ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) (12/17/89)
Except for the programs I program myself for the PD scene, and a couple of other expections, I have not announced news about other programs that I have placed for public access. One reson for this is to avoid unnecessary double announcements with Simtel20. So here is at one go my news about PC programs aquisitions. ................................................................... University of Vaasa, Finland, Sun 4 node number 128.214.12.3 (chyde.uwasa.fi) has a collection of PD and shareware programs which are available by anonymous ftp (file transfer program). This /pc/pd2/0news file contains news about the programs in the /pc/pd2 directory (in reverse order). ................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi (Site 128.214.12.3) School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: vakk::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun ................................................................... Sun 17-Dec-89: Obtained two new list of bulletin boards to complement the lists which cover only Finnish boards. These are bbs1289.zip which list about 3100 US systems, and 96bb1289.zip which list some 9600 bps boards in the US and overseas. The list latter list seem sporadic. Fri 15-Dec-89: Updates pcopy81.arc and shez51.arc. Obtained stpdos.zip. It shows a program's calls to dos (int 21h). For advanced programmers. Wed 13-Dec-89: Acquired a new copy of files-mm.zip. See an earlier date for the explanation of this file. Sun 10-Dec-89: Obtained version 3.12 of the Telix telecommunication program. The files are tlx312-1.zip, tlx312-2.zip and tlx312-3.zip. Obtained the new version of Buerg's list program list72a.zip. Also obtained shez50.zip, the convenient shell for handling packed files. All these three are shareware programs of real quality. Wed 6-Dec-89: Keith Petersen kindly told me that progref1.zip and progref2.zip have been updated, and are available as 1216ref2.arc. I have now obtained this more recent version from Simtel20 for download from our site, as well. Thanks Keith. Tue 5-Dec-89: Obtained progref1.zip and progref2.zip. They are very impressive DOS technical references by Dave Williams. And they make a nice complement to the well-known inter589.arc reference by Ralf Brown. Sun 3-Dec-89: Uploaded dsz1019.arc. It is an older version of z-modem file transfer program dated 19-Oct-88. I have tried out and uploaded many dsz versions, and I have had one problem or another with almost each and every one of the versions. This dsz1019.arc seem for some unfathomable reason the most convenient of the versions I have looked at so far. If anyone has any comments beyond the obvious "contact the author" I would be interested in hearing about your own experiences. But until there is some consistence in the behavior of dsz I just have to keep the old versions available as well. This is contrary to my usual policy, since normally I try to have available only the latest version I have myself. (At the moment there are two versions of shez available, shez49.arc and shez491.arc, but this is simply because I have not had the time to look at shez491.arc, and I know that shez49.arc works ok. Not that there has been any problems with shez. It is a very nice package, indeed. And, incidentally, do not forget the shareware rules.) Sat 2-Dec-89: Obtained two lists of Finnish BBSes, and put them in bx891202.arc. At the same time removed three older lists, that is box.arc, boxivaxi.arc and vaxi_bbs.arc. Wed 29-Nov-89: Obtained files-mm.arc the list of files available on Micro Maniacs Opus, BBS node 2:515/1. It has a very large file collection, certainly one of the largest in Finland. But, this is not an advertisement for the said BBS although it is most certainly worth it. Rather my idea is to make available a comprehensive file list to act as one kind of a reference catalogue to files and programs available for the PC environment. Sat 25-Nov-89: Obtained pdswstat.arc PD and SW statistical software list by Jim Groeneveld. Wed 22-Nov-89: Removed some of the files, because there are more recent versions in the other /pc/ directories. Mon 20-Nov-89: Obtained onside.lzh, tp5patch.arc, and dsz1114.arc. Onside is a sideways printing utility, and of the many such utilities I have looked at, it is the first one that seems to work properly. Tp5patch contains some patches to Turbo Pascal 5.0 from Borland, and sdz1114 is an update of z-modem date 14-Nov-89. Tue 14-Nov-89: Obtained dsz1111.arc z-modem 11-Nov-89, mkmst121.arc Market Master stock analysis, and sa210a.arc Security Analyst. Tue 7-Nov-89: Obtained shez49.arc, the menu driven shell for handling files packed as .arc, .zip, .zoo, .lzh, and .pak. Mon 6-Nov-89: Obtained lh114b.exe which is the self-extracting lharc packing program version 1.14 beta. It makes and unpacks .LZH files. Also obtained a list of Finnish BBSes from VAXI 14-Oct 1989 and named it boxvaxi.zip. It is in Finnish. Tue 31-Oct-89: Obtained list71a.arc, Vernon Buerg's listing program. The virtual standard in PCs. Mon 30-Oct-89: Obtained batpower.zip. It is yet another selection of the standard utilities which seem to (re)appear in so many of these packages. Tue 24-Oct-89: Obtained vol8n16.zip and stkmkt.zip. Vol8n16.zip contains the programs from PC-Magazine Volume 8 Number 16, that is September 1989. Among the programs is the DIRMATCH program by Michael Mefford for comparing directories and copying files. Very neat indeed. Stkmkt.zip seems to contain some kind of stock market charting programs. I have not tried stkmkt out. Mon 23-Oct-89: Got todo38.zip and list70a.arc. Todo38 is a "to do" reminder program. List70a.arc is a new version of the file listing program, which has virtually become a PC standard. Thu 19-Oct-89: Obtained three new packages: Keyb21.zip, a nice display of keyboard keyscan codes. Pcopy787.zip, an update of Patriquin's fabulous copying program. Sypstok3.zip, Stock Trader III, an update of the graphical stock market analyzer. Thu 5-Oct-89: Got shez48.arc. Shez48 has the ability to utilize the virus scanning program scanvxx.arc for ferreting out nasties. Tue 3-Oct-89: Got Ample Notice reminder and calendar an130.arc. Sat 16-Sep-89: Replaced shez44.arc with shez46.arc. The author has added handling .pak files to shez. Got the latest version of simibm.arc from Simtel20. Sat 2-Sep-89: Got qmac12b.arc macro translator for Qedit, and tedplus.arc PC-Magazine tiny editor changed version with sources. Mon 28-Aug-89: Got the current contents of Simtel20. It is in simibm.arc. Sun 27-Aug-89: Got buf128.arc, which is a keyboard buffer of 128 characters. I have not tested it yet myself. Also got vaxi_bbs.arc from Casino Opus. It contains, in Finnish, information about Finnish bulletin boards, and it originates from VAXI. Sat 26-Aug-89: PKWARE's (long awaited?) pkzip version 1.01 has come out. Pkzip un/packing program is the self-extracting package pkz101.exe. Version 1.01 introduces a new, tighter packing method. Thus 0.90 and 0.92 cannot unpack files compressed with 1.01. Wed 23-Aug-89: Added keyfake.arc. Fri 18-Aug-89: Got pak210.exe, sharc876.arc, and shez44.arc from Simtel20. I have not yet checked these packages, so I shall retain the older versions until I do. - And having looked at pak210.exe and shez44.arc I deleted the old versions. Shez now supports also zoo, so the only major packing method it does not support is pak. Tue 8-Aug-89: Got the latest version of simibm.zoo from Simtel20. See an earlier notice what it is about. Tue 8-Aug-89: In response to the notice below, SIMTEL20 has removed file ICE114.EXE from the <MSDOS.ARC-LBR> directory, and so have I removed it from our archives here at Vaasa. WARNING ! LH114.xxx is an unauthorized hack of LH113C.xxx. Apparently some prankster thought it was "cute" to change the LHARC file type from ".LZH" to ".ICE". Direct contact with Yoshi, author of LHARC, has confirmed that he did NOT issue LH114, and has no desire to change the .LZH file type. Therefore all SYSOPs and users are urged to delete the bogus LH114 file, and to pass along this message. Who knows - the prankster may have added his favorite VIRUS !!! Thanks for your help. Paul Foote (07/29/89) Mon 8-Aug-89: Got brik2exe.arc (general-purpose CRC-32 program) and pak201.exe (an update of NoGate's archive create/extract program) from Simtel20. I have not (yet) looked into them. Sun 6-Aug-89: Acquired ice114.exe and qedit208.arc. Ice114.exe is a renamed lharc. Lharc packed and unpacked files with extension lzh. The default extension has been altered to ice. Qedit208.arc is the shareware editor from SemWare. It uses similar WordStar-like commands as Borland's Turbo compilers. This is the editor I personally prefer, and would like to have a similar one in Unix environment. I have not found an editor for Unix using WordStar-like commands, so I have to use MicroEmacs instead. But I do not like it. So, if anyone has information about a commercial or PD editor like Qedit, but for Unix environment, please let me know. Sat 5-Aug-89: Obtained the proper, original copy of pak20.exe. This one displays the NoGate logo, and has the /sec security envelope. Thu 3-Aug-89: I have now converted pak20.lzh into a self-extracting pak20.exe package. NoGate's pak.exe seems to be quite a useful utility for handling packed files. In addition to .pak files, it can be used to handle .arc files. And no more needing a separate configuration file present when using the new pak.exe is a definite improvement upon the earlier pak version 1.61. Thu 3-Aug-89: Got a new version pak20.lzh of the NoGate compression package for handling .pak files. Now whoever (re)packed pak20 did not obviously think the matter through, since you need another packing method (lharc) to open this package :-) Obviously I have to make pak20 self-extracting at an appropriate juncture. Wed 2-Aug-89: Got simibm.idx from Simtel20 and put it in simibm.zoo. Simibm.idx is the list of files available by anonymous ftp from Simtel20. We usually keep this file in the /pc/pd/doc directory, but moderator Harri Valkama is on vacation at the moment. Fri 28-Jul-89: Got inter489.zoo from the Usenet binary postings, that is from comp.binaries.ibm.pc. It is a very comprehensive list of interrupts on the PC. I did not delete the old interrup.arc if somebody prefers this version, because it is so much smaller (one third of the current version). Wed 26-Jul-89: A more recent version of simibm.zoo is in directory /pc/dp/doc. The version that was in this directory has been deleted. Fri 21-Jul-89: shez41.arc --> shez43.arc. Sat 15-Jul-89: Got simibm.idx from Simtel20 and packed it as simibm.zoo. It is a list of Simtel20 files, which have a one line description. Please notice that this file will soon get old as Simtel20 updates its program collection. Tue 11-Jul-89: Got uu.zoo uuencode/uudecode for the PC from comp.binaries.ibm.pc. Sun 9-Jul-89: Uploaded powtool1.lzh and powtool2.lzh. These are collections tools from the PC-Magazine. There is, however, no documentation, or rather the documentations have appeared in the magazine. This is a problem, since there are well over two hundred files in all in these two packages. Quite a number of these (and similar) tools seem appear in the other tool collections, as well. Furthermore, at least the directory control program have later come out in a much enhanced form as a separate package. I have looked at a few of the programs, and I particularly liked the following. Calc.com is a nice resident calculator. Dircomp.com compares two directories, and I have to admit that it does it more informatively than my own dird.exe and dirs.exe in the /pc/ts/tsutil collection. Sat 1-Jul-89: New version shez41.arc of the .zip .arc .lzh shell now available. Wed 21-Jun-89: The longest day of the year (summer solstice) in the Northern hemisphere. In Northern Finland the sun does not set at all. Added txl311-1.arc, tlx310-2 and tlx310-3.arc which make up the Telix telecommunication program package. Telix is a program similar to Procomm Plus. It is a very good shareware program with a nice user interface. - Please recall that shareware means that you can try out a program for free, but if you adopt it, that is begin using it, you will have to pay a registration fee to the program's author(s). Sun 18-Jun-89: Added lh113c.zip which contains version 1.13 of the lharc packing method from Japan. It seems that after the SEA vs PKWARE incidence we have entered an era of a lot of different packing methods. Gone are the days when most things were arc. This is more and more reflected also in the /pc/pd2 directory which contains the files as were when obtained. Sat 17-Jun-89: Flushot plus, version 1.6 made available as fsp_16.arc. Z-modem updates. This time dsz0525.arc and dsz0525x.arc. I had problems with this dsz version, too, in transferring files to an Unix system from my PC through a server. The server was jammed. The other direction was ok. It seems to me, that although slower, CKermit is the more robust file transfer alternative at least in my configuration. Thu 15-Jun-89: Replaced shez34.zip with version shez38.zip. Shez is a nice shell for handling .zip, .arc, and .lzh packages. Tue 13-Jun-89: Added SEA's arc602.exe, that is the latest version of the earlier(?) defacto packing standard. Sun 11-Jun-89: nnansi.zoo from comp.binaries.ibm.pc has been added. It contains an ansi.sys replacement nnansi.sys. Tue 6-Jun-89: lharc113.exe and dsz0424.lzh have been added. The self-extracting lharc113.exe contains lharc, which is the provides the densest compression method around, so far. This is beta test version 1.13. Dsz0424.lzh is z-modem released 24-Apr-89. I could not get this version work properly between my PC and a unix machine through a server and net, where an older version of dsz does work. Mon 29-May-89: Updated zoo201.exe from UseNet Binary Postings, that is comp.binaries.ibm.pc. The name of the file is unchanged, but the contents of the file is more recent. Thu 25-May-89: Updated box.arc, the list of finnish BBSes (due to CityBox Opus). Mon 15-May-89: 1) Included pkzf10.exe. Searches throughout a disk for given file name (and inside .zips too). 2) Updated the .zip shell to shez34.zip. 3) Included sharc875.zip. It is a shell for handling .arc files. Tue 9-May-89: box.arc (list of Finnish BBS phone numbers from CityBox) updated to the current version. Mon 8-May-89: Added dirtyd8d.zip containing information about trojans and hacked programs.