VOL2FILE

New way to transfer .arc files to Hercules MUSIC/SP 

             Posted to H390-music discussion group as
             message #262 Sep 30, 2005 (+ later additions)

             Last updated: Mar 1, 2008

There is a new utility program, vol2file, for MUSIC/SP
that allows an archive (.arc or .mfarc) file to be read as an
FBA volume file, and copied to a MUSIC/SP file.
Starting with misc7.arc, vol2file can be used to
transfer update files to MUSIC/SP in cases, like
Hercules, where FTP cannot be used. The .arc file is
first downloaded to the base system (Linux or Win) as
a binary file, then defined in the emulator's config
file as an FBA (3370) volume on device 305 (even
though the file is not actually formatted as a volume).
Then vol2file is run on MUSIC/SP, which reads the volume
as 512-byte blocks and copies the archive data to a
new MUSIC/SP file of 80-byte records.

The assembler source for vol2file is in vol2file.txt
(135 records, or 136 records in a later version) at:

http://webpages.mcgill.ca/staff/group3/dedwar1/web/vol2file.txt

You have to somehow get that text file to MUSIC/SP.
(NOTE: In all recent versions of the MUSIC/SP Demo system,
the file is already there, as file $pgm:vol2file .)
For example, you can use "copy and paste" into the
MUSIC/SP Editor - use Input Mode of the Editor (the
INP command), and copy and paste in small sections
of about 30 lines each. (Use a size 43x80 3270 screen
if possible.)  It's a bit tedious, but it works,
and you only have to do it once! Check the resulting
file by "checksum filename", which should give a
check sum of 565070180 (or 230366243 for a later
136-line version of the file). Another method is to
use a MUSIC Batch /SAVE job read from the card reader
(device 00c); this is described in another file.

There is a problem with the last (incomplete) 512-
byte block in the volume file. It is not accessible
to MUSIC/SP, and therefore the last few records of
the .arc file may be lost. misc7.arc has been
especially adjusted so that no records are lost.
(This is not true for previous files such as misc6;
future files WILL be adjusted.) If you are preparing
your own .arc file, you can avoid this problem by
adding 8 *MFAEND records at the end.

Summary of the procedure:

(1) Use FTP on the base system to download the .arc
as a binary file, e.g. misc7.arc.

(2) Add a record like the following to the emulator
config file and then restart the emulator and IPL MUSIC:
For Hercules: 305 3370 c:\myfiles\misc7.arc
For Sim390: iodevice diskf512 305 c:\myfiles\misc7.arc
(You can remove the record later.)

(3) Run vol2file on MUSIC/SP. This copies the .arc data
to a new file called temp.arc. Rename temp.arc to
misc7.arc, use CHECKSUM to verify it, and execute it
to apply the update. There are some comments in
vol2file about job return codes indicating errors;
you can see the job return code by typing the command RC
immediately after vol2file.