.  In addition, the file AAFILES.HLP lists the files and
gives a fuller explanation of the naming conventions, and some information
about the various Kermit implementations.

ANSI and OS are the two formats most commonly used for exchanging information
on tape between unlike systems.  These formats are now described in some
detail; in case you don't have a utility handy to read your ANSI or OS tape,
the following information should be sufficient to allow a programmer to write a
procedure to get the information from the tape.
- ANSI LABELED TAPES -

All systems are supposed to be able to read ANSI labeled tapes, which,
according to ANSI standard X3.27-1978: "Magnetic Tape Labels and File
Structure for Information Exchange", should be the universal medium
for exchange between mainframe computers.  Our tape is written on any of
several types of computers, including a VAX with Unix (using an ANSI
tape-writing utility), a VAX with VMS (using the COPY command), or a
DECSYSTEM-20 (using the WRITEL program), and conform to the ANSI standard,
level 3.  The tape is written as follows:

              Tracks:  9
             Density:  1600 bits per inch
              Parity:  Odd
  Character Encoding:  ASCII (ANSI X3.4-1968)
        Block Length:  8192 (unless indicated otherwise on external label)

ANSI labels (each label is an 80-byte record, encoded in ASCII):

Each label begins with a 4-character identifier, like VOL1, HDR1, EOV1, etc.
- Volume label  (VOL1): Volume name is KERMIT, in character positions 5-10.
    The volume label appears only at the beginning of the tape.
- File Header 1 (HDR1): File name is in character positions 5-21.
- File Header 2 (HDR2): Record Format (F, D, or S) in 5 (it's always "D"),
                        Block length in 6-10, ASCII numeric, leading 0's.
                        Record length in 11-15, ditto.
  After HDR1 and HDR2 comes a single tape mark (tm) then the contents of the
  file, terminated by another tm.  The (HDR1, HDR2, tm, file data, tm) sequence
  is repeated for each file.  At the end of file, there may be EOF1 and EOF2
  labels followed by a tm; if present, they may be ignored.

- At the end of tape may be EOV1 and EOV2 labels to indicate end of volume.
  There is a double tape mark at the end of the tape.

Record Format: "D" -- variable length records with a 4-digit ASCII length field
  at the beginning of each record (the length includes the length field
  itself), line terminators stripped, and no record crossing a block boundary.
  The record may be padded at the end with 0 to 3 circumflex characters,
  which are NOT included in the length field.  A null record ("blank line")
  is indicated by "0004" followed immediately by the length field of the
  next line.  "F" (fixed length record) format, although simpler to read, is
  not used because the Kermit distribution will not fit on a 2400-foot
  fixed-block tape because of the space wasted by padding each record with
  blanks.  Only printable files (text, program source, text formatter source,
  or hex) are included on this tape. 

Record Length:  Variable, maximum 300 (no lines of text or program source in
  the Kermit distribution are more than 300 characters long; very few are
  longer than 200).

Block length: Since 8192 is longer than the normal block length on some
systems, you may need special procedures to read the tape.  For instance, on
VAX/VMS, you must "MOUNT/BLOCK=8192/DENSITY=1600 MTA0: KERMIT" (not /FOREIGN).

DEC PDP-11s may have trouble with these tapes.  RT-11 doesn't support them.
In RSTS, MOUNT MM0:/FOR=ANS KERMIT (or ASSIGN MM0:.ANSI), and use PIP to read.
In RSX, MOU MM0:/OV=ID and use PIP to read.
In both RSTS and RSX, you may have to extend PIP's buffer size.
- OS STANDARD LABELED TAPES -

The tape is written on either a VAX running Unix, using a local utility,
or an IBM 370-Series machine running VM/CMS, using MOVEFILE.  The tape may
be read on IBM OS or MVS systems using normal JCL procedures.  The tape may
be read on CMS using the program provided as the first file on the tape.

The tape is written as follows:

Tracks:   9
Density:  1600 bits per inch
Parity:   Odd

Character Encoding:  EBCDIC

Labels (each label is an 80-byte record, encoded in EBCDIC):
Each label begins with a 4-character identifier, like VOL1, HDR1, EOV1, etc.
  Volume label  (VOL1): Volume name is KERMIT, in character positions 5-10.
    The volume label appears only at the beginning of the tape.
  File Header 1 (HDR1): File name is in character positions 5-21.
  File Header 2 (HDR2): Record Format in 5 (it's always "V"),
                        Block length in 6-10, printable EBCDIC digits,
				      filled to 5 columns with leading zeroes.
                        Record length in 11-15, printable EBCDIC digits,
				      filled with leading zeroes.
			Blocking attribute in 39 (always "B").
  After HDR1 and HDR2 comes a single tape mark (tm) then the contents
  of the file, terminated by another tm.  Finally, there are EOF1 and
  EOF2 labels, also terminated by a tm.  The (HDR1, HDR2, tm, file
  data, tm, EOF1, EOF2, tm) sequence is repeated for each file.

  At the end of the tape there is a double tape mark.

Block Format: "B" -- Each block begins with a 4-byte length field (the
  length includes the block length field) which is the actual length
  of the block.  The length field is encoded as two binary bytes (high
  order byte first) followed by two zero bytes.  Following the length
  are as many records as will fit in the block; no record spans
  multiple blocks.

Record Format: "V" -- variable length records with a 4-byte length field
  at the beginning of each record (the length includes the length
  field itself), line terminators stripped, and no record crossing a
  block boundary.  The length field is encoded the same was as the
  block length field, above.  "F" (fixed length record) format,
  although simpler to read, is not used because the Kermit
  distribution will not fit on a 2400-foot fixed-block tape because of
  the space wasted by padding each record with blanks.

Record Length:  Variable, maximum 300 (no lines of text or program source in
  the Kermit distribution are more than 300 characters long)

Block Length:  Maximum of 8192 bytes.

Only printable files (text, program source, text formatter source, or hex) are
included on this tape.

[End of AATAPE.HLP]