Re: unarchive caltech apple2 files

[Toby Reiter <str4552@OBERLIN.EDU>]

On 28 Nov 1996, Sid Stulberg wrote:

> I'm just about ready for the funny farm. I just cannot unarchive any of
> caltech's apple2 library.  I've tried every uncompressor of which I'm
> aware but I still get a message which tells me it's not a GS file.
> 
> Yet I read that nobody seems to problems unpacking these Mac files.
> 
> O.K. folks, what  do you know that I don't.  Any help will be MOST
> sincerely appreciated.  Get me out of my misery PLEASE. :(
I remember you making an identical plea about a month ago. I guess you 
didn't get the answers you were looking for.  Here is my personal suggestion:
Most of the ftp sites have archives in binscii'ed and shrunk (with 
shrinkit) archives. However, caltech is almost exclusively shrinkit 
archives.  In addition, whereas ground will display an error message when 
you try to download a binary file as text, caltech will not do so.  
Therefore, since you have tried unpacking all of these files using all of 
the utilities you could find, I expect that they were corrupted when you 
attempted to download them as text. Try this: in whatever ftp program you 
use, try to find a setting which states "binary".  If this is a graphical 
program, it might be a setting in one of the menus or on an open window 
while downloading, possibly even a dialog box which says "Would you like 
to download this file as binary or text?" If you are using a browser, 
such as netscape, you should go under Helpers and put in an entry 
(entries) for the most commonly used shrinkit suffixes with a setting for 
save to disk in binary mode. If you are using ftp on a shell account, you 
should type "binary" before downloading, or "bget" rather than simply 
"get". Of course, as always, it is much more helpful if you are specific. 
The most important question is, of course, what computer are you using to 
download, and which ftp program are you using.  As I have never had 
problems unpacking caltech files, and since they are not in fact Mac 
files, I do not see that the files themselves are at fault. If you are 
more specific in your problem, our solution will be all that better.

Good luck!

Toby Reiter