Tar (and other?) blocking question

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <877 at unh.UUCP> pss at unh.UUCP (Paul S. Sawyer) writes:
>My drive is limited to 8k at 1600 bpi only.  (Is it indecent?  B-)

1600bpi is the most universal density these days.

I've heard of several magtape systems that wouldn't support more
than 8K (or maybe even 5K) byte records.  I recall the ANSI standard
doesn't require support for more than something like 2K bytes, but
5K bytes seems to work on nearly all systems encountered these days.