Re: Reading old MIDAS data

[system@midasc.oma.be (Dr. Jean-Pierre De Cuyper)]

Nikolaus Neininger wrote:

> Hello,

> recently, I saved old MIDAS data from 1/2"-tapes. They had been created
> in 1989/1990 on a microVAX and (unfortunately) saved to tape as a VMS
> backup. When trying to access these frames now, I don't even have to
> worry about the wrong coding of floatings as had been discussed here
> some time ago, since the header is not recognized at all (here's a
> `screen shot'):

>  Midas 001> load/ima m7331f
 
>  (ERR) SCFOPN: m7331f.bdf - VERNOR 
>  (ERR) MID_ACCFRM: - VERNOR 
>  Version not recognized: None of the currently supported versions for
> Midas   data files was found in the header record.

> The version we are using is "ESO-MIDAS version 97NOVpl2.1 on OSF1/AXP";
> however, I tried down to 1994 Versions with the same result.

> Does anybody know a trick to convert such old data into a recognized
> format (maybe FITS) without losing the header information? (We were
> already discussing to dump the file, prune the header and insert a new
> one "by hand". But such a method should be the very last resort only...)

> Many thanks in advance for any help!

> Best regards,

> Nikolaus Neininger


Hello,

If I understand it correctly you are trying to use VMS backuped image files.
In this case they probably are internal MIDAS .bdf or .tbl files written in
D-float. In order to recover the data you should convert them to fits format
on a VMS machine running MIDAS with D-float as internal data representation.

If you do not have access to such a computer, please contact me. Here at the 
Royal Observatory of Belgium we still can read those tapes and convert the files
to FITS format as should have been done to backup them!

Greetings,

Jean-Pierre De Cuyper