[daip] aips always says "SYMBOL?"

[Eric Greisen]

Deborah Haarsma writes:
 > Designated aip,
 > 
 > One of our students is using aips in her summer research.  Today
 > someone pulled the plug on her computer (while aips was running), in
 > the process of moving the computer to another room.  Now when she runs
 > aips, every command entered at the prompt gets an error message:
 > "SYMBOL?".  It's like the program has forgotten how to communicate.
 > We've started and stopped the program several times, did RUN POPSGN
 > (it ran normally), and copied the AIPS.EXE file from another
 > indentical computer to this one.  Nothing has helped.  Any ideas?
 > 
 > Debbie Haarsma

What has happened is that the Save/Get file called LASTEXIT has gotten
damaged.  In the 31DEC04 version I have put tests for this problem
that should work to avoid it.  Either those tests are inadequate or
you are using something older than the latest 31DEC04 version.  In any
case, the offending file is in the first data area named

SGDuuunnn.uuu;

(note thee semi-colon) where uuu is the user number in extended hex
and nnn is a number in extended hex.  The LASTEXIT one is usually 001
 - delete it and start aips again.

Eric Greisen