dg@sundog.caltech.edu (DALE GARY) (01/26/91)
If you, like me, tried downloading the damaged Aquarium data file updates on ab20 and screwed up your data file, here is what I did to fix it. You need an editor that allows you to alter binary data--I used Cygnus-Ed Pro. If you use something else, the procedure will probably be different, but hopefully the following information will help: The problem is in the data file, not in the index or names files. One series of entries is duplicated in the data file, so you just have to remove the duplicates. The duplicates are for fish disk 410. The format of the file is that each description is normal ascii, with each line null terminated (a null looks like an inverse video @-sign in Cygnus-Ed). Each description is separated by exactly 56 null characters (57 if you count the one terminating the last line of each description). In Cygnus-Ed, you can fix the file by deleting lines 126903 to 128964, inclusive. This amounts to deleting the duplicate descriptions, starting with the first VLT description. If you are using a binary editor, you will not have things in terms of lines, so you will have to find the duplicates by searching. Look for two identical descriptions of VLT version 4.826. The first description is okay, and each description after it is a duplicate, up to and including the second VLT description. I hope this helps someone avoid having to start over with their data-base (after waiting for non-corrupted versions to appear). Dale Gary dg@sundog.caltech.edu