[daip] problems with MSORT on VLBA data

[Josh Winn]

Hi,

  I am having trouble loading VLBA data from project BH032 and BH032B
(archival data from 1997 that I recently obtained).  Each project is a
long (~12 hour) continuum observation of a gravitational lens, with
multiple correlation passes on one of the targets (0957+561). When I read
it from tape with FITLD, the following error messag was sprinkled in along
with all the "source found" messages:

WARNING: data found out of time order
Warning: source numbers    2 and    3 both have
         have name 0957+561         and qualifier     0 but
         have different positions
**************************************************
 Subarray or data out of order condition found.
 NX/CL tables deleted.
 Use UVSRT or MSORT to sort data into TB order.
 Use USUBA to set up subarrays.
 Rerun INDXR using CPARM(3) and (4)
**************************************************

  Then, when I try running MSORT to sort the data into TB order, the
process seems to take forever....over a week on a new Sun Blade 100
workstation.  It's still going on now.  I'm not sure whether it's really
working or if something is wrong.  It is definitely reading and writing to
disk, and the screen output continues:

MSORT1: BFORCE:    1584163 /    1684299 remaining, starting at 76190
MSORT1: BFORCE:    1583539 /    1684299 remaining, starting at 76678
MSORT1: BFORCE:    1582955 /    1684299 remaining, starting at 77166....

  but the running time seems excessive, and I am wondering if I may be
doing something wrong.  In the past when working with VLBA data I have
needed to use USUBA and INDXR to repair the data, but never MSORT.

  Any ideas?

Thanks,

Josh

P.S. Here are my inputs to FITLD and MSORT.

task 'fitld';
intape 1; nfiles 0; infile ''; outdisk 3; geto 1;
optype ''; ncount 33; dotable 1; douvcomp 1; doconcat 1;
clint 0.5; sources ''; qual -1; timer 0;
bchan 1; echan 0; bif 1; eif 0;
digicor 1; selband -1; selfreq -1; fqtol -1;
wtthresh 0.7; opcode ''; npiece 0;

task 'msort'; getn 1; geto 1; outclass 'MSORT'; sort 'TB'; prtlev 1;