There is now a DAT drive, an Exabyte tape drive, and a nine track
tape drive on cosmo.  The Sun Microsystems support for nine track tapes
is poor and is tending to get worse.  The Computer Support Group will
attempt to support this nine track tape drive for the next twelve months,
for the purpose of copying nine track tapes to DAT or Exabyte.
The nine track tape drive will be disconnected on May 1, 1997.
The easiest way to copy tapes is with the IRAF "reblock" task.
A sample session follows.

Login into cosmo and start IRAF.
cosmo% cl
...
cl> alloc mta
cl> alloc mtk
cl> rew mta
cl> rew mtk
cl> unlearn reblock
cl> reblock
Input file: mta
Output file: mtk[:se:wc]
Tape file list: 1-99999
Blank tape?: yes
File: mta[1] -> mtk[1:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[2] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[3] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[4] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 0/0 
Empty file: mta[4]
cl> rew mta
cl> # change input tape
cl> reblock
Input file (mta): 
Output file (mtk[:se:wc]): 
Tape file list (1-99999): 
Blank tape? (yes): no
File: mta[1] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[2] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[3] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[4] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 0/0 
Empty file: mta[4]
cl> rew mta
cl> # change input tape
cl> reblock
Input file (mta): 
Output file (mtk[:se:wc]): 
Tape file list (1-99999): 
Blank tape? (no): 
File: mta[1] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[2] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[3] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 19/19 
File: mta[4] -> mtk[EOT:se:wc]: [skip 0 blks] blks r/w 0/0 
Empty file: mta[4]
cl> unlearn rfits
cl> rfits make-
FITS data source (mta): mtk[:se:wc]
File list: 1-99999
File: mtk[1:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[2:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[3:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[4:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[5:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[6:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[7:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[8:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[9:se:wc]  m51  B  600s          Size = 512 x 512
File: mtk[10:se:wc]  End of data
cl> rew mta
cl> rew mtk
cl> # remove tapes
cl> dealloc mta rew-
cl> dealloc mtk rew-
cl> logout