Although the code for compressing files on HP 3000s is more than a decade old, like a lot of things on the system, it continues to work as expected. A customer recently asked how to Zip and Unzip files to move things between the HP 3000 and other servers.

Tracy Johnson, who manages the Invent3K server operated by OpenMPE, noted he's using the MPE/iX Posix shell's compress and uncompress. "It creates a file that ends in capital Z. Seems the compressed format is compatible with both GNU-zip and Winzip programs or any other *nix machine."

Lars Appel, who ported the Samba file sharing tool to MPE, offers a comprehensive answer. He points to software that resides on his own development server, open to the public.

You can pick up the InfoIP zip/unzip programs (in a tar file) at www.editcorp.com/personal/lars_appel/WebKit2 The link in that webpage that contains the zip/unzip programs is

E:\WebKit2\upload\infozip.tar.Z

Transfer it to the 3000 in bytestream or (fixed) binary format and then unpack with :/bin/tar "-xvzopf FILENAME". Place the two programs where you like; I typically have them in /usr/local/bin or (with uppercase filename) in a group or directory that is part of my HPPATH settings.

The web page also contains a tar.Z file with /usr/local/bin/gzip

E:\WebKit2\upload\gnuzip.tar.Z

(gzip -d decompresses; creating a symbolic link gunzip is also useful)