W8SDZ@mit-mc.arpa (04/29/83)
From: Keith Petersen <W8SDZ@mit-mc.arpa> I think if your budget will allow it you should order all 7 volumes of the NY Club's catalogs. I bought them at the computer fest and wasn't sorry. It's amazing to look through them and see the wide diversity of things in the public domain. After you get the catalogs and decide on some things you want, check the MIT-MC CPM; directory first for more recent versions, then order. One nice thing about public-domain programs is that if they're good ones they seem to be well-maintained (i.e., updates/fixes/features added, etc.). For instance, MDM7xx (a.k.a. MODEM7xx) has gone through MANY revisions (most for the better) and some people have taken the attitude that they're tired of getting the newest versions of that program. I don't see it that way at all - personally I would want to make sure I ALWAYS had the latest version, just to make sure I didn't miss out on some nice new feature. You'd be amazed at how many people don't know, for instance, that there's a very large printer buffer available in the terminal mode. That feature has been in there for a number of revisions, but some users are so far behind they don't have it. --Keith