Where and how do I get software and other informations?
*******************************************************

Three questions arise in this context: Which programs can be found, where are they and how to get them and transfer them home?

Files and databases on freely distributable software
====================================================

Of course you need to know where you find things. Many good choices are listed in this paper, as I hope. Other sources are:

AmigaSciSchool
     is a list of software and where you find it in Ascii format. It is posted monthly to the newsgroups comp.sys.amiga.applications, comp.unix.amiga, and news.answers. Additionally you will find it on Aminet sites (text/doc/AmigaSciSchool-4.01). It handles everything listed here and many more, for example GNU software, libraries (linked and shared), shells, Unix commands, educational and scientific software and much more.

FishCon
     are lists of the Fish disk contents. (fish/doc/fishcon-???.lzh on Aminet)

FishXref
     is a cross reference list of the Fish contents. (fish/doc/fishxref-???.lzh on Aminet) FishXref and Fishcon are in Ascii format.

KingFisher
     A Fish disk database, (fish/doc/Kingfisher1_30.lha, which is the program and fish/doc/KFData850.lha ,which contains the data, on Aminet or Fish disk 863) allows search by name and context. See Fish.

A collection of tests
=====================

Comp.sys.amiga.reviews is a moderated newsgroup where tests of soft- and hardware, books and anything else relevant to the Amiga are posted. Its always a good idea to check this newsgroup for a review, if you are interested in something special. Of course you always find only the latest reviews, but the older postings are available per FTP from math.uh.edu, Directory /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews or on the Fish CDs.

Getting files from a FTP server
===============================

Things are easy for those who have access to the Internet and a program called FTP (File Transfer Program). Nearly all Unix computers have it, but not all of them allow the use of FTP.

FTP allows you to gain access to some other machines and store and/or retrieve files. Normally one needs an acoount on the remote machine to use it, bat a number of machines have a setup that allows everybody to log in as the user ftp or anonymous, so anybody may get files from them. The most important of this servers are the Aminet servers, which mirror each other and hence should have the same files. They are the best choice if you are looking for Amiga software. Aminet hosts are

     USA (MO)     ftp.wustl.edu           128.252.135.4
     USA (CA)     ftp.cdrom.com           192.153.46.2
     USA (TX)     ftp.etsu.edu            192.43.199.20
     Scandinavia  ftp.luth.se             130.240.18.2
     Germany      ftp.uni-kl.de           131.246.9.95
     Germany      ftp.uni-erlangen.de     131.188.1.43
     Germany      ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de     130.149.17.7
     Germany      ftp.uni-paderborn.de    131.234.2.32
     Germany      ftp.uni-oldenburg.de    134.106.40.9
     Germany      ftp.coli.uni-sb.de      134.96.68.11
     Switzerland  ftp.eunet.ch            146.228.10.16
     Switzerland  litamiga.epfl.ch        128.178.151.32
     UK           ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk        146.169.2.1

All these mirrors have a directory /pub/aminet, where you will find much stuff. Please use a mirror close to you! Some other important hosts are

     ftp.funet.fi             (Finland)
     ftp.isca.uiowa.edu       (USA)
     ftp.hawaii.edu           (USA)
     ftp.cso.uiuc.edu         (USA)
     ftp.dfv.rwth-aachen.de   (Germany)

Note that grind, aachen and erlangen have the full collection of Fish disks available! See Fish disk xxx.

To connect to a special host (ftp.uni-erlangen.de for example), you should type

     ftp ftp.uni-erlangen.de

The host answers by requesting your login. You should type

     ftp

No you are asked for a password. Please type your Email address here, if you have one. If not, use the password ftp.

Now you're inside the host. There is a number of commands you may execute here. The most important are:

?
     Prints the help text of the FTP command. Additionally you may type ? command to get information on a special command.

bin
     Tells the FTP program that you whish to transfer binary files. It is always a good choice to type bin as the very first command! Files you load without the bin command can be corrupt.

get <file>
     Loads the given file from the host. On most Unix machines you can type something like get file.txt - or get file.txt |more to show a text on the screen. Note that there must not be any blank between the | and the word more!

mget <pat>
     Loads the given files. pat may contain Unix style like wildcards.

put <file>
mput <pat>
     Like get and mget, but transfer files from you to the remote host. This is in most cases not allowed, except for a special directory called incoming. You can place files here which you want to make public.

cd <dir>
     Like the usual cd command. The commands get, mget, put, mput, dir and ls refer to the current working directory.

dir [<dir>]

ls [<dir>]
     Like list and dir on the Amiga. Note that the FTP-dir corresponds to the Amiga-list!

bye
     Leaves the FTP program.

When you have used FTP for the first times you will notice, that you always begin with executing the same steps:

 1. Type the login (ftp in most cases)

 2. Type the password (your mail address in most cases)

 3. Enter the bin command

 4. Change the current working directory (/pub/aminet for example)

This may get executed automatically. What you need is a file called .netrc in your home directory. Note that it needs to be protected against others! The FTP program doesn't use it, if it can be read by anything else than you. (Protection is set using the command chmod go-rwx .netrc.) The .netrc file contains some entries for your most favourite FTP sites, each separated by empy lines. A typicel entry may look like this:

     machine ftp.uni-erlangen.de
     login ftp
     password <your mail address> or <ftp>
     macdef init
         bin
         cd pub/aminet

Note that on some machines it is possible to use the machine name default which meets all machines not listed in .netrc.

Getting files from a Mail server
================================

Another way to get files is to use a mail server. This assumes that you can send mail to Internet addresses and get mail from Internet hosts. It works by sending a mail to the server specifying some commands, for example send commands for the files you want. Important mail servers are

     ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
     mailserver@nic.funet.fi
     mailserver@leo.org
     mrcserv@janus.mtroyal.ab.ca
     mail-server@ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de
     mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu

The most important commands are:

Help
     Tells the server that you wish to get an Ascii file containing detailed explanation how to use the server.

Limit <number>
     Specifys that you wish to get not more than <number> Kbytes per mail. Larger files get splitted into small pieces of at most <number> Kbytes which are sent as separate mails each. Note that the mails may get larger because of overhead.

Cwd <dir>
     Sets the current working directory to <dir>. This directory is used by the commands send and dir.

Index
     will return a list of files and/or directories that the server offers. Note that this may be very large!

Index <item>
     returns a list of files containing <item> in their names.

Dir [<dir>]
     returns a list of the files and directories in the given directory.

Send <file1> <file2> ... <fileN>
     Tells the server to send the given files to you.

Begin
     Tells the server to ignore all lines above this command.

End
     Like Begin, but specifies to ignore the lines below. (A signature for example!)

A typical session would be to send the following mail to the mail server:

     BEGIN
     CD /pub/aminet/util/arc
     SEND LhA_e138.run
     END

Getting files from a mailbox
============================

You also can get files from one of the many BBS's (Bulletin Board System). Most of these are driven by private users, so there is nearly everywhere a mailbox which doesn't cause a too expensive telephone bill.

I want to publish a list of all Amiga mailboxes here. So please send to me a list of all mailboxes which are related to the Amiga - in any way. I need all telephone numbers of the boxes and their name. Tell me the nation where the box resides and - if possible - some more info (Does the box have Aminet or the Fish PD or FRAS? Is the box especially for Amiga users?)

Thanks, Ignaz Kellerer

The Fish PD series
==================

A very good source is the Fish PD series. One distinguishes between the floppy disks and the CD-Roms.

The Amiga Library disks
-----------------------

Fred Fish has started in the middle eighties to collect freely distributable software on floppy disks. There are 1000 disks and very much good stuff on it. Most Amiga dealers sell them and most magazines contain addresses of people mailing them to you for about 3$ per disk or less. Fred Fish has terminated offering software on floppy disks. Instead, there is a dealer who offers the new software from the CD-Roms on floppy disks.

There are some things which can be found on the Fish disks, but not on Aminet. However, you can get them with FTP. See Fish disk xxx.

The Fresh Fish CD-Roms
----------------------

Fred Fish is going on to offer freely distributable software. But now he collects it on CD-Rom's. He releases two different kinds of CD's:

 1. Monthly released disks are divided into roughly three sections:

      1. New material, which includes the material from the new unreleased floppy disks as well as material which does not appear in the floppy distribution, about 84Mb on the first disk.

      2. Useful utilities that can be used directly off the CD-ROM if desired, thus freeing up the corresponding amount of hard disk space (GNU Emacs, Gnu C, GNU C++, Amiga E, PasTeX, AmigaGuide, Installer, 2.0 and 3.0-Includes, different archivers, tape drivers, the AmiCDROM filesystem and many other GNU and BSD tools, ...), about 150Mb on the first disk.

      3. Older material from previous released floppy disks or CD-ROM's, about 404 Mb on the first disk. (Fish disk 600-910)

 2. Disks containing the latest software as well as recent software in packed format only. (These are intended to be used for example in BBS's.)

I recommend especially the first kind of Fish CD's. They cost about 20$ plus 3$ for shipping (5$ outside USA/Canada/Mexico) and are available from

     Amiga Library Services
     610 N. Alma School Road, Suite 18
     Chandler, AZ 85224-3687
     U.S.A.

     Phone/FAX: (602) 917-0917

How do I Read and write MS-Dos disks?
=====================================

No problem for owners of Workbench 2.1 or higher: The program CrossDos is part of the Workbench. All you have to do is mounting the device pc0: by putting it into the drawer Devs:DOSDrivers or by double-clicking the icon in Sys:Storage/DOSDrivers. Ms-Dos disks in drive df0: can now be handled in the usual manner replacing the word df0: by pc0:. For example the directory can be shown with the command dir pc0:.

People still running Workbench 2.0 or lower need a program called MSH. You will find this on the Aminet (directory misc/emu) and on Fish disk 382. See Sources. After editing the file devs:MountList as described in the documentation you have to say Mount msh: in the CLI and can now do the same as above replacing the word pc0: with msh:.

How do I split large files?
===========================

There are some archives which are too large to fit on one disk. To transfer them on disks you need to split them into smaller pieces and transfer each part on a separate disk. I recommend Martin Schlodder's Splitter. (Aminet, util/misc/splitter_121.lha. The archive contains binaries for MS-DOS and should be compilable without problems on any Unix system.

Discussing things
=================

A mailing list is a server that allows to discuss special things via Email. The server holds a list of people that are interested in the respective topic. For example, the gcc mailing list will discuss bugs, new features and other problems of gcc. (see Compilers) If a mail is sent to the server from someone he will forward this mail to all the other people on the list.

You will be added to the list by sending a mail to the server which will usually contain the word Subscribe or something similar. Once you are no more interested in the mailing list you can unsubscribe.

Unforunately the servers have a different syntax of subscribing and unsubscribing. The best way to find how to subscribe is to send a mail with the word Help to the server. He will reply a mail which should explain how to handle this special server.

Some mailing lists are:

     Topic           Server

     Amok            listserv@amokle.stgt.sub.org
     Dice            dice-request@castrov.cuc.ab.ca         or
                     dice-request@hactar.hanse.de (Germany)
     gcc             listserv@lists.funet.fi
     Lisp            amigalisp@contessa.phone.net
     Mui             mui-request@taloa.unice.fr
     Oberon-A        oberon-a-request@wossname.apana.org.au

Other FAQ's
===========

This is not the only FAQ, of course. Lots of FAQ's are available either by being posted to newsgroups or by access via FTP.

Amiga related books FAQ
     This is a list of books for the Amiga, including short discussions, prices and sources. Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc, comp.sys.amiga.introduction, comp.sys.amiga.programmer (monthly) Ftp: rtfm.mit.edu, pub/usenet/comp.sys.amiga.misc. Maintainer: Marc Atkins, atkin@cs.umass.edu

AmiTCP/IP FAQ
     This is for users of AmiTCP/IP, a set of programs which allows to include an Amiga into a TCP/IP network. (Most well known nets, Internet for example use TCP/IP.) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc, comp.sys.amiga.datacomm, comp.sys.amiga.networking (biweekly) Ftp: rtfm.mit.edu, pub/usenet/comp.sys.amiga.networking Maintainer: Neil J. McRae (atcpfaq@domino.demon.co.uk)

Amiga Networking FAQ
     Unlike the AmiTCP/IP FAQ this one wants to cover all aspects of networking, including TCP/IP and Envoy. Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm, comp.sys.amiga.hardware Ftp: rtfm.mit.edu, pub/usenet/comp.sys.amiga.networking Maintainer: Richard Norman (norman@afas.msfc.nasa.gov)

Point Manager FAQ
     Networking seems to be quite a problem: This FAQ os for Point Manager, a FidoNet-client (so-called points). Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm Ftp: rtfm.mit.edu, pub/usenet/comp.sys.amiga.datacomm Maintainer: Eric Krieger (pm_faq@quasar.hacktic.nl)

All about FTP
     Explains the usage of the file transfer program FTP. See FTP. Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc (monthly) Ftp: Aminet, info/start Betreuer: Urban Dominik Mueller (umueller@amiga.icu.net.ch)