Some of my downloads are bad; whats wrong?
If the exact length of a downloaded file is different than its exact length on the download site (e.g. as shown via your FTP client program), the download is probably corrupted. (Text files are something of an exception– i.e. the download length may be different and the file may have characters added; but, usually, the “corruption” has no damaging impact.) A common reason for getting a bad download is that a binary file– e.g. a .shk, .dsk, etc. file– was downloaded in Text mode. (See discussion about this in Q&A 001 above.) An FTP program should be set to “Binary” before doing most downloads from ftp sites. If using a browser, pick one which defaults to binary mode for unrecognized file types (e.g. a current version of Internet Explorer). Some files may seem to be corrupted– i.e. ‘not work right’– even if a length check shows that the download size is identical to the file’s size on an ftp site. One possibility is that the file was corrupted somewhere in the upload process. This i
