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\title{Tape Standards}
\author{V Pucknell}
\date{Edition 1.0\\January 1990}
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EDOC027\par
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EUROGAM PROJECT\par
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NSF DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM\par
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Tape Standards\par
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Edition 1.0\par
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January 1990\par
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NSF Software Systems Group\par
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UK Science and Engineering Research Council\par
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Daresbury Laboratory\par
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\maketitle
\section{Introduction}
  This document proposes standards for magnetic tapes intended
to ensure exchangeability between laboratories and computer
systems.
 
 
\section{Devices}     
The following may be used:

 (1)  1/2 inch tape drives recording at 6250 BPI.       

 (2)  8mm (Exabyte) tape drives - the density standard is yet to
be decided.           
 
\section{Media}
The following may be used:

 (1) For 1/2 inch tape any media certified for GCR use at 6250 BPI
is acceptable.    

 (2) For 8mm tape an INTERIM standard is Sony P5-90 tapes 
but a certified tape is to be announced by Sony soon and when
available this should be used.     

\section{Labels}
Tape Volume and header labels to either the IBM specified 
standard or the ANSI standard (as defined by ANSI X3.27 - 1978)
should be used.

 Only VOL1, HDR1, HDR2, EOF1 and EOF2 should be written by the
Data Acquisition software. Other labels defined by the standards
(such as UHLn and UTLn) should not be used.
 
\section{Options}
To enable tapes to be read easily by foreign systems the
following only should be used:

 (1) Volume name - The tape volume name should consist of 1 
to 6 alphanumeric characters of which the first must be 
alphabetic.

 (2) File name - File names should consist of 1 to 8 
alphanumeric characters of which the first must be alphabetic.

 Files on a tape should have unique names.

 (3) File types - The following formats are permitted:

 F format - ie fixed length records and blocks

 VB format - variable length records (IBM) 

 D format - variable length records (ANSI)
 
 (4) Block size - This should be less than 16K bytes for 1/2 inch
tapes and less than or equal to 8K bytes (ie one track) for
Exabyte tapes.
 
 The format of data within a file on tape is the subject of 
other documents.
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