RMAN restore - which backup piece?

[franco]

Environment:
Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options
JServer Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production.
Windows Server 2K SP4.

I use RMAN to backup the database and I have scheduled one job (three steps) with OEM, but anyway the commands I use are:
FIRST STEP
I need to delete the old backup from disk because I don't have enough free space:
del E:\backup\orcl\*.*/Q

SECOND STEP I also delete the control file's backup:
del E:\Ctrl\orcl\*.*/Q

AND FINALLY , LAST STEP I backup the DB:

run {
allocate channel Channel1 type disk format 'E:\backup\orcl\b_%u_%p_%c.BAK';
backup
( database include current controlfile );

backup ( archivelog all delete input );

}
allocate channel for maintenance device type disk;
delete obsolete device type disk;


It's clear that when I use the command:
"Crosscheck backup" I end up in this situation
****************************************************************************
RMAN>Crosschek backup;
using channel ORA_DISK_1
crosschecked backup piece: found to be 'EXPIRED'
backup piece handle=E:\BACKUP\ORCL\B_9NFA89VF_1_1.BAK recid=306 stamp=514074608
crosschecked backup piece: found to be 'EXPIRED'
backup piece handle=E:\BACKUP\ORCL\B_9OFA8ANH_1_1.BAK recid=307 stamp=514075378
...and so on..
and finally:
crosschecked backup piece: found to be 'AVAILABLE'
backup piece handle=E:\BACKUP\ORCL\B_A4FAIS7E_1_1.BAK recid=319 stamp=514420975
crosschecked backup piece: found to be 'AVAILABLE'
backup piece handle=E:\CTRL\ORCL\C-1025478424-20040102-00 recid=320 stamp=514421001
*****************************************************************************

Note that all the backup pieces are also on tape, so I have on tape 2 weeks of backup, but on disk only the last one (yesterday).
Now my questions are:

1) If I need to restore a backup, but not the last one that I have on disk, how can I achieve this with RMAN after having restored the backup piece from tape to disk? (which command)
2) If once in a while I use the command "delete expired backups", are there any chance for me to be able to restore a old backup piece from tape to disk and use RMAN to restore my DB?

In other words I can I direct RMAN to use a particular backup piece?
I don't use recovery catalog but the control file.

Thank you for your time.

[BJE_DBA]

I use control file backups and when I restore I place the pieces into the locations where they were originally created during backup. Sometimes this is another machine and I have to create the exact paths or make it appear so with soft links.

I would expect there is some way to inform RMAN without doing this but for now it works and thats what I do.

Newname seems to apply not to backup pieces but to restored data file locations i.e. .dbf not .bak

[julian]

You run delete expired backups/delete obsolete and you cannot use these RMAN backups.

Well, you can recover you catalog database point in time :-) but I see you use only the contro file.