Conference hydra::amiga_v1

                                -< mCAD 1.2.6 >-

<	 MCAD 1.2.6 is now available at MDKCSW::DUA2:[DAVIS.AMIGA].  

Could you please describe what MCAD is and does?

Dave Busch

    Its a computer aided designed program. Really quite good for a
    shareware piece. I've used the first release to design a "blueprint"
    for the deck I constructed.
    
    Paul

    I'd like to try this latest version of mcad.  I had what I think
    was a very early version that didn't do much, and I have yet to
    find anything on the Amiga for cad that met my needs.  But in trying
    to get it, I've added yet another chapter to my never ending saga
    of computer frustration.  
    
    I realize, and appreciate the value of archiving utilities such
    as ARC and ZOO, but I can never get them to work at first shot during
    my infrequent encounters with them.  There always seems to be some
    sort of file format incompatibility or archive program version problem.
    I obviously do not posses the computer virtuosity that many of my
    fellow Amiga conference participants display, so perhaps one (or
    several) of you can help me out.  
    
    The two archives I'm currently trying to crack are mcad and weave.
    The version of ZOO.EXE that I have is that which was pointed to
    by a note this conference.  It not of a late enough version to handle
    mcad.zoo.  I don't have an Amiga version of it.  Weave de-arcs O.K.,
    but a listing command spouts "bad header" or "bad block" messages
    for every file.  HELP!
    
    John

The new version of ZOO is at CGOU01""::DUA1:[PUBLIC.AMIGA.TOOLS]ZOO.ARC.
Hope that helps.

...richard

    thanks, I'll try.  But it seems wierd that I'll have to de-arc the
    new archiving utility.  Glad you didn't say "its in ZOO.ZOO!  Gee,
    is disk space really that scarce?   John

    re: .5
    
    ARCing & ZOOing offer one other advantage besides reduced disk space...
    The complaints about failing CRC check can save you from a visit
    by the guru.  If it complains, then something is wrong.  I always
    do a CVTARC if needed, and then ARC T file.arc on VMS before
    downloading.  Amiga ARC should give the same results unless the
    file was downloaded wrong or got corrupted by line noise.
    
    -dave

    HI Dave!  Yea, I ran cvtarc and it made all the difference.  Funny
    thing is that before I converted it, it would test o.k., extract
    fine, but just couldn't list.  Also, arc on vms has a filename length
    limit of eight (I think) characters.  So when I did "cvtarc u
    weavedoc.arc weavedoc_u.arc" and then "arc l weavedoc_u", I thought
    I was still getting the "bad header" result, not having checked
    the line it spits out about which file it is operating on, which
    was "weavedoc.arc."  After I shortened the converted file's name,
    all went well.  But really, isn't this a big, stupid pain?  I mean,
    I use kermit for downloads, which does error checking.  Why doesn't
    someone put the compression/file-directory scattering stuff into
    the comm. program (for me!)?  I know, then it would be too easy,
    and everyone would do it, and the whole thing would get boring...

    Just to confuse things a bit more, does anyone know what and where
    the latest (whatever that means) versions are of:

                  ARC (Amiga and VMS)
                  ZOO (VMS, assuming 1570.whatever-it-was pointed at the latest)
               CVTARC (I would imagine only VMS)
             UUENCODE (Amiga and VMS)
             UUDECODE (Amiga and VMS)

    There are lots of pointers in this notesfile, but some don't give any
    indication of version (if any) and I'm not sure about the ones that do.
    For example in note 1394.* (Amiga File Locations...) there's:

                      ARC.EXE
                      ARC23.ARC
                      $ARC3018.ARC
                      VAXARC.ARC
                      
                      ZOO.ARC
                      ZOO142.ARC
                      ZOO151.ARC
                      ZOO171.ARC
              
    
    Now I'm not complaining mind you, just confused as usual. So far I haven't
    had any major problems (isn't there a VMS version of ARC that doesn't barf
    over longer than n character file specifications?), but I'd like to keep up
    to date on both the Amiga and VMS ends.
    
    Too complex an issue? I thought so.

    Pete

    P.s. No flames, or I'll post a listing of all twenty-six skizzidillion
         third-party versions of DBW's VT100 emulator.

    re: .7
    
    Hi John, having fun?
    
    ARC comes from the MS-DOS world, so it is limited to the MS-DOS
    file name restrictions, 8 char + 3 letter extension.  The idea
    is so that you can ARC/de-ARC on any system, even MS-DOS.
    
    Amiga ARC lets you have 12 char filenames (since Amigados does
    not use filename extensions).  I haven't tried de-ARCing that on
    a MS-DOS system.
    
    VMS ARC will put strange garbage characters at the end of file
    names that are too long when you ARC them.  Then you can't 
    access them.  VMSSWEEP will let you get at the files to recover
    from that.
    
    -dave
    

    RE: .8
    
    Check PAULY"AMIGA"::README.TXT for all files available there.
    Everything except CVTARC is available in that directory.
    
    Paul

    
>    Check PAULY"AMIGA"::README.TXT for all files available there.
>    Everything except CVTARC is available in that directory.
    

I haven't been able to copy *anything* from PAULY"AMIGA":: lately. I try it
at night, even using FTSV with no luck. Most often the copy just hangs
there real slooowly getting a block or 2...

Anyone have  ORBITS, MCAD and SHOWIZ??

John

>    	Anyone have  ORBITS, MCAD and SHOWIZ??

>John
 
    	I have orbits.arc and showiz.arc in
    puerto::disk$public:[alvarez.public]. You can also find there doc.arc
    which are the various documents found in mcad.zoo, which you can
    de-arc and print from your VAX account.
    
    The files will be there for just few days.  
    
    Miguel A. Alvarez

Did anyone ever get mCAD working with an LA50 printer?

Nick

    Well, I finally copied mcad from Pauly"amiga" over to my vax and then
    spent over an hour downline loading it into my a1000..
    I tried to de zoo it, but got the screen filled with
    replace readme yes/no...has anyone got any suggestions??
    I used the command  " run zoo.exe extract mcad " to a diskette that
    only has zoo and mcad.zoo on it..as you can tell, I know diddley
    about zoo.
    
    by the way, if anyone has some good documents on zoo,convert or
    anything else I would need to  understand in order to load something
    into the A1000, I would appreciate it..
    
    By the way, I think this note file is great..I am starting to learn
    or feel somewhat comfortable with my system..
    

    I got 1.2.6 mCAD mentioned in .0 (thanks!!), downloaded it; had
    an earlier version of Amiga Zoo (1.42) which I proceeded to use
    to do a list of MCAD.ZOO.  I got a warning that I needed at least
    version 2.0 of zoo.  Back to this note, copied the version of Amiga
    zoo mentioned in .4; dearced this on VMS, did a hex dump of zoo,
    found a version number of 1.42
    
    Do I really need zoo 2.0 or later to dezoo (unzoo?) MCAD.ZOO?
    Anyone have this, or is it plink time?
    
    Thanks.
    

    Could someone provide an unencoded version of mcad v.(latest) on
    the net?  That would allow prospective downloaders to encode it
    their favorite way before downloading.  Thanks, John

    Re: a few back.
    
    Why the runaway "Replace README y/n"?'s  because you did a run zoo
    whatever.  it is waiting for a reply for its input.  because you
    ran, it there is no input stream for it to read.  I did this once.
    ONCE. (;-))  the solution is not to run it, but just ZOO blah blah
    blah.
    
    As for the wrong version,  I also got that message while de-zooing
    it too, but it seems to be O.K.  No problems running it.
    
    					Rob

    
    I had a similar problem zooing MCAD.  I didn't use the RUN command
    to run ZOO.  I said "ZOO e filename".  But, it didn't create the
    directory structure for me and also got "Replace file y/n?" errors.
    
    The solution is to use the "/" parameter in the Zoo command.  This
    tells Zoo to create the directories, if they do not exist.  The
    command line I used was "ZOO e/ MCAD126".
    
    living in a zoo,
    
    -Mike
    

    I really didn't have a problem getting MCAD to work with version
    of ZOO I have (it's atleast a year old, but don't know what version)
    I did a ZOO l MCAD to find out what directories there need to be,
    created them, the ZOO E MCAD worked like a charm.
    
    Now, back to rep .13
    
    Any one got a /prtdef/la50/ etc working?
    
    I've used it with one screen dump that comes in extras, but I
    frequently run out of memory when invoking it.
    
    ... rich

The majick incantation seems to be

	ZOO e// MCAD.ZOO

which took me several hours of head-scratching, attempted mind-reading,
and asking out loud several times, ``What the HELL is the help trying
to tell me?''

As pointed out, the ZOO listed in .4 seems to be 1.42.  When I said
``zoo e mcad'', it complained tha I need zoo v2 and put all the files
from all the subdirectories into the top-level directory.  There are
multiple (for example, l and readme) files in the subdirectories.  These
were being overlaid ontop of each other at the top-level of my brand
new formatted disk.  That's why it was asking the ``replace'' questions.

After staring at the novice and full help screens and wading through
ZOO.DOC a bunch of times, I came to the conclusion that `/' loads files
into appropriate existing subdirectories and ``//'' creates the directories
before filling them.  So, then it took me a while to figure out where
to put the damned ``//''s.  It turns out that ``//'' is a qualifier
(is that the right word?) like ``e'' and ``t'' and such, so, to tell
ZOO to extract into a subdirectory structure that gets built on the
fly, you need to say ``e//''.  Boy, I'm impressed.

Oh, yeah, when I said ``e//'', ZOO stopped complaining that I need ZOO
v2.

Now that I'm done flaming, let me say that I'll post what I did as exactly
as I can remember in the next note as an example of what I did to get
all of this to work.

BTW, mCAD is a great little program.  I only played with it for a while,
but it seems to do just about all I need and gives me nice results on
my Epson LX-800 using the MX-80 high-res printer definition file.

BobW

The steps to successful aquisition of MCAD 1.2.6:
                
    From a CLI or Shell (I used Shell)
    1) Format 2 disks:  Call one mCAD and the other mCAD_Work
    2) CD to mCAD_Work
    3) COPY VT100 and ARC23 to where you are now
    4) RUN VT100
    5) dial-in
    6) log-in
    7) find a copy of ZOO.ARC (the one pointed to in .4 seems to work
      		OK) and copy it to your current working area
    8) find a copy of MCAD.ZOO and copy it to your current area
    9) find a copy of KERMIT and run him.
    10) tell KERMIT> SET FILE TYPE BINARY
    11) tell KERMIT> SERVER
    12) tell VT100 that to set XFER MODE IMAGE (this is a pull-down
    		in 2.7 - yours may be different)
    13) tell VT100 toggle XFER MODE CONVERT to off state (this is a pull-down
    		in 2.7 - yours may be different)
    14) tell VT100 to KERMIT GET (this is a pull-dowN in 2.7 - yours may 
    		be different)
    15) GET ZOO.ARC - wait a short time for this to complete
    16) GET MCAD.ZOO - wait about an hour at 2400 baud (ouch, my phone
    		bill!)
    17) KERMIT BYE to disconnect the server
    18) EXIT KERMIT
    19) logout - you should be done with the VAX by now.
    20) ARC23 t ZOO.ARC to see if its gonna work.
    21) ARC23 e ZOO.ARC to get the contents to mCAD_Work:
    22) if that goes successfully, CD to mCAD:           
    23) say mCAD_Work:ZOO e// mCAD_Work:MCAD - to unpack mCAD
    
    you should now have a successfully built disk called mCAD that will
    have the correct name amd directory structure so that mCAD will
    find all the right subdirectories such as the ones with the parts
    (lots of em) and printer definitions.  write-protect this disk.
    You can now save your drawings, etc, to mCAD_Work, while keeping
    mCAD pristine.  I discovered you need 2 disks because unpacked mCAD,
    ZOO.ARC, mCAD.ZOO, VT100, nad ARC23 all don't seem to fit on one
    disk.
    
Good luck,
BobW

    Where is MCAD V1.2.6 now?  The most recent fish release was 1.2.4
    and the copy in WJG:: seems fairly old.  MDKCSW has gone away (no
    directory found) so where might I find this revision or any newer
    one of this program?
    
    Thanks,
    George
    

    Sorry.. I thought the WJG:: revision was older than the basenote and
    wasn't the most recent.  I pulled it over and it *is* 1.2.6 and also
    noted from the DOC file that V1.2.6 is the FINAL VERSION.
    
    Thanks anyway,
    George