[comp.sys.atari.st] Univ. of Edinburgh public domain ST software?

jfbruno@rodan.acs.syr.edu (John F. Bruno) (04/11/90)

In the March 1990 ST World (the U.K. mag) on page 42 is a letter from 
Tom Jones, Dept. of Meteorology, Univ. of Edinburgh. The letter states that
Edinburgh is maintaining an on-line library of public domain ST software.
The addresses given are:

PSS:
pdsoft@234223519191.JANET.00001040
300096.FTP.MAIN

BITNET:
pdsoft%uk.ac.lancs.pdsoft@ukacr

These addresses are meaningless to me. Our site is on BITNET, but I can't
seem to get mail to the above addresses. Is this site reachable via FTP?
If so, HOW? Is there a trafficking problem during business hours? 
Does this site have stuff I can't find at terminator.cc.umich.edu?

---jb

ngse18@castle.ed.ac.uk (J R Evans) (04/12/90)

In article <2903@rodan.acs.syr.edu> jfbruno@rodan.acs.syr.edu (John F. Bruno) writes:
>In the March 1990 ST World (the U.K. mag) on page 42 is a letter from 
>Tom Jones, Dept. of Meteorology, Univ. of Edinburgh. The letter states that
>Edinburgh is maintaining an on-line library of public domain ST software.

I don't think Tom reads c.s.a.s often (not that I read all of it!), so
perhaps, as another user of Ed U facilities, I can answer.  Note that I
have not seen Tomsk's letter in ST World; I am answering John Bruno's
question.

Edinburgh University does *not* maintain an online library of ST or any
other software.  The address quoted by John refers to the UK National
Public Domain Software Archive, which is maintained by Lancaster
University.  Note that the UK academic community has its own networking
system - JANET - based on near-OSI protocols.  There is no transparent
gateway between JANET and the Internet, so Internet access to
lancs.pdsoft through ftp is not possible.  The NPDSA has recently
started to offer a mail service, but I believe that it does not respond
to requests from outside the UK.  In other words the UK-NPDSA serves the
UK *only*.  I know a little of the financial structure of JANET, and the
reasons come down to there being no-one to pay the associated bills.  So
all flames to /dev/null, please.

As far as whether there is anything at lancs.pdsoft which is not at
terminator, I do not know.  I *do* know that most of what is at
lancs.pdsoft *is* at terminator.  I do not know whether Mark Hobart (who
I believe manages the Atari area at lancs.pdsoft) corresponds directly
with Stephen Grimm (Stephen? Mark? are you there?).

Russ