This is the RSX/IAS SIG Symposium Tape from the 1981 Spring DECUS meeting in Miami, Florida. The tape contains material submitted by the user community to the SIG at the Spring DECUS meeting. A very important submission was made to this tape. Ralph Stamerjohn submitted a document that has an abstract for each program on all past RSX/IAS sig tapes. In addition he supplied an index at the end so that you can pick a subject and look to see which sig tape the program is on. This is a very valuable tool and should be printed right away. The programs on this tape are from user submissions. The DECUS staff, the RSX/IAS SIG staff, and DEC are all in relative ignorance of the contents of the tapes. No warranty of any kind is implied in the distribution of these tapes. The programs may or may not be well documented, they may or may not work, they may even crash your system. If you have a problem with the contents of the tape, contact the author of the program. Do not contact DECUS, DEC, or the RSX/IAS SIG. The tape contains approximately 48,690 blocks of software in 2891 files. Since 48,690 blocks would require four 2400-foot reels of tape in FLX DOS format at 800 bpi, we elected to distribute the tape in BRU format. The distribution fits on one 2400-foot tape in BRU format at 1600 bpi. The distribution at 800 bpi will be two 2400 foot reels. I intend to use BRU with the length switch so that the first reel is only 2000 feet long. This will leave librarians who have two tape drives and do reel to reel copies plenty of spare room at the end of the first reel. At the time of this writing I have not actually used the length switch, I think it will look something like : BRU /REW/DENS:800/VERIFY/LENGTH:2000 MM: DB0: I think BIGTPC will correctly treat the two 800 bpi tapes as separate entities and faithly reproduce them. However, I have not tried it. One other note on the distribution, I think the collection will fit on an RK07 but one might have to use the /HEADERS switch on BRU. If you are a VAX site and, for whatever reason, cannot read theh contents of this tape (so graciously submitted by the hard-working RSX/IAS SIG members), please contact Philip Cannon. UIC account [300,1] contains several files of interest. The file RSXSPR81.DIR contains a directory of the contents of the tape (BRU does not produce nice directories). The file RSXSPR81.DOC contains an abstract of the contents of the tape by UIC. The file READ1ST.ALL contains a concatenated list of all the README.1ST files on the Collection. The file SUBMIT.DOC contains the guidelines for submissions to the RSX/IAS sig tape collection. This is must reading for everyone who desires to submit a program to the SIG tape. A copy of this letter appears in the file BEGINS81.TXT in the same account. The file UICSETS81.CMD contains the UFD commands to create all the needed UIC's on device XX:. Edit it to match your needs before using BRU to extract the tape contents. Note that a partial extraction can be achieved by only creating the desired UIC's. The UIC account [300,2] contains the program that is used to copy this and other tapes, BIGTPC. This is a new version of TPC that does not choke at the end of the copy (did not effect data). To use TPC with the 1600 bpi distribution one needs a disk with at least 48,690 blocks of free space, not necessarily contiguous. To read in a copy of the master tape onto your disk, one enters the following command: RUN BIGTPC TPC> DN:RSXSPR81.BRU=MT: To make a copy of the tape for someone, one enters the following command line: RUN BIGTPC TPC> MT:=DN:RSXSPR81.BRU The distribution is again being made through the SIG tree-structured distribution system. A geographically oriented distribution scheme is used, where each LUG makes a few copies of the tapes and sends them on to other LUGS, who in turn make a few copies of the tape and send them on to other LUGS, and so on. The SIG is relying on each node to contact the next higher node for necessary tape-transfer arrangements. Since this is a volunteer operation, sincere interest on the part of soon-to-be participants is very helpful in assuring a timely distribution. Remember since it is a volunteer operation, DECUS is NOT paying for postage or free copies of magnetic tapes. Make arrangements so that this does not cost anybody a lot of money or magnetic tapes. The Tape Copy tree will be mailed in advance to all the nodes with two post cards included. The first post card is to be mailed on receipt of the tree, to acknowledge receipt. If there is some reason why a node cannot participate in the distribution, please contact Philip Cannon IMMEDIATELY. The second post card is to be returned when the Tape Collection copy is received. Now for a new project, we are in the beginning stages of compiling a tape which contains the most popular programs on all past sig tapes. This tape "best of the RSX/IAS sig tape" will be kept updated. The problem is how do we determine the most popular programs. If you have taken a program off the SIG tape and used it, write me (Philip Cannon) a letter and let me know. This be a start anyway. Let me know about things that did not work also. Some programs to start with would be TECO,SRD (which one ???), RUNOFF (whose mods ? or no more mods ?),Ralph's INDEX, and Jim Downward's KMSKIT (includes CCL). Write and let me know what other programs are being used and WHERE YOU FOUND THEM. Tell me which tape and what uic. Speaking of writing letters, if you use a program off the SIG tape, take the time to write to the author and let him know. If you find a bug or make an enhancement, write and let him know. Don't call (we all get too many phone calls) and don't expect a bug fix, but a little positive feedback can go a long way. Just think we have over 200,000 blocks and 12,000 files. With a little positive feedback we will all have to get 6250 bpi tape drives. Anyway my thank you to all the people who have submitted to the sig tape. You are the ones who have made it the huge success it is. The following people burned the midnight oil to create the 1981 spring RSX/IAS sig tape: Angel Li (generously provided the Collection assembly site) James Brown,Joe Sventek,Wayne Graves,George Hamma,Philip Cannon Glen Everhart,Jim Neeland,Tony Scandora, and Mark Weston Respectfully submitted, Philip Cannon RSX/IAS SIG Librarian Science Applications, Inc. 1211 West 22 nd street suite 901 Oakbrook, Il. 60521 (312) 655-5960