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5.11 How do I download and unpack binscii?

[If you'd rather skip this and most of the next step, Steve Cavanaugh
has a disk containing this, Shrinkit 3.4, and many other useful
programs. See the Resources section (10.2) below.]
1. Binscii has many programs that can unpack it, but if you have none
of them, you will need to first get 'BINSCII.TXT', the only
binscii program that can be transferred without any of the others
or Shrinkit. [Spectrum 2.1 and later can also unpack Binscii, so
if you have a GS and want to purchase this program for general
telecom use, that's an alternative.] After you have this binscii
program and Shrinkit, you can unpack other binscii decoders.
2. There are non-Apple II Binscii programs (sciibin is available in
source code form ready to be compiled on unix and other
platforms), should you desire, but to download and unpack
Shrinkit, you will almost certainly need a minimal Binscii decoder
on your Apple II. Thus, it's in your best interest to download a
binscii decoder.
3. Make sure you have a method of getting files to a ProDOS disk on
your Apple. That may include downloading with a communications
program, or copying to a disk from another computer. Please note
that Apple II and IBM PC 5.25" and 3.5" disk formats are different
at a hardware level, so without (rare) addon hardware on one or
both sides, you cannot use an IBM PC to download stuff to an Apple
II disk.
Macs running system 7 can write to ProDOS 3.5" 800K disks, but
please note that the Macintosh system software has the bad habit
of adding a "resource fork" to files. This makes them UNREADABLE
from most Apple IIs, unless you run a special program on them from
the Macintosh side. Please see the section on file transfer from
Macintosh to Apple II for where to get that program.
If you do not have ProDOS, please contact your local Apple II User
Group for a copy-- they can copy it free of charge. If you do not
have a modem program, but do have a modem or null modem to another
computer, Steve Cavanaugh's disk that was mentioned above has some
simple comm programs. Alternatively, the commercial program
ProTERM 3.1 by Intrec is by far the best general Apple II
communications program, so if you have at least a 128K Enhanced
Apple //e, a //c, IIc+, or Apple IIGS, it is worth it to invest in
this program. See the sections on dealers below for Intrec's
address and phone number.
The rest of this tutorial assumes that you have read the above
sections and have a basic clue as to how to navigate the internet
and download files.
4. Download the file 'BINSCII.TXT', written by Todd Whitesel to your
Apple II. A copy is linked in at Nathan Mates's Apple II Resources
WWW pages, http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/binscii.txtOr, check

the major Apple II ftp sites (see above), as well as
ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu, pub/nathan/binscii.txt
This is a text file. (Previous versions of it were named
'binscii.exe', which most people confused as being a MS-DOS
executable, which the program most definitely is not.) It must be
downloaded in text mode to your computer, or it will require some
work to get it working. Check the ftp and [z]modem transfer
options to make sure binary mode is off before downloading it to
your Apple II.
If you used a Macintosh to write the file to a ProDOS disk, be
warned that it'll sometimes add a 'resource fork' to the file,
rendering it unusable under ProDOS and Basic with a "FILE TYPE
MISMATCH" error on trying to access it. To avoid that, see the
section on file transfer from Macintosh to Apple II for a Mac
program to clean up after that problem.