  Storage Media Interchange? 
 The Question is:
 
Is it possible to write information from an Alpha cluster to a TZ887 tape
drive (using a DLT Type III) and then to read this information from a Unix
machine?
 
It doesn't matter how the information is written to tape or how it is
removed from the tape although I want to avoid a third party product if at
all possible.
 
Thanks for your help
Alex Bell
 
 
 The Answer is:
 
  Yes, this is possible -- the binary format written directly on the media
  is entirely independent of the host system.
 
  That said, it very much matters how the information is written to the tape.
  While the low-level format can be exchanged, the upper-level (application)
  format written to the media must be compatible for any exchange to work.
 
  Raw formats (eg: fixed-size record COPY) and tools such as tar are common
  approaches for data interchange among disparate systems.
 
