iraf.net

Michael, there is more than one way to approach this problem. Some
questions...1. You are not currently running VMS/IRAF on the 780 - right?
2. What sort of networking do you have between the VAX and Sun - tcp/ip or
decnet?
3. The VAX has both a 3200bpi and 6250bpi drive?
4. Are the tapes FITS format or 2d-frutti format? Do you have a standalone
FITS reader and writer on the VAX? I think it might be best for you to read and write the tapes on the VAX.
We can send you enough of VMS/IRAF to make this possible, or perhaps some
standalone FITS reading and writing programs. Your answers to the above
questions will point us to the best solution. This sure is an unusual
problem - I didn't know 3200bpi drives even existed!Suzanne
sjacoby@noao.edu
5355::sjacoby or noao::sjacoby
(602-325-9364)
(602-323-4160 IRAF HOTLINE with an answering machine)

Michael, I think the simplest solution to your situation is to convert
the tapes from 3200bpi to 6250 on the VAX outside of IRAF. IRAF
networking will not work as we don't have a VMS/IRAF kernel server for
tcp/ip. We could install a subset of IRAF on the VAX, but this would
be several files and probably take too much time to work out for just
this one special case. We have a program here called TCOPY that runs on
VMS. Two versions exist, one written by Nigel Sharp, the other by Ed
Anderson. The programs are designed to simply copy one tape to another,
and changing density is no problem. I could send you the TCOPY program.
I know of one cosmetic change that needs to be made, other than that we
believe it will work fine. First, please check with your VMS system
manager and ask if there is some existing utility on your VAX for doing
this. You might also be able to do it with the EUNICE dd command. If not,
let me know and we'll put together a TCOPY distribution for you.Suzanne

Michael, I'm glad you have a solution. If it doesn't pan out, we can
possibly make TCOPY work with a single tape drive. Nigel's version of
TCOPY is just a DCL command file. If one is careful about block sizes,
perhaps it could be written to go to tape to disk and back again. Anyway, exchanging mail with you today has reminded me of two
things. The first has nothing to do with you, but maybe you can help
me out! I've been trying for 3 days now to return a phonecall to
Jim Rose. I call the observatory (919-962-1292) and get no answer.
I've also called the Physics department and left a message. He
called the HOTLINE on Monday with an urgent sounding installation
problem so I'd really like to get back with him. I don't know if
you two overlap at all, but if you could let him know I've tried to
contact him I'd appreciate it. I also don't have an email address, so
I'm kind of stuck. Thanks. Secondly, remember a while ago you called because aliases defined
in your .cshrc file were not being picked up when you escaped from IRAF.
(Or was it that you had foreign tasks defined in the CL to be csh alisases
and they didn't work on the 386)? Whatever, a similar report was
tracked down at another site to be caused by a line in the .cshrc file
that caused an immediate exit if it was not an interactive login. An
OS escape from the CL (cl> !anything) is not an interactive login to
the shell, and so this users aliases were not being defined. It is
the default .cshrc file on the 386 that includes the test for an
interactive shell; if you're using such a .cshrc file make sure all
aliases you want to use within IRAF precede this statement.Suzanne