Description
This article is from the Mac
communications FAQ, by Bruce L Grubb BruceG6069@aol.com with
numerous contributions by others.
18 How can I transfer Macintosh files to/from my Macintosh and other non-Macintosh computers (eg: mainframes, UNIX boxes, PCs)? (Macintosh File-transfers)
Regardless of whether you are using a communications or Internet
program the procedure you should follow will be the same. First the
file should be compressed with StuffIt and then binhex encoded. Some
programs like Eudora will do the binhexing for you so you can skip
the encoding step.
The reason you will want to use Binhex rather than MacBinary as your
encoding format is that Binhex is useable in the 7-bit only areas of
the Internet like Usenet and E-mail that MacBinary cannot go.
For Internet programs downloading a file is very simple. For systems
or programs that do not support Drag and Drop you simply click (or
double click) on the file and it is downloaded for you. Drag and Drop
aware programs allow you to drag the file to the desktop which results
in it being downloaded. Uploading varies from program to program and
some FTP sites only allow files to be E-mailed. Consult your program
and destination site documentation for the proper procedures.
Communication downloading and uploading is a little more complicated.
This is because the remote computer is usially running a totally
different OS that the Mac user must interact with. As a result the
remote computer must be first be told that a file is being sent
or received and then the Mac commmunications program told the
same thing.
Since Unix shell accounts were the most common remote OS they are
used as example but it should be noted that many BBSes use a different
interface and therefore different commands.
For a unix shell account the command consists of two parts:
% method filename
'Filename' is the name of the file on the remote machine and 'method'
is the protocal and whether the file is being sent or received.
The methods are generally as follows:
Kermit XMODEM YMODEM ZMODEM
------- ------ ------ ------
sending kermit sx sb sz
receiving kermit rx rb rz
As one goes from left to right in the chart above the protocal's speed
increaces. As a result as early as 1994 some communication programs
were not supporting Kermit. With Internet connections becoming more
accessable communication software and its protocols are rapidly fading
into the mists of history.
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