A beginner's question

[gr53 at sdcc12.UCSD.EDU]

Dear netters:
I am a beginner of GRASS.  I have installed GRASS binary and spearfish data
and tey are running well. Now, I want to start my own work coverage.  The
data I have is in GRASS ASCII format,i.e. an ASCII text with a 6-line header.
I imported it using r.in.ascii command, and put it under 'spearfish'.  It 
worked fine.  However, it doesn't work when I put it in a separate directory
other than 'spearfish'.  I guess I have to make some kind of setup, beside
g.region.  My question can be made more general: what is the general procedure
to start a working coverage when I have the ASCII data ?

I am also trying to running the NOAA calibrated global vegetation index data.
First problem I have is that the header files get some unreconized symbols.,
like ^M after copied from CD-ROM to my sparc.  The second problem is when 
the NDVI filels are displayed they all look blank.  Anyone had similar
problem, please give me some advice. 

Thank you very much for your time.