APPENDIX D

Submission of Magnetically-Recorded Information

Magnetic media shall be submitted in the following forms and formats:

(A) Magnetic storage media. The FTC will accept: (1) 9-track computer tapes recorded in ASCII or EBCDIC format at either 1600 or 6250 BPI; (2) 5.25-inch microcomputer floppy diskettes recorded in high or low densities; (3) 3.5-inch microcomputer floppy diskettes recorded in high or low densities; (4) CD-readable disks formatted to ISO 9660 specifications; (5) QIC-80 magnetic tapes formatted to Travan®-1, 2120 Ximat XL, or 2120 Ximat specification, uncompressed; (6) 5.25-inch ISO-standard rewritable optical disks with 512 sectors, formatted to 1.2 gigabytes; or (7) Iomega ZIP® disk. The FTC will accept 4mm & 8mm DAT and other cassette, mini-cartridge, cartridge, and DAT/helical scan tapes by pre-authorization only. In all events, files provided on 4mm DAT cassettes must not be compressed or otherwise altered by proprietary backup programs. Files provided on 8mm DAT cassettes must not be compressed or otherwise altered by proprietary backup programs but may be accepted with files compressed using TAR or CPIO, or created using DD copy or ufsdump.

 

(B) File and record structures.

 

(1) Magnetically-recorded information from centralized non-microcomputer-based systems.

(a) File structures. The FTC will accept sequential files only. All other file structures must be converted into sequential format.

(b) Record structures. The FTC will accept fixed length records only. All data in the record is to be provided as it would appear in printed format: i.e., numbers unpacked, decimal points and signs printed.

(2) Magnetically-recorded information from microcomputers.

Microcomputer-based word-processing documents should be in DOS-text (ASCII), WordPerfect, or Microsoft Word format. Spreadsheets should be in Microsoft Excel (.xls), or Lotus-compatible (.wk1) format. Database files should be in Microsoft Access (.mdb), or dBase-compatible (.dbf) format. Database or spreadsheet files also may be submitted after conversion to ASCII delimited, comma separated format, with field names as the first record. Graphic images must be in TIFF 4 format, compressed and unencrypted. Other proprietary software formats for word processing documents, spreadsheets, databases, graphics and other data files will be accepted by pre-authorization only. For microcomputer files that are too large for one disk, files may be provided in a proprietary backup program format with prior authorization only or in compressed PKZip® format.

(C) Documentation. Brief documentation of each file on tape or disk must be provided. (1)Files provided on disk must be accompanied by the following information: (a) full pathname and (b) the disk on which the file resides. Where necessary, paths that must be created in order to successfully read submitted files on FTC equipment also must be provided

 

(2) Files provided on tape must be accompanied by the following information: (a) filename; (b) the tape on which the file resides; (c) the position of the file on the tape. For sequential database files, the documentation also must include (a) the number of records contained in the file; (b) the length and block size of each record; and (c) the record layout, including (I) the name of each element, (ii) the respective element size in bytes, and (iii) the element's data type. The documentation should be included in the same package as the tape, along with a printout of the first 100 records in report format.

(D) Shipping. Magnetic media must be shipped clearly marked:

 

MAGNETIC MEDIA DO NOT X-RAY.