dealing with .e00 files

.e00 files are from an older version of arc. a simpler time. but now it is complicated to open them. I ended up importing some .e00 files that were in a .tar.Z file (1996 USGS Open report) in a very roundabout manner, and later found some other more straightforward procedures (but can't figure out how to get those to work with my version of Arc). I'll just post them all here. 1. Official