FASTBACK is a quick and efficient method of backing up disks and transporting data. It is very economic of tape but the tapes can be read only by other Perkin-Elmer machines with OS/32. Therefore, observers can use FASTBACK only if they are going to read their tape on a Perkin Elmer back home. As Murphy's law dictates, STARLINK does not support any PE hardware, nor does RGO have any PEs at Cambridge.
FASTBACK works disk-to-tape or vice-versa. FASTBACK does not work from disk to disk; you will have to use BACKUP instead. If you intend to work tape-to-disk, remove the "write-enable" ring from your tape, or a moment's lapse in concentration may corrupt an irreplaceable tape.
FASTBACK can be run on the PE3210 Instrument Computer from any of its three terminals:
You can now work through all the options available, but the odds are that you will just want the defaults. Therefore, you can skip further input at any time, and start the data transfer, by typing:
>!GO
which will initiate the transfer (and verify) of files files to the tape or disk. If you only want to transfer specific files, then type: @
which allows you to select files interactively: Run through the questions giving the default option at every line until you are prompted for a list of files. You can either type in a list of files followed by period-slash, `./', or use wild cards such as `-.FTN', `HSP.-', or `-.-/60' followed by `./'. Further tricks that may be useful are e.g.: `REN(AME) = -.-/60', which allows you to change account number, or `!-.OBJ/-' to omit all `-.OBJ' files from your current file selection.
If you want to FASTBACK files created since a certain date, go through the questions, until you get the AGE prompt:
If you wish to abandon at any stage, send STOP.