Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!wheeler.qal.berkeley.edu!lauac
From: lauac@wheeler.qal.berkeley.edu (Alexander Lau)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: More ZTerm 0.7 problems...
Summary: Can't upload! Downloading troubles, too...
Message-ID: <20477@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 16 Feb 89 22:07:27 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 45

I really put Zterm 0.7 to the test this afternoon, and it failed.
My setup is as follows: (Mac side) Mac SE, 1 Meg, System 6.0.2, various
inits (MacroMaker, Suitcase II, MenuClock 101, Quote Init) that I've
never had problems with.  (UNIX side) Sun 3/50, remotely logged in.  OS:
Sun UNIX 4.2 Release 3.5.  Using Chuck Forsberg's (rz/rb/rx/sz/sb/sx)
ZModem protocol for UNIX, compiled to run under BSD 4.2.  Here are the
problems that I've noticed:

1) Does not upload properly, using all conceivable configurations:
rz/"Send ZModem", rb/"Send Ymodem 1K", rx/"Send Xmodem 128", and a few
others.  I am using an 8-bit connection, as suggested by Dave Platt.

(Note: I tried the same tests with Microphone 1.1 (except for the
ZModem test) and the results were the same.)

Upload tests with XMODEM 3.6 in lieu of rz/rb/rx also failed with both
ZTerm 0.7 and Microphone 1.1.

2) Does not download properly using ZModem file transfer protocol.
This is more or less the reason the program exists!  sz from UNIX to
ZTerm sends about 95% of the file, then hangs indefinitely.  If I
cancel the send and resume it using the "crash-save" feature, the
resulting Macbinary file is garbled and unusable (unless it is a
Stuffit archive, in which case Stuffit tells me that the file is
damaged and may not work properly.  I was able to extract all files,
though.)  This phenomenon only happens with files over a certain
size; I haven't been able to pin won the exact size, but it seems to
download files of less that 8K without much trouble.

I know Dave Alverson said the crash-save feature did not work properly
with Macbinary transfers, but without it, I would be wasting mucho
tiempo on unfruitful file transfers.

The file transfers were successful, by the way, with YModem and with
XModem, and YModem was actually faster than ZModem (no false error
retries, and no indefinite hangs).  This, perhaps, is due to the 
complexity of the ZModem protocol and the incompleteness of the ZModem
implementation, but I can't be sure of that.

Disclaimer: I am otherwise a fairly happy user of ZTerm 0.7, and I will
be more than glad to send in my $30 once these bugs are fixed.

--- Alex
{att,backbones}!ucbvax!qal.berkeley.edu!lauac
OR lauac@qal.berkeley.edu@ucbvax.berkeley.edu