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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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