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From: milne@ics.uci.edu (Alastair Milne)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Simtel20: How does it work?
Keywords: SIMTEL TENEX ARCHIVE
Message-ID: <13116@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 2 May 89 06:50:35 GMT
References: <557@umiami.miami.edu> <12124@ut-emx.UUCP> <8186@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
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Reply-To: Alastair Milne <milne@ics.uci.edu>
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Organization: Educational Technology Center, Dept. of ICS, UC Irvine
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rieman@boulder.Colorado.EDU (John Rieman) writes
>There's a simtel instructions file at the top level -- ftp get that and
>read it.  In brief, it says:  To ftp transfer a directory listing of 
>macstuff, do
>
>  get pd3:<macintosh>macintosh.crclst

   NOTE: pd3:, *not* pd1: .  I had a message recently from Robert Thum,
   Simtel's Mac archivist, explaining this.  The device was until recently
   PD1:, so there will probably be lingering confusion.  It is now PD3:, where
   Robert says there is much more room.

>To just look at a directory or subdirectory, do
>
>  ls pd3:<macintosh> or ls pd3:<macintosh.sound>

    Are you sure?  I didn't think you could do an "ls" to the 20 -- I thought
    it had to be DIR.

>You can change to a subdirectory and get files with:
>
>  cd pd3:<macintosh.sound>
   
    Note that the target directory must *always* be specified in full,
    starting with the device name.

>Lots of luck in getting and unpacking files, though -- I run into a
>wrong size byte error, which forces me to transfer binary, and then
>they don't unpack.  Does anyone know the solution to that?

    Yup.  This has been said before, but bears repeating, because it's not the
    sort of thing anybody would naturally think of.

    Simtel20 is a DECSystem-20, and it has a 36-bit word, not 32 or any other
    convenient size.  When its ftp does a binary send from this to 32-bit 
    hosts, the wrong part of the word gets sent.  
    
    To fix this, use TENEX transfer mode, not binary.  TENEX, if I recall
    rightly, is the name of one OS that runs on the 20's (TOPS-20 is another).
    It takes note of the discrepancy, and shifts the data it's sending to fix
    it.  

    You'll find setting TENEX when you do ftp, rather than BINARY, fixes a lot
    of problems.

    The unhappy part is that DIR and MGET both need ASCII mode, so if you
    actually want to look at what you're getting, you need to switch back and
    forth between modes.  


    Alastair Milne