[MiNT] 1.16.0 still no go

[Jim DeClercq <jimd@panix.com>]

When I reply to myself, I at least know what I am talking about. This is 
being composed locally, and sent to shell.panix.com for mailing, because 
the tcp_sendsegment bug is still alive.

My request for source code was an honest request. I had a file that said 
it was source code, ending in bz2, which is probably bzip2, but bzip2 just 
sits there doing nothing with it. So I really do not have source code, and 
do not know where else to find it. And I do not have the latest binary, 
and do not know where to find that.

My first tries with 1.16.0 were with the zip files from the Sparemint 
kernal folder. They produced quite unbelievable results.

This time around, I decided to get and use the .tar.gz files instead.

What I saw on my screen when trying to unpack these things was:

gzip: freemint-1.16.0-beta.tar.gz: invalid compressed data--format 
violated

and

gzip: freemint-1.16.0-beta-doc.tar.gz
is not a directory or a regular file.

I have not been having download problems. I collect clip art images, and 
those would not display if I did. I seem to be having munged file 
problems.

The rest I am writing because someone might learn something the easy way.

When 1.16.0 stalled, my mint drive suddenly shrunk from 4 gigs to 38 megs, 
and could not be read by mint or by fsck. I worked through all the 
formatters I had trying to get that unstuck, and finally found that ICD's 
install.prg would format it as a big drive with quite many defective 
sectors. That, I could reformat with HDDriver, told to ignore defect list.

Now that I had my drive back, comes the problem of putting the files back 
on it, using, of course, mint with single tos, to load the files needed 
for multitasking.

I had made CD backups of my mint drive, because while I have worn out two 
data tapes, at about 50USD, I have never worn out a CD. But, that did not 
work. If one writes to a mint drive often enough, one will eventually see 
a screen warning that a bit has already been cleared for something, which 
means that the file system is now dead, and you can start over. That is a 
small bug in Mint that badly needs squashing.

I did have a tape backup, and that worked, and I am back in business 
again.

The fact that CDs could not be used for backup was a disappointment to me, 
since those can be had for 29 cents US, and do not wear out.

This sort of thing, either bugs in MiNT, or merely that I run some 
programs that get stuck, such as Gemvelope, are why I am not very 
enthusiastic about compiling things. If I start, and I have started, 
something will go wrong and I will lose what I started.

So, will somebody please look at those kernel files on the Sparemint site? 
I think there are some problems there.

Jim

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