hummel@m.cs.uiuc.edu (07/18/88)
Some words about the Amiga archive at UIUC:
[ Due to our slow notes-feed, a (draconian) 2-3 day aging policy on
heavily trafficked notesfiles, and my having summer-school midterms
last week, I seem to have caught only the tail end of a discussion
about the archive. Please excuse me if this reply seems somewhat less
than germaine or more than ample. ]
First, an introduction: My name is Lionel Hummel and I am the primary
moderator of the archive in question; I'm the front-man, fall-guy,
and catalyst for it. So please direct criticisms, suggestions, and
(sheesh) compliments about it to me.
For those who are wondering what this "archive" business is all about:
Fish disks have been rather hard to come by here in central Illinois.
There is no complete collection anywhere here, and many of the
existing collections are inbred to the point at which it can take
months to locate a particular disk error-free. Add to that the
relative lack of support afforded to the Amiga at this bastion of
computerdom, and you have my motivations for trying to turn our
"desert" into "fertile land". To do this, I have been able to get an
Amiga Public Domain archive started (in a very roundabout way that I
won't clutter this note with its details). Its /etc/hosts entry is:
128.174.5.54 uxe.cso.uiuc.edu uiucuxe-uiuc-cso-dclnet uxe uiucuxe
Currently, it can only be reached by people with access to a very few
networks such as ARPANet and CSNet. Unfortunately, it can not yet be
accessed by UUCP. We know how desirable it would be to have UUCP and
BITNET access. Perhaps sometime later this year. The priority for
now is with filling out the holes and squashing the bugs in the archive.
To those of you who have used or plan to use the archive: The archive
is still in the startup stage. I'm not happy with the state it's in,
but by all means feel free to make use of it and let me know what
doesn't work (well). At the base of the archive (~ftp/amiga)
there are three help files whose names are in CAPS that should be
obtained and read first, particularly the ERROR_LOG file which will
keep you appraised of current pitfalls.
I encourage people with any questions or comments about the archive to
email me a response to this posting. If you request a response, you
will receive one promptly and courteously. But more importantly, feedback
helps to show CSO that their disk space isn't being wasted on behalf of
the Amiga. (CSO==this University's Computing Services Office, who have
donated the space on uxe for the archive, despite the fact that the
Amiga isn't "officially" supported here at UIUC).
< Lionel
----------
Lionel Hummel 404 W. High St., #6
hummel@cs.uiuc.edu Urbana, IL 61801
{ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!hummel (H) (217)344-5303
Dept. of Computer Science (W) (217)333-7408
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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