john13@garfield.UUCP (12/27/86)
[]
This is quite distressing. The juggler looks great...until about the 3rd
frame when the "Software error - task held" message comes up. Egad sounds
great...until it tells me "File is not an object module". Shell 2.04M is
great...this is the only thing to come over the net recently that works.
All of the split files from the executables/data have joined and uudecoded
with no problems. They have kept the same sizes when downloaded. But only
one of 3 works! It's nice of people to take the time and effort to send
these programs to the net, but in the forced absence of the mod.sources/
binaries moderator (would it really be that hard for someone else to shoulder
the burden for a while? It *has* been several months!) I think that more
care should be taken. "You all know the drill by now" for instructions?
The executable for Egad was the first time I'd ever had to join files before
downloading, and the picture data for the clown was my second.
If the Atari16 newsgroup is any indication, we can expect a rash of "What
is uudecode?" postings in the near future. Just a short explanation of how
to unpack these things wouldn't add much to a ~60K file; perhaps the space
could be saved by foregoing the .signatures at the end.
Let's use a checksum for these files. This could save people (like me)
from spending endless hours on the phone downloading only to find that they
deleted one too many lines, or left on the .signature.
My contribution to mod.amiga.sources:
------------cut here. compile with manx. usage "checksum <file>"---------------
#include <stdio.h>
main(argc,argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];
{ char c;
long sum=0;
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen(argv[1],"r");
while ((c=fgetc(fp)) != EOF)
sum += (long)c;
fclose(fp);
printf("Checksum is %ld.\n",sum);
}
-------sum is 32 bits here. adjust its type as necessary for your system-------
At least this way, I can figure out if the executable is trashed while
it's still here on the Unix system. And whoever posts it can tell if it was
uploaded successfully. After this week, I've just about had it with Russian
Roulette downloads (twice for Egad, once for the juggler).
NOTE: This is not a flame; thank you John Draper, Matt Dillon, Andy Finkel
et al for your efforts on behalf of the Amiga community. It's just pretty
frustrating to have a couple of megs sitting around taking up space, and not
knowing whether it doesn't work because of a stray carriage return or a glitch
in the phone line or it was garbled en route.
Now when's somebody gonna post the uuencoded form of that animated, raytraced
frame-by-frame video I've heard about??? *:^)
John
PS Looks like it's a review of PageSetter next.