Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!hellgate.utah.edu!helios.ee.lbl.gov!lbl-csam.arpa!antony
From: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Decoded Net files
Message-ID: <3764@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 9 Sep 89 20:21:16 GMT
References: <8909080255.AA29852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <22004@cup.portal.com>
Sender: usenet@helios.ee.lbl.gov
Reply-To: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 38

In article <22004@cup.portal.com> Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes:
>John Stiborek  in North Texas asks about errors in UUENCODED files he's
>received...
> 
>It shouldn't matter what kind of computer does the transferring (VAX, IBM or
>whatever) since the whole point of UUENCODING is to convert a binary file int
>a standard ASCII text file that can be transferred by ANY machine, over ANY
						       ^^^               ^^^
>network...
>
> [more stuff about how ASCII doesn't do error checking deleted].


Don't believe everything you read.  There are any number of sights out there on
bitnet which have to pass through very old IBM hardware.  This old IBM
mainframe hardware does NOT use ASCII, but rather an older standard called
EBCDIC.   There are, however, plenty of EBCDIC<-->ASCII converter programs.
Unfortunately they do not always agree on which characters are which.  I have
seen this happen enough times to know thatt uuencoding does not work for
absolutely EVERY sight on EVERY network.  Uuencoding just works on enough
sights that nobody complains.  Especially since nobody wants to have to clean
up after IBM.  

If you are still stuck or want more information about this, there was a
solution found by a programmer (and friend of mine) for the Tandy color
computer which transferred files across just about any network you can think
of(they use a fileserver on an EBCDIC computer).  If you like, I can send you
more information on who to talk to about getting a protocol which will work for
you.

		Cheers,

			Antony

*******************************************************************************
Antony A. Courtney				antony@lbl.gov
Advanced Development Group			ucbvax!lbl-csam.arpa!antony
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory			AACourtney@lbl.gov