27 May
2025
27 May
'25
5:17 p.m.
Yufeng Gao wrote:
The s1 tape is a UNIX INIT DECtape containing the
kernel, while s2 includes
most of the distribution files.
[https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-February/031420.html]
Hello Yufeng,
Do you have more details on the format of the s1 tape? I want to reproduce your
work.
The s2 tape is in the tap format, which was easy to decode, and I assumed that
s1 was similar, just with its file headers on an earlier tape. I’ve been able to
fairly accurately segment s1 into files by observing that blocks duplicate the
tail of the previous block when they are not a full 512 bytes. I’ve written a
tool for this and have segmented all the text files and some of the binaries,
but I’m floundering on the rest. What you say seems to suggest that s1 actually
does have file metadata.
Thalia