Importing SCS Soil data as Grass3 vector files

[FINNEYB at AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU]

I have been provided with a series of Grass3 format vector files
from the SCS digital soils database (Hawaii, Island of Oahu).
The files were generated on a AT&T 6386 Unix box.  I am trying
to use them on a Sun SparcStation running Grass4.  To convert
these files to grass4 vector format I have tried to use v.support
(which runs v.from.3).  After the file is written out to a temp file,
the program begins to rebuild the file in the new format.  After the
first 243 byes are written into the new file, I get the following error
message:
OUT OF MEMORY!
ALLOC_POINTS  Returned error
Requested 33554433 Previous 0
Out of memoryError.......etc

Anyone have any ideas what has gone wrong?  The version 3 vector file
is only 4474 bytes long, so a true out of memory error seems unlikely.
Does the byte ordering of the Intel machine the SCS files came from
have any bearing on this?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
Brad Finney, Environmental Engineering, Humboldt State Univ, CA
finneyb at axe.humboldt.edu   (phone 707-826-3918)