VAX file format conversion

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 4:08 PM, Douglas Taylor <dj.taylor4 at comcast.net> wrote:
> $@hobbyist-use-only-va.txt
>
> %RMS-W-RTB 512 bye record to large for user buffer
>
> It appears that when the file was transferred it showed up on the vax with
> fixed length records of 512 bytes, not variable length.

Not an unusual occurrence with moving files to VMS.

> Can I convert the file on the VAX?

There may be an easy way to do that, depending if you've lost the line
terminators or not.  What does it look like when you TYPE the file or
EDIT it?

> Is there a setting for C-Kermit that I need to change?

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/faq-c-bix.html

VMS C-Kermit ignores "SET FILE TYPE" on send and uses the RMS record
type (Fixed or Stream_LF) instead.  I used to use C-Kermit a lot and
remember having to SET FILE TYPE TEXT on both ends to get good files
through.  We also used a program named BACKPACK.EXE to encode
variable-length record filetypes (.OBJ, .OLB, etc.) into plaintext
files and back.  Much like uudecode/decode fits 8-bit binary data into
printable ASCII, BACKPACK.EXE also encodes the record length and the
RMS filetype metadata so that the reconstructed file is identical to
the original.

-ethan