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Re: 960126: netCDF on PC or Mac

>From: "Connor J. Flynn" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratories
>Keywords: 199601262211.AA06610 netCDF PC MAC

Hi Connor,

> I have been several problems with netCDF files that I hope you can can 
> help me with.  
> 
> I am using a Power Mac 9500 with MacOS System 7.0.  I also have access 
> to a 486-PC running Windows 95 under DOS 6.22.  I also have access to a 
> Sparc IPX workstation running OpenWindows 3.x under SunOS 4.1.3.  
> Hopefully, you can get me up and running with the PC or the Mac, since 
> my experience with UNIX boxes is limited.

Most of our experience is with Unix boxes, and we have no MacOS or Windows
95 development environments with which to port or test netCDF.

> The problems...
> #1) I can not get the MEXCDF Matlab interface (the Power Mac version) to 
> properly produce or recognize netCDF files.  It produces and recognizes 
> files that it thinks are netCDF files, but the said files are not 
> recognized by other systems as being valid netCDF files.  I have tried 
> to contact one Chuck Denham regarding this but have never recieved any 
> response.  I prefer doing most of my data analysis in Matlab.  Getting 
> Mexcdf to work with my Mac Matlab would be #1 on my wish list...

The MATLAB interfaces were contributed by other users, so we don't support
them directly.

I have Chuck Denham's e-mail address as "address@hidden", so if
you're using something else, you might try that.  If you still can't get a
reply, you might also try contacting Rich Signell at "address@hidden".

If you can't get the MEXCDF interface to MATLAB working, there is another
MATLAB interface, but I don't know if it's been ported to any PC operating
systems.  NOAA/PMEL has developed MexEPS, further described at

    http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/epic/mexeps.html


> #2)  I can not seem to get ncgen.exe (for MSDOS) to run properly.  I 
> have dl'd both ncdump.exe and ncgen.exe for MSDOS.  I can use ncdump to 
> produce ascii tranlations of netCDF files that I obtain from other 
> sources.  I have been able to do this from my 486-PC and from my Mac 
> running SoftWindows.  (This is not the problem, this part is good.)  The 
> problem is that I have been unable to produce my own netCDF files. 
> 
> I assumed that the ASCII files produced by ncdump would be properly 
> formatted for use by ncgen.exe.  Is this assumption incorrect? 

No, your assumption is right.  The output of ncdump should always be
acceptable as input to ncgen.  That's one of the things that's tested by
"make test" in the ncgen and ncdump source directories when they're built.
To further diagnose this problem, we'd need to have a small example of the
input you're giving ncgen and how you're invoking it, as well as whatever
output or error messages it produces.

> I am very familiar with the DOS environment.  If I can get these 
> utilities to work under DOS (but not with Mac MEXcdf) then this would be 
> second on my wish list.
> 
> Failing getting Mac MEXcdf or MSDOS ncgen.exe to work...
> 
> #3)  Not being too familiar with UNIX boxes (or even compiling code in 
> C, I am ashamed to admit), I don't know how to get the netCDF utilities 
> working on my UNIX box.  I understand that in order to achieve greater 
> portability of UNIX programs, generally only the source code is 
> provided.  The assumption being that the UNIX user will be able to 
> produce their own executables for their system.  This would be great if 
> I had a c compiler.  If someone has an executable version of netCDF 
> utilities working on a machine like mine, is it possible for me to 
> simply ftp those files?  If this is a possibility, could you put me in 
> touch with them?

Unfortunately, we don't know who has a Sun IPX running SunOS 4.1.3 who might
have the netCDF libraries and utilities available for anonymous FTP.  If
nothing else works, you might post a request for this to the mailing list of
netCDF users, address@hidden.

> I would appreciate any help you can provide.  Thanks a million,
> 
> Connor Flynn (PhD in physics, novice in netCDF)

--Russ

______________________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                           UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                              http://www.unidata.ucar.edu