backing up to scsi disk?

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

    Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1991 06:09 EDT
    From: Robert W. Kerns <rwk@crl.dec.com>

	Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 19:16-0400
	From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
	Actually, what would be nice would be an option to dump and restore
	to/from ordinary files.  I could then dump to an ordinary Unix file or a
	file on our optical disk jukebox.  I once tried to make use of some of
	the code I saw in the dumper source to redirect the dumper stream to a
	file stream, but it didn't work; the dumper sends messages that are only
	implemented by the tape stream flavors.

    But I believe (without trying it or looking at the dumper code to
    refresh my memory), that they're the same as the messages accepted
    by si:embedded-length-8-bit-output-stream and
    si:embedded-length-8-bit-input-stream.  This accepts all of the
    messages I remember from the tape/RTAPE protocol.

I think the function that I saw in the dumper, and which I tried to use,
was LMFS:BACKUP-SIMULATE-TAPE.  I figured that this was intended to let
you emulate a tape with a file stream; when it didn't work, I assumed
that it was just obsolete and hadn't been enhanced as the dumper's needs
evolved.

                                                barmar