More tar help

[P_SECINARO at unhh.unh.edu]

        I noticed a posting recently dealing with tar and .Z files.
Well, I seem to be having some problems of my own in this area.  I'm
running SVR3.2 on a 386 PC and it doesn't have compress.  Since there
are a number of .Z files I'd like to have, I tried downloading the
source code for compress - in an uncompressed .tar file -
from an FTP site.  The problem is I can't get tar to work either.  I
keep getting errors like "Not a tar archive" and "Bad magic string".
        When I process the same file on a VAX running Ultrix, I have no
problems with uncompress or tar, though I don't have enough disk space
in my user account to detar the files fully, so this is also an
unsatisfactory approach.
        Is there something wrong with System V/386 R3.2 tar (AT&T version 2.0)?
Or am I somehow downloading the files incorrectly?  I downloaded the tar file
as ASCII and the compress files as binary onto a VMS system (on which I do
have plenty of space) and then transferred them over to my system via
Kermit.

Paul Secinaro

P_SECINARO at UNHH.UNH.EDU