cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU (11/14/88)
What un-ARC-er should I use on files from SIMTEL20? And where should I get it from? Apologies in advance if there is some standard place to go for this information. I did look through the titles of all 302 notes my site currently has in this notesfile before asking. Details: I have seen frequent remarks of the form "such-and-such is available for anonymous ftp from SIMTEL20". Today, for the first time, with the help of a friend, I found out how to get to SIMTEL20 and bring back files. I fetched two, both with names of the form <descriptive_word>.arc.<digit>, and I downloaded them by a hitherto-always-reliable method from my networked machine to an IBM PC. The transfer program swears that the transmission went OK, and the byte count is the same on the PC as on the machine I did the ftp with, but I cannot de-archive the files. Both SEA's ARC (version 5.2, I think) and PKARC version 3.5 are unable to read the files, and deny that they are in archive format. Any help most gratefully appreciated. Thanks profusely. --Cameron Smith cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.edu
usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) (11/15/88)
in article <32900001@symcom>, cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU says: > What un-ARC-er should I use on files from SIMTEL20? And where > should I get it from? > > Apologies in advance if there is some standard place to go for > this information. simtel20 does have a file of the name ARCHIVE-INFO or near that that explains all the procedures for stuff. 1) during your ftp transfer did you do a: type tenex or: quote "type l 8" simtel20 is a 36bit machine. If you did a straight binary tranfer to a standard UNIX 32bit machine, you got trash. 2) The way I usually do it is get the stuff to a BSD UNIX machine and use the BSD ARC program I got from simtel20 to unpack it. I then repack it using my favorite method and tranfer it to my PC./ John H. Lawitzke UUCP: ...rutgers!mailrus!frith!fciiho!jhl Michigan Farm Bureau ...decvax!purdue!mailrus!frith!fciiho!jhl Insurance Group ...uunet!frith!jhl "What?!? Real computing at an insurance company?!? AND in Michigan!?!"
cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU (11/16/88)
Profuse thanks to the dozen or so people who responded via
email to my question about how to get files from SIMTEL20!
A summary of the information follows.
1. SIMTEL20 is a DEC-20, which is a 36-bit word machine.
It packs 4 bytes per word, with 4 bits of zero fill.
So ftp's from such a machine to a byte-oriented machine
(like my Sun 3/50) must be done in 'tenex', not 'binary'
mode. (This was my mistake -- thanks all!)
2. If Kermit is used to move files from the networked machine
over a modem to a PC, then it must be in "binary" and not
"text" mode. (I have run afoul of this before, though not
this time.)
3. The directory PD1:<MSDOS.STARTER> has (among other things)
all the encoders/decoders one might need to extract the
files on SIMTEL20 from whatever formats they're in.
The extensions mean what they usually do:
.ZOO means it was compressed with Rahul Dhesi's ZOO.EXE
.ARC archived with PKPAK.EXE, unarchive with PKUNPAK.EXE
.LBR concatenated with LU.EXE, break up with LUE220.COM
.?Q? squeezed with SQPC.COM, unsqueezed with NUSQ.COM
4. More details are in the file SIMTEL-ARCHIVES.INFO from the
default anonymous ftp directory.
Thanks again to all who took the time to respond. Depending on
how long this note is kept before expiration, you shouldn't have
to answer the same questions again for a while! :-)
--Cameron Smith
cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.eduTUCFVS@TUCCVM.BITNET (Frank V. Schubert) (11/17/88)
The reason is that you probably did not set the transfer mode to TENEX. I
suspect you set it to BINARY. SIMTEL20 runs a TOPS-20 system and it is a
36 bit machine. Issue TENEX prior to getting the files and they should be
in a format suitable for PKARC or SEA ARC programs. I had the same problem
until I spotted a note about this. Good luck
Bitnet: TUCFVS@TUCC Address: Frank V. Schubert
TUCFVS@TUCCVM Triangle Universities Computation Center
# 2 Davis Drive
Phone: (919)-549-0671 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709