scope:

This International Standard specifies the physical and magnetic characteristics of a 3,81 mm wide magnetic tape cartridge to enable physical interchangeability of such cartridges between drives. It also specifies the quality of the recorded signals, the recording method and the recorded format, thereby allowing data interchange between drives by means of such magnetic tape cartridges.

The recorded format, known as DDS-2, includes all the features of the DDS recorded format specified in ISO/IEC 12247 and of the DDS-DC recorded format specified in ISO/IEC 11557. The principal difference between this recorded format and those recorded formats is the use of a greater track density by this format.

Information interchange between systems utilising this International Standard also requires the use, as a minimum, of a labelling specification, e.g. ISO 1001:1986, Information processing - File structure and labelling of magnetic tapes for information interchange, and an interchange code which shall be agreed upon by the interchange parties.

Under information interchange circumstances in which a processing algorithm is applied to the host data prior to recording on the tape and a complementary reprocessing algorithm is applied after the data is read from the tape, agreement upon the algorithms employed by the interchange parties is also required. It is outside the scope of this International Standard to specify any of these.