[daip] problems with MSORT on VLBA data (fwd)

[Josh Winn]

  Hi.  I'm just re-submitting this question that I sent 3 weeks ago, just
in case Eric G. has returned from vacation, or in case someone else could
help me.

  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 message 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.  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;