At 10:22 -0600 on 01/15/2016, Paul Gilmartin wrote about Tape formats
(was: Conversion ...):
>In a message dated 1/15/2016 12:20:59 A.M. Central Standard Time,... writes:
Weren't those mostly used in automobiles? I remember when a colleague
first saw a 3480 cartridge he asked, "Is that an 8-track?"
It's plausible that the restriction of ASCII<->EBCDIC conversion to tape
arises because the conversion is done in the control unit. Is that the case?
Otherwise, yes, the restriction is inexcusable. It's also inexcusable that
no error is reported when conversion is requested on a device on which
it's not permitted. Sx13 would be a more appropriate outcome.
The conversion is NOT done in the control unit. It is done in the
computer after the data is read from the tape or before data is
written to the tape. When read, the raw data is even stored as is or
converted from the ASCII mappings to EBCDIC mappings. The same
process occurs in the opposite direction when you write an ASCII
Tape. Think of it like the CHARSET setting on an Email Message. When
the CHARSET is US-ASCII or ISO-8859-1 the data is read as-is.
CHARSET=UTF-8 on the other hand converts the data into different
glyphs (characters).
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