Msg: 4832 *Conference*

12-19-93 22:37:46

From: RICHARD HANSON

To : FARREN CONSTABLE

Subj: REPLY TO MSG #4828 (PDD2 PROBLEMS)

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Farren: I understand what's going wrong.

When you download program files to your PC, they are probably in ASCII--from
your 102 an 200 point of view they are .DO files but labeled .BA here online.

Then, instead of renaming the extension from .BA to .DO, you load them onto
your TPDD2 disk--PDD and others will allow this since they don't check file
contents.

Next, you load the .DO files with .BA extension into your 102 or 200.  FLOPPY
and other DOS's will allow them since they, too, do not check file contents.

Lastly, when you go to run these programs, the BASIC interpreter locks up your
computer, trying to read ASCII when it's looking for BASIC tokenized files.

Now, you may or may not understand tokenization at this point, so, here's what
I'd like you to do to prove my supposition.

1) Rename the extension of one of the .BA files you've downloaded to your PC,
to .DO.

2) Load the .DO file onto a TPDD2 disk just like you did, before.

3) Use FLOPPY to load the .DO file into your laptop.

4) Go into BASIC and do the following:  (NOTE: Filename = the name of the file
you're playing with for this example.)

 LOAD"filename.DO"

 ...wait for the wait light to stop flashing and the OK to return

 SAVE:filename.BA"

5) Exit BASIC and run the .BA program file.

6) Report-back here, your findings.  Did that fix the problem?