VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

5.1. [IRAF.DEV]TAPECAP

Beginning with V2.10, IRAF magtape devices are described by the tapecap file, dev$tapecap. This replaces the old "devices" file for all runtime access to tape devices (the "devices" file is still used however in a lesser role; see below). The tapecap file describes each local magtape device and controls all i/o to the device, as well as device allocation.

The tapecap file included in the distributed system includes some generic device entries such as "9t-6250" (9track 1/2 inch tape drive at 6250 bpi), "vms-exabyte" (exabyte EXB-8200 8mm tape drive on VMS), and so on which you may be able to use as-is to access your local magtape devices. For example, by default, the device known to the CL as "mta" is a TA78 9tk drive known as device TU0:, which is locally defined at the system level as a specific tape drive (actually, in our cluster, $1$MUA0:). Notice how related entries are chained together in the tapecap file with the tc= field:

mta|mtahi|mta6250|TA78 9tk tape drive|         :tc=mttu0-6250:

mttu0-6250|mttu0|TA78 half inch reel tape drive (VMS):\
	:al=tu0:dv=tu0:lk=tu0:mr#64512:or#64512:se:tc=9tk-6250:

9tk-6250|9track 1/2 inch tape drive at 6250 bpi:\
	:dt=9 track at 6250 bpi:tt=2400 foot:ts#140000:\
	:dn#6250:bs#0:mr#65535:or#65535:fb#10:

Most likely you will want to add some device aliases, and you may need to prepare custom device entries for local devices. There must be an entry in the tapecap file for a magtape device in order to be able to access the device from within IRAF.

Instructions for adding devices to the tapecap file are given in the IRAF V2.10 Revisions Summary. Notes on the VMS specific implementation of the new magtape facilities are found in §7.2 of this document.