(see quoted material at end)

To all people reading this thread (see my comments way at the end):

I decided to still pursue this project. I have two XP boxes here (I really
do not like XP and also for technical reasons), and fired one up on my
dialup account, downloaded the tt4.pdf file (same one that failed
everything else I said I did at the bottom of this post, way at end), and
the version of AR I have is 7.0 (on this XP box) and it worked. Opened
without errors or delay, and I looked all around at various locations in
the manual. Thank you to the guys who put the website together and went to
the trouble of making the files.

My version of what went wrong has to name as a candidate bugs in the
software and software-hardware incompatibilities. I've had plenty of
examples of this on about three dozen boxes I've owned and done extensive
checking over the last 15+ years. PC compatibility is not 100%. Sometimes
updates fix a problem on one piece of hardware and create a new problem on
other pieces of hardware.

The only real problem with Linux is that you'd better have your firewall
cranked up. One box I had got hacked. If you want to learn what you are up
against, you need to get Ed Skoudis' book "Malware" and read that the
hackers can _have you_ anytime they want. Its not a walk in the park.

Straydog

===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Chuck Harris wrote:

Hi Steve,

Most of the time when a large download fails, it fails by not
being complete. Check the file sizes. I would bet that the
one that goes over your POTS line is truncated. The file server
gets tired of waiting for an acknowledgment from Netscape, and
goes on to other things. Netscape decides enough time has gone
by, and declares the file downloaded... and lies about the number
of bytes too! (I stopped using Netscape and went to Mozilla/Seamonkey
for that very reason.)

RH6 is a bad place to stay with linux. Go over to
Debian Stable, and you will do much better. It is just as
fast, if you avoid the super fancy Gnome and KDE windowing
features.

The problem with RH6 is it has serious problems in its kernel
that allow you to be rooted easily. It is the only version
of linux that I have ever used that got hacked. And then it
was hacked over a dialup line that was only up when I was
using the machine.

-Chuck

Straydog wrote:


On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Steve H wrote:

Straydog wrote:




I just moved the file to a different box with AR ver 5, which says it is
trying to repair the file, then bombs off with a subsequent message that
the damage could not be repaired.

Does this mean I need to try another big download?

Since I posted this the download speed from that site slowed to a crawl,
It should speed up in a day or two when everyone had downloaded everything
on the site.
I use Adobe reader V8 and had no problem reading any of the files. Yours
was probably corrupted due to the download server over loaded. Only takes
a few seconds to download on ADSL Max but it's a huge file on dial up.

Steve H


I went back to the website using Unix LYNX and downloaded a second copy
into my unix shell account root directory. This happend at 120 KB/sec, and
executed normally. Then I FTPed a copy of that file to my root directory at
a second Unix ISP (that happend at about 1 megabit/sec), and downloaded,
again, the file over my dialup (another 1 hr 20 mins [sorry, I'm in the
country and can't get anything but dialup, might someday look into
"wireless" since we have a nearby cell phone tower]), and the file still
geneates errors with AR 4 and 5.

Another guy said he could open the file with xPDF on his Linux box. I have
RH Linux 6.2 (probably the best distro in terms of hardware compatibility
with older hardware and low hardware spec needs) in an hda partition on my
same box with FAT-16/Win98SE partition, so downloaded a third copy of
tt4.pdf, used mtools to copy the file from the FAT-16 to the Linux
partition, and tried to open it with xPDF and it would not open (no error
messages, either).

I have an XP box (that I really hate to use) and am considering tring once
more (since it has whatever version of AR that needs XP) to read the file.

I can tell all you guys that not all hardware/software combinations work
100% right all the time. I've had successes with things that other people
failed at and vice-versa. I've also had reproducible problems of all kinds.
I have a copy of Excel2000 that will absolutely not install on one of my
Win98SE boxes, but installs fine on all other of my Win98SE boxes. And, the
Win98SE box that refuses to install Ex2000 will install everything else I
have and run all of everything else. I have lots of these stories to tell.
Even for Linux (and I've had every version of Red Hat from 4.2 up to the
workstation [Taroon]).