SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (03/06/88)
HEACOCK@UKANVAX.bitnet writes: >I have an older, unenhanced //e, and I'm having a lot of trouble >getting anything I have downloaded from APPLE2-L to work. It's >possible I'm doing something stupid (or failing to do something >obvious), but I am inclined to think it is simply that I need to >upgrade my machine. My dealer says this costs $60 (if I do the work), >and I have to trade in my old ROMs. Is this reasonable? Are the new >ROMs all that different? Could this be my problem in the first place? You may want to enhance you //e for other reasons (I haven't enhanced either of mine and it hasn't inconvenienced me yet -- though Publish It! looks attractive and may finally force me to live with mousetext <yechh>), but enahncing will have NO EFFECT on whether you can get files from APPLE2-L to work. A likely possibility is that your VAX isn't doing a kosher EBCDIC to ASCII conversion (many APPLE2-L files are in EXECUTIONER's most compact <6bit> encoding scheme which uses virtually all of ASCII's printable characters <curly brackets, vertical bars, etc.>). There are some ASCII characters which are either not common with EBCDIC (the backward apostrophe also known as "accent" for example) or for which EBCDIC has more than one possible translation (curly brackets). There ARE agreed standards for consistent conversion of these characters from ASCII to EBCDIC and vice versa BUT (for reasons which remain mysterious) not all systems honor the standards ('tain't the hardware vendor's fault either, some IBM and VAX systems have no problem other IBM and VAX locations fail to convert all the characters correctly). I'd guess the reason for the inconsistencies exists because when systems people developed communications software for dealing with "dumb" terminals, it didn't occur to them that someday they'd have to deal with other, distant systems as well and local idosyncratic conventions would cause trouble. If EBCDIC to ASCII translation IS the problem, fuss at your local systems people to adopt standard translation. What are you downloading with? Kermit will produce files that will EXEC properly (so will SOFTERM 2), but "character capture" has a tendency to pad downloaded lines with blanks or linefeeds and the EXECUTIONER will become confused by either. I trust you are EXECing in ProDOS (EXECUTIONER can be "fooled" into working in DOS 3.3 but ONLY for binary files <as far as I know> Ted Medin uses that trick in his KERMIT EZ Install. --------------------- Disclaimer: I like my opinions better than my employers anyway... (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited) ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu Murphy A. Sewall BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin. UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut