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202 lines
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<title>University of Limerick Computer Society News Letter</title>
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<h1>University of Limerick Computer Society <br>
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News Letter #1 October 94.</h1>
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<img src="ulcrest.gif">
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<hr>
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<h2>Contents: </h2>
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<ol>
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<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a>
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<li><a href="#www">World Wide Web home pages</a>
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<li><a href="#andrew">Andrew</a>
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<li><a href="#lucid">LUCID Emacs</a>
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<li><a href="#povray">POV-Ray</a>
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<li><a href="#doom">Linux XDOOM!</a>
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<li><a href="#acm">ACM Programming Contest</a>
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<li><a href="#unix">Unix at 25!</a>
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<li><a href="#speed">Linux whizzes past the rest</a>
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<li><a href="#decalpha">The Worlds fastest Microprocessor, the Alpha 21164</a>
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<li><a href="#chicago">Microsoft's CHICAGO</a>
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<li><a href="#xzx">XZX</a>
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<li><a href="#cdrom">3GB CD-ROMs</a><a href="#cdrom"></a>
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<li><a href="#notes">Notes on UNIX available in Printroom</a><a href="#notes"></a></ol>
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<hr>
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<p><b><a name="intro">
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
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</a></b>Welcome to the first Computer Society Newsletter. It is hoped this will become a regular(ish) publication reflecting the current state and views of the hacker community in the University. Readers are encouraged to submit articles for future issues
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of the Newsletter. Remember, it is only as good as you make it. <br>
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Since SKYNET is really the central hub of the Computer Society, this newsletter will tend to have a bias towards Linux but articles covering other operating systems will be accepted. <br>
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<p>This newsletter is also available in PostScript form and plain (UNIX) text as<br>
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<i>skynet.ul.ie:/pub/???/newsletter-oct93.ps</i><br>
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<i>skynet.ul.ie:/pub/???/newsletter-oct93.txt</i>
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(above not available yet - watch this space)
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<p>Suggestions for a name for this newsletter are invited.
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<p><a href="http://skynet.ul.ie/~ivan/"><img src="ivan.gif">Ivan, The Editor :-) </a>
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<hr><a name="www">
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<h2>2. World Wide Web home page</h2>
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</a>It is now possible for all users on Skynet to create their own Web home pages! If you haven't a clue what this is about, or what the Web is, read on: The World Wide Web is a distributed information system developed at CERN, the European Centre for Par
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ticle Physics, in 1991. It allows the transmission and retrieval of multimedia documents. A Web document can contain links to other Web documents. Selecting any one of those links causes the browser to contact the server and request the appropriate docume
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nt. The link can point to another document on the same server or on an entirely different server anywhere around the world.
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<p>The Protocol used to transmit these multimedia documents is called the HyperText Transfer Protocol <i>(HTTP)</i> and thus the server needed to provide these pages is, on a UNIX environment, called "<i>httpd</i>".
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<p>The SKYNET HTTP daemon has been upgraded to NCSA HTTPD 1.3. This supports home pages for individual users on a machine. All users are able to create a directory called &quota;<i>public_html</i>" in their home directories and create their own h
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ome pages in there. Their home directory must have world execute privs set, and the public_html directory must have world read and execute privs along with all the files contained in any subdirectory structure in it. These pages are the accessable to ANYO
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NE on the Internet by specifying the URL through a Web-browser such as Mosaic (for X, System 7, MS-Windows, AmigaDOS etc) or the character-based Lynx. For example, to access my home page, the required URL is "<a href="http://skynet.ul.ie/~ivan/"> <i>
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http://skynet.ul.ie/~ivan/</i></a>". This will look for the file <i>/home/ivan/public_html/index.html</i>.
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<p>Your actual home page may be called anything you want (foo.html) but do try to make index.html a link to it ("<i>ln -s /home/ivan/foo.html index.html</i>").
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<p>The SKYNET Web pages are shaping up pretty well at the moment, under the most capable hands of Keith and Andrew.
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<hr><b><a name="andrew">
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<h2>3. ANDREW</h2>
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</a></b>No, not Mr. Good, but the Andrew User Interface System. Taken from the accompanying documentation, "The Andrew User Interface System is an integrated set of tools that allow you to create, use, and mail documents and applications containing t
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ypographically formatted text and embedded objects."
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<p>ANDREW is installed on Skynet in <i>/usr/andrew</i>, so add <i>/usr/andrew/bin</i>to your path. ANDREW, or AUIS, requires you to be running the X Window System. It comes with plenty of online help and documentation A good start is "<i>auishelp</i>
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", or "<br>
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<i>launch</i>". "<i>ez</i>" is the AUIS Multimedia editor. It even supports WYSIWYG HTML (HyperText Markup Language) editing - perfect for creating your own web home pages."
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<p><i>pipescript</i>" is the AUIS replacement for the "<i>more</i>" command. "<i>messages</i>" is the MIME enabled mail program, allowing multi-media mail which can contain inline images, animations, sound etc. Be warned however t
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hat it does involve converting your current mailbox to the type required by messages. Read the accompanying documentation for more details.
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<p><img src="ez.gif"><br>
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An example of the "ez" editor editing html.
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<hr><b><a name="lucid">
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<h2>4. LUCID Emacs</h2>
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</a></b>LUCID Emacs was a development by Lucid Inc. for their Energize C/C++ development environment. They build their environment onto GNU Emacs. The work they have done on GNU Emacs is free and called LUCID Emacs (soon to be renamed XEmacs).
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<p>Recently Lucid have joined in collaboration with SunPro (a division of Sun Microsystems Inc.) and the University of Illinois in the support of LUCID Emacs.
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<p>LUCID Emacs requires the X Window System to run. The basic input method of Emacs was reworked allowing tighter integration into X.
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<p>It has lots of nice extra features such as supporting audio hardware, and pixmaps in buffers (allows browsing of the WEB using the W3 client). Essentially, it is the world's best editor (<i>emacs</i>) made aware of the X Window System in a sensible way
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.
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<p>LUCID Emacs is on SKYNET as /applic/lucid/bin/i486-unknown-linux/lemacs.
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<p><img src="lemacs.gif">
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<hr><b><a name="povray">
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<h2>5. POV-Ray</h2>
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</a></b>For all you budding computer artists out there, the Persistence of Vision Ray-tracer is on SKYNET in <i><i>/applic/povray</i></i>. POV-Ray allows the generation of 3D photo-realistic images by reading ASCII text files that describe the shapes, col
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ours and textures contained in the image and then mathematically simulates the rays of light to generate the image.
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<p>POV-Ray generates Targa files as output ( <i>.tga</i>). Unfortunately the two formats not supported by that bastion of viewers, "<i>xv</i>", are IFF ILBM and Targa. "<i>xli</i>" will view Targa files but I don't think it will conver
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t them from one form to another. It is possible to convert them from a terminal command line using the Pbmplus toolkit installed in /applic/pbmplus (which incidentally will convert from ust about any format to any other :-) ), or alternatively other progr
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ams such as the MS-Windows based "<i>PaintShop Pro</i>" may prove useful.
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<p>Included with the POV-Ray distribution is a hefty PostScript manual (~120 pages), and sample scene files for you to browse, render and amaze yourself with. By clever use of variables, it is possible to render frames of an animation which could later be
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compiled into an mpeg etc. <img src="povray.gif">
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<hr><b><a name="doom">
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<h2>6. Linux XDOOM!</h2>
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</a></b>For quite a while, people had been claiming the only reason they had MS-DOS on their machines with Linux was to play DOOM, id Software's amazing creation. Well, that problem has been solved by those clever guys at id, who have ported DOOM to Linux
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.
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<p>It runs as an X client on an 8 bit display, using a private colormap. Given the additional overhead of talking to a kernel and a windowing system such as X, Linux XDOOM runs faster than its DOS equivalent. It uses the existing "<i>.wad</i>" f
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iles.
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<p><img src="doom.gif">
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<hr><b><a name="acm">
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<h2>7. ACM Programming Contest. </h2>
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</a></b>The first annual University qualification competition was held in S2-08 last Wednesday. Four teams took part, answering 5 questions in a time of 4 hours. The development environment was Solaris and the compiler used was gcc. Apparently it was a cl
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ose contest but the eventual winners were Hary J. Walsh, David Knowles, and Paul Fitzpatrick, who will travel to Amsterdam to compete in the European Qualifiers. Congratulations guys!
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<hr><b><a name="unix">
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<h2>8. Unix at 25!</h2>
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</a></b>Party hats and candles are in order for the birthday of probably the most influencial computer environment ever devised. Unix was bord in New Jersey during the summer of 1969, stemming from a failed project called Multics (<i>Multiplexed Informati
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on and Computing Service</i>) at AT&T Bell Telephone Labs.Its creation is generally attributed to <i>Ken Thompson</i> and <i>Dennis Ritchie</i>.
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<p>Its influence has been vast during the last 25 years, impacting on everything from MS-DOS to the structure of the entire Internet itsef. The C Programming Language was an offspring of the Unix project, born out of the need to keep the operating system
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as portable as possible (the first version of Unix was written in Assembler!!).
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<p>Other items of note to have developed from Unix are the X Window System (MIT's Project ATHENA), Network File Systems (NFS - from Sun), the "<i>lint</i>" C analyser, the "<i>sed</i>" stream editor, the "<i>awk</i>" ... er..
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. programming language? Mutlitasking, multiuser systems and networked communications today would not be what they are were it not for Unix.
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<hr><b><a name="linux">
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<h2>9. Linux whizzes past the rest!</h2>
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</a></b>In a recent issue of the Linux Journal, a comparison of IBM's OS/2, Microsoft's Windows NT and <i>Linus Torvald</i>'s Linux declared Linux to be the fastest 32 bit operating system for your PC. Linux is optimized for the i386 architecture. It also
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has the least demand on system resources (can be run on a 386 with 2Mb ram and 12Mb hard disk space if you forget about X). NT was claimed to be the most portable of the three, OS/2 requiring Microsoft Windows 3.1/Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
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<p>Linux was reported to be the least portable, but perhaps this is before successful ports of Linux to the Motorola 680x0 architecture (Amigas, Ataris - and possible Sun 3s if Sun relent on their Non-Disclosure Policy on the internal schematics), to MIPS
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and the new development of Linux ontop of the MACH microkernel.
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<p>Linux performance is set only to increase however, as Linux kernel developers are now spending time improving disk access, and memory management (including a multithreaded kernel - <i>Linux VIPER</i>). Not bad at all for something started by a Finnish
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student who wanted something like SunOS for his miserable 386.
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<hr><a name="decalpha">
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<h2>10. The Worlds fastest Microprocessor, the Alpha 21164</h2>
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</a>Digital Electronic Corporation's new Alpha 21164 is literally the worlds fasted microprocessor. It also contains the most transistors (9.3 million!) and also the largest-capacity on-chip cache. It also has the fastest clock of all commercial microproc
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essors.
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<p>It achieves three times the integer performance of Intel's 100-MHz Pentium, and 66% more floating-point performance than the MIPS R8000/8010, a processor designed specifically for floating-point intensive operatings (for Silicon Graphics' Indigo line -
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Silicon Graphics own MIPS).
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<p>The Alpha 21164 is the first processr to execute over 1 billion per second (1.2 billion roughly was measured). DEC plan to sell a 266-MHz version of the Alpha for $1865, and a 300-MHz version for $2699.
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<hr><a name="chicago">
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<h2>11. Microsoft's CHICAGO</h2>
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</a>The Microsoft World Wide Web server proclaims CHICAGO (or Windows '95 as it will be called - not Windows 4 as originally expected) as the "latest and greatest" Windowing system around. Microsoft's marketing policy when bringing out a revised
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product seems to be to slag off the previous version and this has already started with Windows 3.1/Windows For Workgroups 3.11.
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<p>CHICAGO is a full pre-emptive multitasking operating system in its own right, providing better memory protection than Windows 3.1. Its GUI is also quite different from the GUI of Windows 3.1 and NT.
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<p>It seems to be somewhat sluggish however, and the start button interface is quite weird indeed. The interface looks somewhat nicer, until you recognise the huge influence from NeXTSTEP and then it sort of palls somewhat in comparison. Its a single user
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system, like NT.
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<p>To be perfectly honest, it doesn't seem to justify all the hype around it. I suppose if you are a Windows user, it will be a welcome upgrade - but then again if you are a Windows user, anything is a welcome upgrade :-).
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<p>
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<hr><a name="xzx">
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<h2>12. XZX</h2>
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</a>Remember the days when programmers were programmers, games came on cassette and you could copy them with your double deck, the Z80 was leading-edge technology and yes, computers came with a whopping 48K of memory!
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<p>Well, it had to happen. There is now a ZX Spectrum emulator for Linux/X! Along with most other Spectrum emulators for other machines, it will load "snapshots" of Spectrum games (".sni") files.
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<p>It's pretty zippy. If you have enough RAM not to be in swap, it runs about as fast as you would have expected a Spectrum to go :-)
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<p><img src="xzx.gif"><br>
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The XZX emulator running that old Chestnut, the Hobbit!
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<p>Oh, the days of colour clash! Sigh!
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<hr><a name="cdrom">
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<h2>13. 3GB CD-ROMs</h2>
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</a>The new High-Density CD system uses an increased pit density (achieved by effectively halving the track pitch to 0.6 micrometers) to quadruple the data storable on a CD to 2.7GB. Further increase is available by improvements in error correction and me
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chanical constructions of drives to about 3GB.
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<hr><a name="notes">
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<h2>14. Notes on UNIX available in Printroom</h2>
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</a>Steve Bergin has had notes reprinted in the Printroom covering an introduction to UNIX operating systems. The notes are originally from the University of Western Ontario. They cover the system run in that University, which is basically a mixture of Sy
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stem V and BSD. <p>
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Presumably they are being printed for fourth ECE students taking Bob Strunz's ASICS module, but are worth checking out by anyone who has an interest in learning UNIX basics. They cost <20>2.50 and are Ref. No. 1251.
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<hr>
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<h2><b>SKYNET System Administration Team: </b></h2>
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System Administrators: John Quinn (quinnj), Hary J. Walsh (hjw), Ivan Griffin (ivan) <br>
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Web Administrators: Keith Aherne (keith), David Knowles (chopper), Andrew Good (akira) <br>
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FTP Administrator: David Airlie (airlied), Andrew Good (akira)
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<hr>
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<p>Skynet WWW Home page: <a href="http://skynet.ul.ie/home-page.html">http://skynet.ul.ie/home-page.html</a><br>
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Skynet Anonymous Ftp: <a href="ftp://skynet.ul.ie/">ftp skynet.ul.ie</a>
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<p>This document was created using the "<i>ez</i>" multimedia editor and debugged and converted to PostScript using NCSA "<i>Mosaic</i>".
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</body>
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