Re: BINSCII problems

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <4qu6ua$3ca@news.sas.ab.ca>,  <mouse@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
>Has anyone out there been able to use BINSCII.EXE?  I have tried numerous 
>times to do so, but I can't seem to be able to Exec it.  If anyone has a 
>copy of BINSCII would they send it to me is another compression format?

   Ok, some people (and especially programs) refuse to recognize this
little sequence:

   binscii.exe is a TEXT file. It is NOT a MS-DOG executable. It is
NOT a binary file. It is NOT downloaded like other programs. It is NOT
to be downloaded in BINARY mode. I repeat, it is NOT to be downloaded
in BINARY mode-- you MUST download it in ASCII mode. Yes, a program in
ASCII mode. And O, it WON'T run on your 386 either if you downloaded
it in binary mode. Trust me on this. Just do it.

   [Sorry, I remember an IRC session from about 6 months ago where I
and others repeated essentially that paragraph for well over half an
hour. He eventually got the message, but not after trying every damn
excuse on the planet.]

   Yes, this goes contrary to _all_ expectations (I'd love to have it
renamed 'binscii.txt' just so that downloaders could get it right).
However, deal with it. Do NOT use a program like Netscrape, Lynx, or
Mosaic that'll automatically force a binary download on files ending
in '.exe'. Use the plain vanilla text FTP, and before downloading the
'binscii.exe' file, type 'ascii' to force ascii mode. 

   Further, in grabbing it to your GS, do NOT use a binary Z-Modem
connection either.  Turning on 'capture to file' and displaying the
file from the remote end is known to work pretty well overall. Once
you've got it on the GS, from a ProDOS 8 BASIC prompt, type 'exec
BINSCII.EXE' to run it.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in
# parables" Mark 4:11, NRSV