Re: help with the ground's archives

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Michael Maginnis replied:

>On 18 Mar 2004 09:43:43 GMT, mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote:
>
>>Michael Maginnis wrote:
>>
>
>--<snip>--
>
>>
>>Your method will work, but BINSCII is not a compression program--
>>it's an _expansion_ program!  ;-)
>>
>>It is in the same spirit as B64--it simply encodes a binary file
>>into the 7-bit ASCII character set.
>>
>>You need an un-BINSCII program on the Apple end.  (Actually,
>>you could un-BINSCII on the Windows machine, since your
>>transport path from there on supports binary.)
>>
>
>Good point! Is there a specific un-BINSCII app for Windows that I
>should be looking for?

I don't know--I don't do much un-BINSCII-ing, and generally do
it on my //e.

>>BINSCII is available for 8-bit Apples (and gsCII or something for
>>the IIgs) on ground, caltech, or almost any archive.
>>
>
>But will BINSCII also do un-BINSCII?  The programs I have tried all
>claim to be able to decode, but none will recognize the files as
>archives.  I have a feeling it because of the way TransMac is writing
>the files to the zip cart, but I don't know enough to be able to
>customize the settings so that the files are recognized by an
>un-BINSCII file.

Yes, it will.  Read the BINSCII documentation on caltech:

http://apple2.caltech.edu/apple2/binscii.txt

This should answer most of your questions.  The executable is
in the same directory.

>Maybe a setp-by-step guide is in order.  If I ever figure out how to
>do this, I'll write one...
>
>>With binary file transfers now ubiquitous, BINSCII is no longer
>>needed except to un-BINSCII very old files or files posted in
>>an ASCII "binaries" newsgroup.
>>
>
>A good portion of the files on the Ground FTP site are in BINSCII
>format, unfortunately.

And most of those were archived from CBA2...

-michael

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