> Pardon me if this is the dumbest question yet:
> (everyone is welcome to rotfl)
> there are two sets of binaries for 1.2 - I THINK - one is in
> the binaries dir, one is in the 1.2 vax dir.
> They are different sizes, have different names, like base.tar.gz versus
> bin.tar.gz or sbin.tar.gz.
> 
You have looked in two different directories :-)
Filenames like base.tar.gz etc. is from a release, like 1.2.
Names like bin.tar.gz belongs to a snapshot.

-- Ragge