CompuServe Thread

John, I saw your e-mail on the Net but I haven't had a chance to get to it. As to sending binary files on the Internet, you simply need to uuencode the file into multiple pieces so that all mail servers will be able to use it. Most mail servers have limits as to message sizes. There are a number of ways to do this. More than likely the easiest way for you to do it is to upload the file to the host system and then activate a binary transfer through whatever front end they're using. Almost all "dial up" services have binary e-mail transfers set up so that the host system will automatically take the file, split it, uuencode it, and send it to the respective party. If you prefer to handle the uuencode yourself, simply download one of the 100 different uuencode/uudecode utilities off of the net. Then after running uuencode send the multiple files to the intended recipient. Paul P.S. – If you don't know how to find an uuencode/uudecode utility on the Net, let me know and I'll e-mail it to you here on CIS.

I was mostly teasing you. You said it yourself, $22/month ain't free (though quite a trip from a T1). There are all kinds of ways to send files across the net. It depends what you use to access it. You're probably using a standard comm program and accessing someone's system (that's Telnet). You probably have your "Home" directory in this system. From there you can start another telnet session with the computer you want to send the files to (assuming they give you an account) and send the files through Zmodem (type sz to send and rz to receive) than just fire your Zmodem protocol. If you don't have an account to "Telnet" into, do what Paul said, but instead of UUENCODING the file before you upload to the "middle" system, get a utility called "GZIP" in the unix forum and zip the files locally. Once you transfer them to your "middle" man, unzip it there (GZIP is in almost every unix box out there) and run UUENCODE on the host computer. That way you save 4 to 8 times the transfer time. All UUENCODE does is get every byte of the file and make it a valid 7 bit ASCII character. That means doubling the file size. This can go on and on… It depends on what kind of connection you have. If you're interested, I can give you a very loooong description on how to do this.

>>>am I missing a key peice of info here (very possible <g>)? If you're doing the sending, you're not missing too much info, but if you're receiving, you should make sure your provider doesn't rape you on the "storage fees". My old provider (I'm at school now… I like free thing$) would charge me on a weekly basis as soon as I got over 1.5 megs in the account. Because of their "starting materials", a number of text files about the internet, I had 5 megs in my directory for a number of months – expen$ive.