Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini]

On 18/05/2021 10:17, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:
> The content of your posting which I was replying to and the error 
> message you
> quoted suggested to me that your concern was that the bookreader files you are
> attempting to read are "corrupt".

I think Zane was reading the files from an ISO image I made of a 1989 
CONOLD CDROM.

That CDROM had previously been used as a toboggan by one or more members 
the DEC Reading Engineering Team and so was somewhat heavily scuffed 
when I got it.

I eventually recovered it through a process of manual polishing 
involving sandpaper and elbow grease. I think ddrescue reported 2048 bad 
bytes in the end (one sector).

It is entirely possible that one or more of the files is corrupt, 
although the text files (the BOOKSHEFLF files, for example) seem OK.

The filesystem structures do seem OK, so maybe I was lucky.

> My suggestion was intended to help you discover whether the bookreader files are
> "corrupt" or the tools you are using to read them are mishandling them.
>
> (In my experience "corrupt" files on VMS are usually due to file attributes
> being lost when the files were transferred via some other system.  On early
> version of VMS, this can usually be fixed using Joe Meadows' "FILE" utility.)

In this case any corruption will be down to over-enthusiastic handling 
20+ years ago.


Antonio


-- 
Antonio Carlini
antonio at acarlini.com