[daip] AIPS problem: conversion of big-endian to little-endian

[Eric Greisen]

RALLIS at mps.ohio-state.edu writes:
 > Dear AIPS group,
 >      Last fall my sparcstation running Solaris died and was replaced with a
 > Dell running Linux. Our sytems person, Bryan Dunlap (see message from
 > him below), did an AIPS installation on the new computer, but it can't see
 > my old data catalogue. Eric Greisen said that the problem was 
 > big-endian vs little-endian and we needed to install AIPS on a
 > sparcstation or a Mac to convert my data files. Doesn't NRAO have a script 
 > that could convert my data files independent of our doing an AIPS 
 > installation on a sparcstation or a Mac? Hasn't this problem occurred at
 > NRAO or elsewhere when computers were replaced?
 >   
 >      Bryan Dunlap looked into doing an AIPS installation on a Mac as we
 > no longer have any sparcstations in the department and is stumped. 
 > If it is necessary to do the installation on a Mac in order to convert
 > my data files, where can we get a binary distribution for it? 
 >                                             - Michele Kaufman

The problem with a conversion program is that it would have to know in
detail the format of every file in the aips system.  We have not
written that and it woiuld not be simple.  You are instructed to back
up your data regularly in FITS format and I have little sympathy for
those who do not do that.

To install on a Mac consult our Web pages.  In fact it should be very
simple.  If you do not intend to actually use aips on the Mac then the
XWindows and cvs tools will not be needed and one can plow on without
them.

Pick a disk area to install aips and cd to it.  ftp install.pl (only)
from our ftp site:
      ftp.aoc.nrao.edu/pub/software/aips/31DEC04/install.pl 
then
      perl install.pl -n
and answer a few questions which will be familiar to the installer
from the Linux install.  The script does the binary download.  Note
that a binary MNJ is set up if you download 31DEC05 instead and aips
would be usable in that environment with XWindows and cvs installed.

Eric Greisen