On 11/3/18 5:17 AM, Jonathan Billings wrote: >> On Nov 3, 2018, at 06:26, Pete Biggs <pete at biggs.org.uk> wrote: >> I don't think dump has changed anything in 20 years or so! And I >> certainly can't see it changing such that it can't read old files - >> that is, sort of, it's raison d'etre. > A bit off topic but... > > Funny story, at a previous job, my boss was able to extract the data off tapes made in the 80s on tops-20 systems (iirc) with the version of restore on FreeBSD, but couldn’t get the tape drive to work on anything but Linux, so he had to extract the tapes on a RHL system then copy them to FreeBSD to read into the restore program. He actually was able to find the data he was looking for. > > > -- > Jonathan Billings I actually had some of those tapes written on a tops-20 system as well as ebcdic tapes written on an IBM 370. Though at one point I had 3, 7 foot tall racks filled with servers in my home, I decided I was never going to get a TU77 or other similar tape drive, so I disposed of those old tapes. There is actually a KL10 running tops-20 still on the Internet today... https://sdf.org/twenex/? Nataraj