Catamount Pertec 9-Track Tape Drivers 3.x

Release notes

Alternate DL link: https://archive.org/details/Catamount_ATC-16 Manuals: https://archive.org/details/3.2Manual

For PCT-9 SERIES Including the ATC-8 and the ATC-16 interfaces.

The Catamount 1/2 inch Magnetic Tape Sub-systems are designed to provide access to, and use of, 1/2 inch magnetic tape data from the IBM PC/XT/AT and PS/2 computers and 100% compatibles. The Catamount subsystems support the IBM and ANSI compatible NRZI (Non-Return to Zero Invert) format at 800 bpi (Bits per inch), the PE (Phase encoded) data recording formats at 1600 and 3200 bpi, and the GCR (Group Coded Records) format at 6250 bpi depending on which subsystem have you purchased.

The Standard Catamount subsystem consists of a tape drive, a desk-top enclosure, an interface card, data cable and software. The Catamount interface is a full function DMA interface allowing access to all features of the Catamount tape drive. The Catamount interface occupies one expansion slot on the computer’s I/O channel.

A single data cable connects the interface card to either pair of P1 and P2 connectors on the rear of the tape drive.

Up to eight tape drives may be attached in a daisy-chain fashion to a single Catamount interface. Each tape drive attached in this fashion must be separately addressed and the termination resistor packs removed from all but the last drive in the chain.

The Catamount Subsystems are supplied standard with five software packages. These software packages are used for data transfer to and from tape; backing up and restoring from floppy, hard disk or network drive; and custom program support.

DT

The DT program is used to copy data to and/or from magnetic tape to and/or from a DOS device, such as a disk drive or a printer. The DT program provides record blocking/deblocking, tab expansion and contraction, trailing blank removal or padding, carriage return and/or line feed Insertion and removal, ASCII/EBCDIC translation and tape positioning for copied data.

TBACKUP and TRESTORE

The TBACKUP and TRESTORE programs are used to create tape backup copies of disk flies. These commands function in a manner very similar to the DOS supplied BACKUP and RESTORE commands. Support is provided for tree structured directories, multiple disk drives, file selection by archive bit and date of last modification, global file names, multi-reel backups, file classification and file exclusion. Additional utilities are provided to scratch the backup tapes and to list directory Information from the backup tapes.

TPS

The TDS (Tape Device Support) software provides DOS with additional devices used to transfer data to and from tape. One (or more, if additional tape drives are In- stalled) block device(s) and one (or more) character devlce(s) are added to the system, with the additional block device(s) providing data as files that can be accessed through conventional operating system calls. ASCII/EBCDIC translation, record deblocking, trailing blank removal or padding, tab expansion and contraction, carriage return and line feed Insertion and removal are selectable as options. These devices are controlled through DOS’s IOCTL facility.

BPS

The BPS (BASIC Programming Support) software provides a simplified and fast method of accessing tape data through the BASIC language. String data is passed via the USR function to and from the tape drive. The BPS software provides optional ASCII/EBCDIC translation as well as record blocking and deblocking.

GPTR

The GPTR (General Purpose Tape Routines) Is a library of machine language subroutines designed to be LINKed to other (usually high level language) programs, and provide access to standard tape drive functions. The GPTR subroutines are accessed by other programs when LINKed via the DOS LINK utility. The GPTR package is derived from the BPS software and provides similar features.