[net.micro.mac] PACKIT and Red Ryder 5.0 This will never work....

davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) (05/04/85)

In article <4028@stolaf.UUCP> eilers@stolaf.UUCP (David V. Eilers) writes:
>    I will be posting Red Ryder 5 to the net very shortly.  In an
>attempt to simplify the posting of the programs and the 12 or so
>documents that should accompany it, I'll be posting this upload
>in as a Packit (suffix .pit) file.  ...

Please don't get me wrong- the ideas behind PackIt and other such schemes to
simplify the downloading process are appreciated, but there is a real barrier
here.  It seems that some machines on the net just cannot properly handle
messages greater than 64K in length.  Failure invariably occurs due to word
sizes of only 16-bits in length (PDPs) or I/O errors somewhere along the line
which cause truncation or mutilation of part of the message.  The results are
a proliferation of postings requesting a resend and a hassle for all of us.
I don't know what can be done about this.  I just suggest that sending
anything over 63.5K in size is asking for trouble. Maybe someone has an idea
on how to circumvent the problems.

P.S. I just downloaded Version 5.0 of Red Ryder and the Docs no more than 2
months ago off the net.  Why post it again so soon?

Motorola Semiconductor Inc.                Dave Trissel
Austin, Texas              {ihnp4,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet

vishniac@wanginst.UUCP (Ephraim Vishniac) (05/07/85)

> 
> P.S. I just downloaded Version 5.0 of Red Ryder and the Docs no more than 2
> months ago off the net.  Why post it again so soon?
> 
That was Red Ryder 4.0.  True, the code was labeled 5/6, but that
had nothing to do with the version.  I hadn't been using RR, but took
a look at my downloaded copy when I discovered local bulletin boards
using Mac binary format.  I thought I remembered it as 5.0, and was
surprised to see it say 4.0 inside.
-- 
Ephraim Vishniac
  [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac
  vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay