----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf_at_siconic.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 11:43 PM
Subject: Re: Importing binary files without removable storage nor
non-bundled software (was: TKermitFTP
> On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>
>> Vintage Computer Festival declared on Wednesday 05 January 2005 11:19 pm:
>> > On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Pete Turnbull wrote:
>> > > Dunno, I don't have quite such old versions :-) My old copy of "The
>> > > MS-DOS Bible" says "every version" -- it means 3.30 and older --
>> > > disallows binary reads from devices. The same message is at 5254 in
>> > > MS-DOS 3.30 (ditto in PC-DOS 3.30), at 4CA0 in 3.21, and 4CCC in
>> > > IBM-DOS 4.01 (from a Compaq). I can't read my MS-DOS 2.10 and 2.11
>> > > disks on the hardware I have here. "Binary reads from a device are
>> > > not allowed" is the message at 8753 in DR-DOS 3.41.
>> >
>> > The question I haven't seen answered yet is, "Well, why the hell
>> > not???"
>>
>> Well, my guess would be that it has no way to determine the EOF coming
>> over the line, as it can't just "check the file length", unless there's
>> a ^Z there to indicate it. Thus, ASCII mode is needed.
>
> And the programmers were not smart enough to figure a way around this
> because...why?
>
> --
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
> Festival
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Man of Intrigue and Danger
> http://www.vintage.org
>
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Programmers did have a work around. The answer for decades has been hex.
Many times I transfered software to both DOS and CP/M by using hex files.
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
Received on Wed Jan 05 2005 - 23:50:58 GMT