User's Manual

XEROX LASER PRINTING SYSTEMS TAPE FORMATS MANUAL 10-1
10. 10Honeywell tapes
The Xerox/OSS accepts magnetic tapes generated on Honeywell
200/2000 and 600/6000 systems. Supported label formats include
standard 80-character labels, standard 120-character COBOL
labels, System Print Type (SPR) labels, and standard system tape
labels. Fixed-length records (bannered or unbannered) are
supported on 9-track tapes in EBCDIC or 4 x 3 packed BCD; the SPR
data format is a subset of this format. Variable-length records
(bannered or unbannered) are supported on 9-track tapes in 4 x 3
packed BCD.
4 x 3 packed 6-bit character format
Octal data, 6-bit binary, or 6-bit character may be written on 9-track
tape in a compressed 4 x 3 format. That is, four 6-bit data bytes are
compressed into three 8-bit data bytes when the data is written to 9-
track tape. Each 6-bit data byte is extracted and two high-order zeros
are appended.
Two separate methods are used on Honeywell tapes to pack and
code 6-bit characters. Figure 10-1 shows an example of how BCD
characters on Honeywell 200/2000 tapes are translated to ASCII by
the Xerox/OSS.
Figure 10-1. Pictorial representation of T4X3H2 packing