On 12/30/22 15:17, John Herron via cctalk wrote: > This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all > generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and > read/restore? > > Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the > structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, > would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? Then > see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards?
It is unlikely that the tapes are in tar format, so tar on Linux won't help. The chance that they are in tar format is much higher if they're from Amix (Amiga Unix) instead of AmigaOS. There is a better possibility that the tapes were created by BRU since AmigaOS 2.x (and maybe later) included a version of that. BRU is now Argest Backup, if you need to go down that road. It is also possible that the tapes were created with any of the many third-party backup applications that existed for AmigaOS. In any case, using dd (not tar) on Linux to copy the tapes to disk to "interpret" and "sort out files afterwards" is at least a starting point. Other list members are better qualified to comment on the physical aspects of doing that without destroying the fragile old tapes.
