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Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> It appears that the file itself is corrupted somehow, two 
> different ways.

You use two different methods and get corruption in two
different ways.  The problem appears to be at your end.
What md5sum do you get for your downloads?  Are they the
same as the md5sum given at the site?

> I could try unzipping the 2.8MB file at a shell account 
> and then rezipping just the .img file for transfer via FTP, 
> but that is one more step for things to go wrong.  

Do zipping and unzipping often produce errors for you?
Over the years, I have found zip/unzip to be very reliable.

> only the *.img file was corrupted, the rest okay.  

How do you know the .img file was corrupted?

> Has anyone else tried doing it with DOS?  

Are you using pkzip for DOS?  If so, which version?
Some versions were more reliable than others.  

As far as DOS PPP goes, I have no confidence in it.
That's one of the reasons I switched to Linux.

> You can't expect all linux Newbies to be downloading and 
> unzipping with linux.  

Actually I expect most of them will be downloading with some
version of Windows.

> I don't see how DOS kermit epppd or lynx are any more weird 
> than linux.

They are weird (1) because very few people use them, and 
(2) because they are based on a primitive, half-baked operating system
that relies on cludges to approximate the functionality  
of a properly-designed multi-tasking operating system.

You say you run only one program at a time, so you don't need
proper multi-tasking.  However, connecting to and browsing the
internet requires several sub-tasks, and a real multi-tasking
operating system handles this with fewer glitches than DOS.

> Is 2.8MB a 'large' unzip?

I suppose that depends on which version of DOS and which
version of unzip you are using.

> so I suspect it is bad.

It is bad at my end?  Then why do you get two different 
versions at your end?  Surely, if the original is bad,
you should get two identical (bad) copies.  What are
your md5sums?

> I recall other people having trouble making BL2 floppy 
> disks, identical to mine.

IIRC that was a problem with the floppy drives (head alignment and/or
inability to handle the higher density format). It was 
not an unzipping problem.

> I will keep trying to download BL3 FD, maybe this time with 
> BL2 on HD.

Have you tried downloading the file from the other site?
I've just checked the md5sums, and they are identical.

Cheers,
Steven