sometimes I ftp files from an Unix environment from the command prompt of my win2000 pc and I get a "broken pipe" message. sometimes I'll get nothing but sometimes I'll get part of the file.
Whats this "broken pipe" about??

well, "broken pipe" is a real general error just meaning that the transfer cannot be completed for one reason or another.. i'm sure there are many many reasons you might get that message.. you may want to search on this site or on google for different causes/solutions.

i'm sure others on here will list some things to try, i just don't have any suggestions myself.

if your ftp transfer is binary, change it to ascii, if its ascii try changing it to binary. i know unix to unix always use binary. try ascii mode for retreiving to a windows machine.

In one scenario of TCP world, a 'broken pipe' error occurs when the other end of the connection(must be win2000pc in ur case) closes, and this end (unix) ignores the closure.

An ftp session establishes 2 distinct TCP connections between the source and destination: one for control information transfer which will be alive till you close the ftp session and the other is for the data transfer, which is established and closed for every get/put ftp command.

I assume that the control connection might have been closed from one end, which was ignored from the source end. And, still the source host would have continued sending some control information to the other end...and hence the broken pipe.