Importing binary files without removable storage nor non-bundled software (was: TKermitFTP

[Vintage Computer Festival]

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
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