[ct-user] Urgent help needed! Summary & conclusion

[Cahaba Internet]

At 07:15 PM 6/24/02 -0500, you wrote:

>Hi Bill,
>If someone has not already suggested this. Just rename BIN.OLD back to 
>FD2002.BIN.
>73, Mark KB9S

Hi Mark

Thanks to you and all the others who took time out from their busy schedules
to reply to my earlier post.

Here's a follow-up with my conclusions and the ultimate outcome ... let it
be a lesson to all ;-)

First, if you (or any member of your club) is running CT 8.27 on an old laptop,
for whatever reason, encourage the operator to make an immediate backup of the
BIN file after use and *prior* to running any of the after-contest functions.

Secondly, do not, I repeat *do not* run the dupe removal utility. It is 
defective
and *will* render the file unreadable by CT. Oh, CT will remove the dupes 
alright.
But then, CT will rename the file (still not a problem) ... but will also 
make some
sort of change that causes CT to believe the file is not of a suitable 
version for
viewing and will suggest running the 7to8 conversion utility. Don't even 
*think*
about running the conversion utility, though. I can't describe in polite 
company
what happens to the BIN file if you're hapless enough to fall for that 
suggestion.

There *is* a solution for extracting the necessary FD data from the duped but
otherwise unusable file ... not a pleasant solution, but a better option than
having the entire club membership torch your house, ban you from the club, 
and tell
your neighbors that you're a member of Al Queda.

Numerous viewers will let you *see* the contents of a binary file - none I 
found
(sadly) provided any sort of editing or printing capability. So ... open the
corrupted file with a binary viewer and search for callsigns, one per line,
transcribing them as you go. ARRL needs only an alphabetized and duped listing
of callsigns, so the remaining data is unnecessary (unless of course they 
request
your complete log for some reason ... and then you have your neighbors tell 'em
you're a member of Al Queda and recently nabbed by the Feds).

Picture this ... 1000 callsigns, penned one at a time on (gasp) paper, and 
then entered
into a word processing program which sorted and finally rendered a 
multi-column printing.

You know, having my home torched doesn't seem like such a bad proposition after
the fact. At least I have insurance.

*Make back up copies immediately after every contest!*

73/DX & see ya next FD!

Bill - WA4FAT



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