README

This directory contains ITSTAR, a program for manipulating ITS DUMP tapes
on UNIX (-like) systems.  It's mainly intended for building install tapes
using files from the AI/MC snapshots, but it provides general read/write
access to DUMP tapes using a subset of TAR's command set.  Yeah it's ugly
but at least it's familiar to a lot of people.

V1.10 is a new version, hacked to use the "SIMH" tape image file format
by default, which is just slightly incompatible with the Ersatz-11 tape
format.  Set the "simh" variable to 0 to restore the old behavior.

itstar.doc contains documentation.  As of V1.10, extracting gets the whole
tape, the ability to select individual files will be added later if anyone
seems to care.  It's a bit dumb about UFD names, the best thing to do is
to run ITSTAR in the parent directory above the UNIX copy of the UFD(s),
so that it can easily translate "ufd/file.ext" to UFD; FILE EXT.

The current version is only tested with Linux/x86, it's intended to be pretty
portable (no dependencies on word size, byte order, or any tricky libraries)
but who knows, anyway if you have to do anything special to make it run on
your system please let me know so I can fix it.  The calls to set the block
size and density on SCSI 9-track drives may need tweaking.  It ought to be
64-bit clean and would be Y2K-safe if ITS were (although of course there's
still the 2412 bug!).  Sorry, 7-track tapes are not supported (easily fixed
in tm03.c I would think, but good luck finding a UNIX box with a 7-tracker).

Files:

Makefile	...
README		this file
dirlst.c	DIR.LIST file parser
itstar.c	main program
itstar.doc	doc file (no it's NOT M$ Word!)
pack.c		code to pack 36-bit words into UNIX files
tapeio.c	magtape I/O code
tapsrv.h	opcodes for my old IBM mainframe MTS tape server, don't ask!
tm03.c		pack/unpack 36-bit words the same as TM03 tape formatter does
unpack.c	unpack UNIX files into 36-bit words
zopen.c		open a file, uncompressing if needed

Have fun,

John Wilson
D Bit  www.dbit.com

-- 
This file is part of itstar.

itstar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

itstar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with itstar.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.