This software is provided without support and without any obligation on the part of Silicon Graphics, Inc. to assist in its use, correction, modification or enhancement. There is no guarantee that this software will be included in future software releases. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR ARISING FROM A COURSE OF DEALING, USAGE OR TRADE PRACTICE. In no event will Silicon Graphics, Inc. be liable for any lost revenue or profits or other special, indirect and consequential damages, even if Silicon Graphics, Inc. has been advised of the possibility of such damages. SGI DAT Goodies, version 1.0 This is a simple set of DAT examples. There are three programs here, dodat, verifydat, and cdtodat. Dodat is a simple scripting language that lets you read & write files to DAT tapes in a frame-accurate manner, so you can master your own DATs, or grab just a certain chunk of audio off DAT or whatever. cdtodat will copy a CD to DAT. verifydat will read the timecode on a DAT and make sure that it is continuous and conforms to the DAT spec as I understand it. Each has its own README file with more complete information. In the course of writing these examples, I tried to make them useful little tools for DAT stuff, but they are by no means intended as complete and professional solutions for DAT audio. They are supplied as-is and without warranty of any kind. Note that the current firmware (2.63) has some bugs in it which make some operations difficult. (The manufacturer of the drives is aware of these and intends to fix the problems in newer firmware). These are: 1) writes following seeks are not always frame-accurate. 2) writes following reads are not frame-accurate. 3) The read-position command does not return the correct position (there is an easy workaround for this in dodat). 4) The tape drive unloads the tape from the heads after a minute of idle time. This will cause immediately subsequent reads to return bad data (this has been fixed in newer firmware). I hope you enjoy these programs. Comments, bug reports, additions, etc. are welcome. Doug Cook, cook@sgi.com Software Engineer Silicon Graphics, Inc.