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Pure Bollocks Issue 22_039
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* H O W * T O . . . *
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...get PD off a PAD!
THE COMPLETE LAMERS GUIDE TO GETTING PD SOFTWARE OFF HENSA (LEGALLY!)
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HENSA (The Higher Educational National Software Archive) is a major store of
Public Domain and shareware stuff. It has areas catering for most
microcomputers, including STs, PCs, Amigas (hiss!), Archies, and even crappy
old BBC Micros! As Robo says, most of it is "sensible" software, although I
have noticed things such as The Power Demo by TLB and a couple of issues of
STUNN diskmag being uploaded to it! It is very useful if you want to look for
"official" stuff, such as the MiNT and MiNT source code which we got for this
issue of PB. There is also a new section of archives of Compuserve chatter,
some of which we find very useful! You just have to look in the indexes that
are provided.
Now this is a lamers guide, written by someone who before knew absolutely
fuck all about IBM PCs and networks, so if you already know how to do this
sort of stuff then you might find Robo's article much more interesting.
WHAT YOU NEED.
A PC logged onto a PAD with some communications software. The computers I used
were the IBM PS/2s in the GU Boyd Orr building, which as anyone can tell you,
are crappy old 286s with only a hard drive and some interesting comms software
as a saving grace. So get to an easily accessible PC in a nearby higher
educational establishment as that's most likely to have access to a PAD. There
are 2 types of useful software:
KERMIT: More or less the standard transfer protocol between most
machines.
RAINBOW: A newer one, which can transfer files even without you
logging on!
I expect if there's another standard, it'll also be called
after a children's TV programme!
If you have any software with the names "Telnet" and "ftp" in them then
you're a lucky bastard! (The IBMs in the Computing Service in Glasgow
University have this feature.) You can easily log onto the services as
described by Robo in his article. If you haven't had any experience of them,
then consider getting stuff off HENSA as a dry run!
Don't worry if you don't know what PAD stands for, just think of it as a
computer controlled modem, which allows you to dail to various universities
all over the world, because that's what it basically is. To start the PAD in
Kermit, run it, and when the "Kermit>" prompt comes up, enter "connect". In
Rainbow, you just have to select "Start PAD" from a menu.
IN "PAD" MODE
Once you're in a pad mode, you can do a few things like type "Help address" to
see all the potential sites you can call. To call any of them, you would type
"call " and then their name.
However, we know who we're going to call- HENSA! This is where a slight bit
of confusion comes in. If you're in the UK, and calling from a college or
university PAD, then you just have to type "call lancs.pdsoft", where
"lancs.pdsoft" is the name of the HENSA server(It's full title is
"uk.ac.lancs.pdsoft", where "ac" means "academic", and you can guess what the
"uk" stands for!!) BUT if you're calling from outside the UK, then it would be
"call pdsoft.lancs.ac.uk"!!! This is because the British educational network
(JANET) has chosen to put it's names in a different order from the rest of the
world!! So remember- "uk.ac.lancs.pdsoft" from UK, "pdsoft.lancs.ac.uk" from
anywhere else! Phew, I hope that's fixed.
Anyway, however you get onto it, if you connect to you it, you'll get a
message saying that you've connected to the HENSA server, and to use "hensa"
for username and passsword. Actually, it used to be "pdsoft" for username and
password, and blow me, that also works as well! You'll get a big of a rambling
text file about various directories and so on, and then you get the prompt,
and from there on, you are in charge!
LOOKING AROUND
HENSA is run on a UNIX/DOS type system, so if you have some idea of basic DOS
filing commands, then you'll have no problem with this one. If not, then you
might find it a bit confusing. So here come a few basic commands whilst we go
about our business:
"cd " + <directory name/<directory name/<etc..>>> -
This allows you to change the directory you're on.
This is the basic way of moving through the HENSA directories, so you need to
know what you are doing here! An example of it would be:
"cd micros/atari/tos"
This gets you into the main atari archive. Note that the backslash is in the
opposite direction to the one used in directory commands on the ST! Also, note
that there's no backslash at the start of the list of directory names either.
"cd .." (two dots) moves you up a directory, and "cd" by itself puts you back
in the root directory.
"dir" + <directory name/<directory name/<etc..>>>
This shows the contents of the specified directory.
Continuing our example, if we type "dir" by itself, it shows us all the files
on the directory followed by the sub directories, one of which is "news". If
we type "dir news", we see all of the files and directories within news. There
should be at least one file saying something like "news03.002" or something
similar, and a couple of "news.." directories. This is where all the
information for the latest files in HENSA is stored, so let's go into the
directory by typing "cd news". Now how do we look at the information?
"type -p "+filename
This shows you a text file in paged mode, a bit like the "show text"
function in GEM on an ST.
Like that, pressing SPACE advances the text file on a page, and RETURN
advances the text file on a line. The "-p" is the bit which make the server
show the text file in paged mode. If you leave that bit out, then expect to
see the text file fly by on the screen at a hundred miles per hour! So, try
looking at one of the "news" text files. There should be a brief description
of the program and then a listing of the filename and directory in which it's
held eg something like "micros\atari\tos\n\n011\n011srcs.uue". If you see
anything you want to download, note it down on a piece of paper. When you've
marked down all the programs you want to download then you're ready to do some
file transfer!!
DOWNLOADING USING PC-KERMIT
I must say I'm most used to this because it was the way I managed to download
my first files off HENSA! If you want to download using Kermit, then you first
get into the directory in which the file is stored eg from our above example,
I would type "cd" then "cd micros\atari\tos\n\n011". Then what you would next
do is type
"Kermit"
This loads the UNIX version of Kermit, which can talk to your PC version of
Kermit. Now you just have to type
"Send "+filename
This gets the Kermit at HENSA ready to send the file to the Kermit on your PC!
Of course, you could type "send *.*" to send everything in the directory!
So, the Kermit at HENSA's waiting for your Kermit to receive the files. You
now have to exit out of the PAD window. You can do this by either typing ALT-
X, or typing CTRL-] and then pressing "C". Either way, the old "Kermit>"
prompt should come up. Type "Receive", and sit back and watch your IBM
download the software onto your hard drive! Once you're finished, type
"connect to get back to the PAD and the HENSA server. Type "q" to get out of
the Kermit program.
QUITTING OUT OF HENSA
Quite easy, this one. Just type "Logoff" to log out of the server. You can exit
out of the PAD in Rainbow by ALT-X, or the same way as mentioned before for
Kermit. To quit out of Kermit, you have to type "quit" (Logical, huh!), and
with Rainbow, you just have to select it from the menu.
DOWNLOADING FROM RAINBOW
The reason I mention this AFTER logging out of HENSA is because you don't need
to be logged in to download the files! There is an option for remote file
transfer from the menus in Rainbow. You have to specify whether you want a
binary or text file transfer. But you can easily download single files from a
Rainbow menu option "Single binary [or text] file transfer" which lets you
enter a command line of this form:
<server name>::<source file> <destination file> <username> <password>
The effect of this is that, when entered, it actually logs onto the server and
starts downloading the file! So for HENSA, we'd obviously do something like
this:
"lancs.pdsoft::micros\atari\tos\...."+<filename>+" "+<filename we'll use on
HD>+" hensa hensa"
This is another reason I told you to note down the filenames and directories!
This appears to be slightly faster than the Kermit mode of transfer, but
Kermit is much more standard. There is a way to do multiple file transfers on
Rainbow, using a text file as some sort of templete, but I haven't looked in
on that yet.
COPY IT ONTO YOUR DISK!
Rather obvious, but make sure you have a PC formatted (0-79T, 9S, DS) disk
ready to copy the files off the hard disk. You can move around the hard disk
directories using exactly the same commands as you used in HENSA. (eg "cd",
"dir" and "type".) If you don't know the command to copy a file, it's:
"copy " <source> <dest>
And if you can't copy a file onto your disk after that, then you really must be
an absolute lamer! Don't forget to delete the file off the hard drive though!
(The command is "del " <filename>.) So, you've got your nice programs on a PC
disk, which of course can also be read by STs. But you're still not finished...
BIG "BUT".... UUE ENCODED FILES!
Now this is a bit of a bastard. All the files are in UUE encoded format, which
actually makes the archived files appear longer than they really are! (At
least 10% longer) You might wonder why they bother with this, and so do I, but
it's something to do with VAX machines, so they're the ones who are really to
blame! You can get the UUE decoder from HENSA, by a really roundabout "run
this in GFA v2, which produces a 'minimal' UUE decoder, then UUE decode the
UUE decoder to the working version of UUE decoder"- I thought "What a fuckin'
carry- on!", and no doubt you would do too. I was actually going to do a quick
run-down of what you've to do, but fuck that- the there's a working version of
UUE decode in "HENSA.ZIP" on disk A of this issue. You basically just need to
give it the name of the .uue file to decode. Watch out floppy users, it takes
a fair amount of time, and it's "disk intensive", you know, a bit like
ARCshell? After it's finished, you just have to get the appropriate de-arcer to
depack the files. HENSA only uses ARC, LHARC, and ZOO for packing, so it's
advisable to get these de-arcers. You can of course download them from HENSA in
a UUE encoded form!
AND THAT IS THAT!
Well, I hope you have a nice time downloading software, and if you can master
that- then read Robo's article now!
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EGB'S SMELLY SOX!
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