Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!ka9q.bellcore.com!karn
From: karn@ka9q.bellcore.com (Phil Karn)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Downloading from Simtel ...
Message-ID: <17888@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 15 Oct 89 21:41:05 GMT
References: <89285.230458CMH117@PSUVM.BITNET>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: karn@ka9q.bellcore.com (Phil Karn)
Organization: Secular Humanists for No-Code
Lines: 28

In article <89285.230458CMH117@PSUVM.BITNET> CMH117@PSUVM.BITNET (Charles Hannum) writes:
>I figured this out several weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to post it yet.
>To download from Simtel20 to VM, you must do the following:
>
>  FTP> Type I
>  FTP> Quote TYPE L 8
>
>Note: The L in the line above ***MUST*** be capitalized.  Otherwise, case does
>not matter.
>
>The problem with this is that MGET and MPUT don't work.  Tough luck.

Just to expand on this a little....the reason MGET and MPUT from a BSD
client to a TOPS-20 server don't work is because the remote server will
return an error message in response to the NLST command. It complains that
you must be in ascii mode to do an NLST.

I dunno whether this is strictly the fault of the server or of the client,
but the problem could be fixed on either end. The TOPS-20 server could be a
little more lenient by always executing the NLST command as though it were
in ascii mode. Alternatively, the BSD client could keep track of the TYPE
commands issued to the server and issue temporary "TYPE A" commands around
NLST and LIST commands when the server is otherwise in TYPE I state.

My own FTP client does the latter because I got annoyed by LIST output from
BSD systems appearing on my MS-DOS screen without carriage returns.

Phil