wtaylor@pro-hysteria.cts.com (Will Taylor) (04/30/89)
whenver I boot my pro-sel modified ProDos on my HD, it says cannot load ATINIT .. now what does this mean.. it just freezes up, as if there were no system files in the boot directory. also, what is BINSCII (or however it is spelled)
dcw@athena.mit.edu (David C. Whitney) (04/30/89)
In article <8904300936.AA26944@crash.cts.com> pnet01!pnet51!pro-hysteria!wtaylor@nosc.mil writes: > also, what is BINSCII (or however it is >spelled) BinSCII is the new and improved method of sending programs across the net. Since mailers have a hard time dealing with 8-bit bytes, binary programs (ie, executables) can't be sent over the net directly. Hence the need for some program to encode executables in some way so that they turn entirely into plain ASCII. The first program (that I've heard of) that did this was The Executive. It would take a binary file as input and produce a file you could EXEC from Basic. EXECing would re-create the original file. The next able program was Executioner, which did pretty much the same thing, only it could encode files in the more efficient 6-bit mode (6 bits of every byte were made into a character instead of just four. This makes coded files much smaller). Executioner had a few drawbacks though - there was an upper bound on the size of the file you could encode (approximately 40k or so) and the end user had to twiddle the text file before it was ready to be EXECed in Basic. Also, its 6-bit encoding scheme used 'funny' characters - they often wouldn't survive the translation when going to EBCDIC machines (read: IBMs). Therefore, I wrote BinSCII. It answers all of the drawbacks of Executioner - file size is now limited to roughly 3 megabytes; the 6-bit encoding uses 'normal' characters; the end user doesn't need to twiddle the file before processing; the parts of file can be processed in any order. The only drawback right now is you need BinSCII in order to decode files created by BinSCII. Dave Whitney A junior in Computer Science at MIT dcw@athena.mit.edu ...!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!dcw dcw@goldilocks.mit.edu I wrote Z-Link & BinSCII. Send me bug reports. I use a //GS. Send me Tech Info. "This is MIT. Collect and 3rd party calls will not be accepted at this number."
mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) (05/03/89)
In article <8904300936.AA26944@crash.cts.com> pnet01!pnet51!pro-hysteria!wtaylor@nosc.mil writes: >whenver I boot my pro-sel modified ProDos on my HD, it says cannot load >ATINIT .. now what does this mean.. it just freezes up, as if there were no >system files in the boot directory. also, what is BINSCII (or however it is >spelled) This only happens in a couple of instances - when the file ATINIT exists in the root directory and is not of file type $E2, or when the file exists, is of the proper file type, and can't be read (disk errors). At least, that's the only times it's *supposed* to happen. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Deatherage, Apple Computer, Inc. | "The opinions expressed in this tome Send PERSONAL mail ONLY (please) to: | should not be construed to imply that AppleLink PE: Matt DTS GEnie: AIIDTS | Apple Computer, Inc., or any of its CompuServe: 76703,3030 | subsidiaries, in whole or in part, Usenet: mattd@apple.com | have any opinion on any subject." UUCP: (other stuff)!ames!apple!mattd | "So there." -----------------------------------------------------------------------------