Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!eniac.seas.upenn.edu!silver
From: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andy Silverman)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: SIMTEL20 TROUBLES
Message-ID: <14843@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 89 18:30:03 GMT
References: <120800007@silver>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Andy Silverman)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 47

In article <120800007@silver> sl179060@silver.bacs.indiana.edu writes:
>
>I am having some problems down-loading software from SIMTEL20 and I hope
>someone can help me out.I am logged unto a VAX at IU (Ultrix).
>I am using telnet software and a ZENITH 286.I log into SIMTEL20 with the FTP
>program and I declare myself to be an anonymous user. I follow this
>procedure:
>
>%ftp simtel20.arpa 
>............ sign on message ......
>username:anonymous
>password:{nothing}
>............ login message ........
>ftp>cd pd1:
>ftp>tenex   {I have no idea what this does}
>ftp>get gmovie.arc
>ftp>bye
>.... sign off message .......
>ftp>quit
>%ftp 129.79.101.146  {my workstation}
>ftp>send gmovie.arc
>ftp>quit
>%logout

The tenex command changes the ftp protocol slightly to insure that binary
files will be properly received from the TOPS20 system which uses a strange
word format to Ultrix, which uses a more common back-words format.  See if
you can get hold of an ARC utility on your Ultrix system to check the
validity of the files at that point.  The most likely place for the files
to be getting trashed is sending it to your workstation.  Your FTP is probably
defaulting to 7-bit ASCII send mode, thus trashing the file. The fix is to
type the command
ftp> binary
before doing the send command to the workstation. This is somewhat like
"tenex" but has less overhead, tenex probably being unnecessary for the
second transfer.  This will allow full 8-bit transfer.
This seems to be the most likely fix for the problem, as you mentioned
that some files came through with valid ARC headers but garbled data.
This is consistent with 7-bit transfer trashing of an 8-bit file.



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| Andy Silverman        | Internet:   silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu |
| "All stressed out and | Compu$erve: 72261,531                   |
|  nobody to choke."    |                                         |         
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