Our End of Day backup routine uses following script.

start End-of-day
compress $BASE TO /home/compdir
write /home/compdir to DATTAPE
end

where
$BASE=/home2/Rev83
DATATAPE=/dev/rmt/ctape1
write=cpio (not sure about parameters)

since I'm new to UNIX, i dont know how to restore data using cpio and i'm not sure about how compress works, Any one would plz. help me on these issues and also on how can i read data from the tape drive.?

Best Regards,
Tayyab

See the man pages for compress and cpio. If you don't have them available, the try a search on SCO's web site. This link is for 5.0.7 man pages. There are examples of how to use the commands in the man pages. Also, you should find out what the parameters are in the cpio and look them up to understand them. You'll need to know how the data was written to tape (what parameters) to be able to read the tape to restore them.