taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) (03/19/91)
A curious thing happened today with ProTerm 2.2. I wasn't around when it happened, and it's driving me crazy. I started a massive upload of sampled sound files to a local BBS this morning at 12:50 am. The total size of the upload is over 10 megabytes in about 60 files. I expected to finish classes in the afternoon to find the transfer completed. Instead, the GS was sitting at the Prosel-16 Main Menu with the screen blanker running! Furthermore, it seems the transfer was aborted partway through a 2.2-megabyte file (only about 1800K of it was transferred). ZModem Batch was used to upload all files (this is to an IBM-based system). Two questions: why was the transfer aborted, and (more importantly) how did ProTerm quit to Prosel-16 by itself??? Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't."
kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kent Squires) (03/19/91)
taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) writes: > A curious thing happened today with ProTerm 2.2. I wasn't around when it >happened, and it's driving me crazy. I started a massive upload of sampled >sound files to a local BBS this morning at 12:50 am. The total size of the >upload is over 10 megabytes in about 60 files. I expected to finish classes >in the afternoon to find the transfer completed. Instead, the GS was sitting >at the Prosel-16 Main Menu with the screen blanker running! Furthermore, it >seems the transfer was aborted partway through a 2.2-megabyte file (only about >1800K of it was transferred). ZModem Batch was used to upload all files (this >is to an IBM-based system). Two questions: why was the transfer aborted, and >(more importantly) how did ProTerm quit to Prosel-16 by itself??? >Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be >U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there >Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't." Well, it could be that the BBS you logged onto had a time limit, or, in the midst of your download your U/D ratio fell below what was required for that BBS. On thing I noticed with ProTERM is that I was cut off from another ProTERM after 90 mins. That part about it dumping you back to ProSel is an expected mystery. One thought just occured to me. The power may have been cut off at your house (or wherever it is you live apt/dorm whatever) and then when it came back on it booted your HD (assuming you have one) and loaded up ProSel! I bet THAT'S what happened. _________________________________________________________________________ | Move over Rover & |Email Addresses: Kent Squires | | let Jimi take over!| Internet: kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu | | -------------------| ProLine: kents@pro-apa | | I wouldn't do it |_______ America OnLine: kents12 | | for all the farms in Cuba! | FidoNet: 233/15 Kent Squires | |____________________________|____________________________
daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David H. Huang) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar19.061541.15020@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kent Squires) writes: >taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) writes: > > >> A curious thing happened today with ProTerm 2.2. I wasn't around when it >>happened, and it's driving me crazy. I started a massive upload of sampled ^^^^^^ [rest of original article deleted] >Well, it could be that the BBS you logged onto had a time limit, or, in the >midst of your download your U/D ratio fell below what was required for that >BBS. On thing I noticed with ProTERM is that I was cut off from another Note that he was uploading, not downloading... Most BBSs don't let you d/l a file if you don't have enough time for it, but let you upload whatever you want... > _________________________________________________________________________ >| Move over Rover & |Email Addresses: Kent Squires | >| let Jimi take over!| Internet: kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu | >| -------------------| ProLine: kents@pro-apa | >| I wouldn't do it |_______ America OnLine: kents12 | >| for all the farms in Cuba! | FidoNet: 233/15 Kent Squires | >|____________________________|____________________________ -- David Huang | "Calzoni Pizza: Internet: daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | Delivery in six UUCP: ..!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!daveh | hours, or else your America Online: DrWho29 | pizza is cold."
taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) (03/20/91)
From kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kent Squires): > Well, it could be that the BBS you logged onto had a time limit, or, in > the midst of your download your U/D ratio fell below what was required > for that BBS. No, I was uploading the sound files (sending to the BBS), and it will not log anyone off during a transfer. My U/D ratio would have been improving with time, not getting worse. Anyhow, I think you've hit on the solution: > One thought just occured to me. The power may have been cut off at your > house (or wherever it is you live apt/dorm whatever) and then when it > came back on it booted your HD (assuming you have one) and loaded up > ProSel! I bet THAT'S what happened. Yes! That must be it. I don't have any digitial clocks in my room, but I'll check with my roomate's. The sysop said he didn't notice any errors during the transfer. It was as if the upload terminated normally, and I logged off. Thanks for the idea, for a while I thought there was some way to control Proterm by remote... Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't."
EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) (03/20/91)
D
.EDU>
Brian,
It seems fairly obvious what problem you encountered while uploading your
absurdly huge file to the local BBS. I have calculated that at a respectable
rate of 2400 bps, your 2.2 M (or 2,200,000 bytes) would have taken just a
little over 2 hours to upload (double that time at 1200, and 8 times at 300).
During this never-ending phone conversation with the computer at the other end,
It is highly likely that some sort of interference caused a disruption in the
transfer, Zmodem detected this, and interuppted your communications program.
For this reason, I doubt that this is an error in the software you speak of,
but rather an error in judgement on your part. It would be prudent to break
this huge file you speak of into smaller parts so that you may reduce the
transmission time. This would also be beneficial in the sense that if this
happened again, it would not require the entire time to re-send. I hope this
is helful.
Eric...bazyar@ernie (Jawaid Bazyar) (03/20/91)
In article <9103192302.AA25755@apple.com> EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) writes: > >For this reason, I doubt that this is an error in the software you speak of, >but rather an error in judgement on your part. It would be prudent to break >this huge file you speak of into smaller parts so that you may reduce the Gee, ya know what? If Proterm TRULY supported Zmodem like REAL telecom packages do, he could have just restarted the transfer where it crapped out, i.e., it IS an error on the software's part. -- Jawaid Bazyar |"I'm sure K&R have never heard of Mike." Senior/Computer Engineering | bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu |"That's okay. I'm sure Mike's never heard of K&R". Apple II Forever! | (discussion about Orca/C)
kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kent Squires) (03/20/91)
OK, so I misread the post. But my theory on the power going out for a short period of time still sounds like the most logical reason for the abortion.
EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) (03/20/91)
Jawaid Bazyar,
All telecommunications packages that I know of do attempt to re-send bad
packets. Unless there is some physical reason that it cannot do a re-send, it
should (and most do) attempt this until they reach a preset limit on the number
of tries. In any case, ProTerm should (I keep referring to ProTerm in a hypo-
thetical manner because I am not familiar with it) have returned a message to
the effect that it did have trouble sending a specific packet and terminated
its transmission due to this error. Since Brian did not mention anything about
an error message, (this is an afterthought) I am inclined to believe the
failure was due to a power surge or spike, or (as I mentioned before) a tele-
phone interference of some sort (assuming that he does not have a dedicated
line guaranteed by the telephone company). You must agree with me, however,
that the file was much too large to be sent via a 2400 bps modem from a
personal computer. In closing, I would like to respond to your comment about a
"REAL modem program" .... We are talking about Apples....
ERIC....unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) (03/21/91)
In article <9103201526.AA07284@apple.com> EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) writes: > All telecommunications packages that I know of do attempt to re-send bad >packets. Unless there is some physical reason that it cannot do a re-send, it >should (and most do) attempt this until they reach a preset limit on the number >of tries. In any case, ProTerm should (I keep referring to ProTerm in a hypo- >thetical manner because I am not familiar with it) have returned a message to >the effect that it did have trouble sending a specific packet and terminated >its transmission due to this error. According to my slight knowledge about Zmodem, you are incorrect in your assumptions, because Zmodem does not conform to the "regular" specifications of a modem transfer protocol. It just keeps blazing happily away whether or not there are errors. It prints to the screen (or maybe a file in some implementations?) a list of what blocks are in error... In non-brain-damaged versions of Zmodem (i.e. anything but ProTERM), you can tell it to resend a bunch of blocks or resend from a specific point on. Now if I could only get my damn graphics project to work.. aaah -- <unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu Apple IIGS Forever! ULTIMA VI GS -mail me. CDs-mail me>
bazyar@chip (Jawaid Bazyar) (03/21/91)
In article <9103201526.AA07284@apple.com> EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) writes: >Jawaid Bazyar, > All telecommunications packages that I know of do attempt to re-send bad >packets. I know that... Part of the _Z_modem specification is the ability to restart an aborted transfer (whether due to power loss, phone line crap, or whatever) at the point it left off. A REAL implementation of Zmodem would have saved the original poster 2.2megabytes of upload. [reiterates possible causes of loss of transfer] >personal computer. In closing, I would like to respond to your comment about a >"REAL modem program" .... We are talking about Apples.... Yes, we are. As far as I'm concerned, there is no decent telecom program for any computer. Every one I've seen sucks rocks in some way or other. Proterm's big problem is the half-assed implementation of the transfer protocols. Not to mention no real GS support. The other contender for the "least intolerable" comm program would be Telix, for the IBM. Although it loses characters at 19,200 baud. All hail TelCom, saviour of the modem world. Coming soon to an FTP site near you. -- Jawaid Bazyar |"I'm sure K&R have never heard of Mike." Senior/Computer Engineering | bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu |"That's okay. I'm sure Mike's never heard of K&R". Apple II Forever! | (discussion about Orca/C)
daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David H. Huang) (03/21/91)
In article <9103201526.AA07284@apple.com> EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric) writes: >Jawaid Bazyar, > All telecommunications packages that I know of do attempt to re-send bad >packets. Unless there is some physical reason that it cannot do a re-send, it >should (and most do) attempt this until they reach a preset limit on the number >of tries. In any case, ProTerm should (I keep referring to ProTerm in a hypo- >thetical manner because I am not familiar with it) have returned a message to >the effect that it did have trouble sending a specific packet and terminated >its transmission due to this error. Since Brian did not mention anything about I believe that Jawaid was referring to the fact that REAL Zmodem has support for restarting aborted transfers. If you got 500K of a 1Meg file, and the carrier got dropped, Zmodem *should* allow you to start at the 500K mark, although Proterm doesn't let you do this. It's not the same as retransmitting a bad packet... >an error message, (this is an afterthought) I am inclined to believe the >failure was due to a power surge or spike, or (as I mentioned before) a tele- >phone interference of some sort (assuming that he does not have a dedicated >line guaranteed by the telephone company). You must agree with me, however, >that the file was much too large to be sent via a 2400 bps modem from a The power surge thing seems to be a very likely case. However, I _think_ Brian said that he was transferring a couple of sound files, not one big sound file (if he was transferring one big sound file, I'd like to see it... It'd be very nice to get some 2-3 minute samples on the GS). >personal computer. In closing, I would like to respond to your comment about a >"REAL modem program" .... We are talking about Apples.... >ERIC.... What's that supposed to mean? Jawaid is working (hopefully!) on Telcom GS, which sounds like it could be a REAL modem program... -- David Huang | "Calzoni Pizza: Internet: daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | Delivery in six UUCP: ..!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!daveh | hours, or else your America Online: DrWho29 | pizza is cold."
taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) (03/21/91)
From EWNORT@WMVM1.BITNET (Eric): > Brian, > It seems fairly obvious what problem you encountered while uploading > your absurdly huge file to the local BBS. I have calculated that at a > respectable rate of 2400 bps, your 2.2 M (or 2,200,000 bytes) would have > taken just a little over 2 hours to upload (double that time at 1200, and > 8 times at 300). During this never-ending phone conversation with the > computer at the other end, It is highly likely that some sort of > interference caused a disruption in the transfer, Zmodem detected this, > and interuppted your communications program. Thanks for you insight, but I did not mention that a couple of other files close to 2 megs each were uploaded successfully. There would have to be some serious line noise to force ProTerm into giving up the transfer. Even if that were so, it does not explain how the GS was sitting back in Prosel-16 when I checked on it later. Someone suggested that the power went out during the transfer, which of course rebooted the computer. That is in fact what happened. I remember there was a campus-wide blackout for about two minutes Monday morning (right in the middle of a Calculus lecture...) and apparently it affected the power to the residences as well. Speaking of interrupted transfers, does ProTerm 2.2 support ZModem crash recovery? I noticed a setting for ZRPOS in the Defaults menu. Does that have anything to do with it? Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't."
peterc@pro-micol.cts.com (Peter Cameron) (03/21/91)
In-Reply-To: message from kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu I suspect the reason you ended up back in Prosel was that your machine was hit by a power failure and rebooted.
drewr@hpcc01.HP.COM (Drew Rudman) (03/22/91)
Perhaps the BBS you uploaded didn't like the fact that you were uploading 10 megs of stuff. I run a BBS and know that my machine cuts off at about 3 megs. Talk to the sysop about it. Drew
taob@pnet91.cts.com (Brian Tao) (03/22/91)
From daveh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David H. Huang): > The power surge thing seems to be a very likely case. However, I > _think_ Brian said that he was transferring a couple of sound files, > not one big sound file (if he was transferring one big sound file, > I'd like to see it... It'd be very nice to get some 2-3 minute > samples on the GS). Among the five dozen-some sound files I uploaded to this particular place, 4 of them were over 800K (they were 2204K, 1988K, 1860K and 832K in length). I asked the sysop if he had some utility which would join two files together manually, and then I used Lister 2.1 to create a file which consisted only of the unsent portion of the 2.2-meg file and uploaded that. BTW, it's the opening theme from Star Trek: the Next Generation @ 22 kHz. Those three multi-meg files are great for showing off LongPlay 2.0... ;-) Brian T. Tao *B-) | t569taob@bluffs.scar.utoronto.ca | "Though this be U of Metro Toronto | - or - | madness, yet there Scarberia, ON | taob@pnet91.cts.com | is method in 't."
kjs39186@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Kent Squires) (03/23/91)
drewr@hpcc01.HP.COM (Drew Rudman) writes: >Perhaps the BBS you uploaded didn't like the fact that you were uploading >10 megs of stuff. I run a BBS and know that my machine cuts off at about 3 >megs. Talk to the sysop about it. >Drew I think the majority of us agreed that it was some sort of power surge that disconnected him due to the fact that it dumped him back to his program selector.
lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com (Laer Haider) (03/24/91)
In-Reply-To: message from bazyar@chip > All hail TelCom, saviour of the modem world. > Coming soon to an FTP site near you. TelCom? Ok, my ears are perked. What kind of features does it have? Especially, does it include text handling as good as ProTERM's? I'm sure we're ALL interested. / _______________________________________________ \ / / ProLine: pro-beagle!lhaider \\\' , / // INET: lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com \\\//, _/ //, UUCP: crash!pro-beagle!lhaider \_-//' / //<, ARPA: crash!pro-beagle!lhaider@nosc.mil \ /// <//` / >> \\\`__/_ The opinions expressed here belong to nobody! /,)-^>>_\`, \\\ (Anybody see nobody lately?) (/ \\ /\\\ ----------------------------------------------- // _//\\\\ ((` ((
bazyar@ernie (Jawaid Bazyar) (03/25/91)
In article <30522.apple.net@pro-beagle> lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com (Laer Haider) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from bazyar@chip > >> All hail TelCom, saviour of the modem world. >> Coming soon to an FTP site near you. > >TelCom? Ok, my ears are perked. What kind of features does it have? >Especially, does it include text handling as good as ProTERM's? I'm >sure we're ALL interested. Note that I've been working on this for a year and a half, so don't hold your breath. In planning my curriculum, the College of Engineering forgot to leave me time for "big software projects". As far as features, we have: Emulations- VT100, VT52, Proterm Special, Apple II, and soon a split- screen 'chat' feature. Protocols- Currently supported are Xmodem and Ymodem, (all Apple varieties, in addition to the standard Unix/MSDOS are handled). As I speak I'm working on Zmodem. All I can say is I'm really glad that Orca 1.2 is evidently at my house. Note that this is REAL Zmodem, in fact the very code that gets executed when you type 'rz' on your favorite Unix box. Telcom has what I think is a nice interface, a good feel. Some people disagree (Albert!) about aesthetics, but it's very usable. I hate to sound like Brian "If you guys don't pay me I'll never make another game again" Greenstone, but if I can't find a commercial publisher for this it may never see the light of day. Which means I hope to find one. I won't go into detail in the remaining features because I'll get overrun with mail now as it is- suffice it to say that Proterm cannot compare to TelCom where growth potential is concerned. -- Jawaid Bazyar |"I'm sure K&R have never heard of Mike." Senior/Computer Engineering | bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu |"That's okay. I'm sure Mike's never heard of K&R". Apple II Forever! | (discussion about Orca/C)