4th September 2000
Long before the GUI was gooey, we stuck to the command prompt. Software compression, while not running rampant, was on the scene. In your travels, no doubt you've seen files with strange extensions. Does EX_ or TX_ ring a bell? Most likely, you've found these in ZIP archives and CAB files; each with two letters and an underscore character. What will unpack 'em? Drag the underscored file into WinZip, and when it prompts you to finish the extension, take a wild guess and you'll probably be correct. Now drag that file back out of WinZip (onto your Desktop, for example). Shazam! This trick works for compressed files sitting inside archives, too. You can also use the old DOS utility, EXPAND.EXE -- if you still have a working version. It's amazing how far we've come. It seems like just yesterday I was unclogging my binary threshing machine. You younger folks might call it a "word processor."