Hi. I'm Austin Johnson, a lurker on the Arachne mailing list. I'm confused by what has been happening to Simtelnet - the most important ms-dos resource on the internet for me. What I have done is the past is find a file that I wanted from the downloaded index and then access an ftp server somewhere and download it. What the new management seem to be saying is that the files will stay on the ftp servers, but they are going to make sure you can only access those servers by going through half a dozen web pages stuffed with adverts first. I did try this a couple of times and yes, it is confusing to find the file you want to download and wade through the pages to actually download the s.o.b. The way they have the subdirectories organised on the web page with "business software" as the first entry is less than helpful. Today I ignored the web and tried to go in with ftp. I got into a UK ftp mirror and started downloading a file, as per usual, but the download slowed to a crawl (it is Saturday evening) so I quit. Then I went back in (using Minuet running under Lynx386) and this time selected ftp.simtel.net. Minuet got me in. I went through the directories till I got to ms-dos and then binaryed. I downloaded three files. I don't use Arachne for ftp. I use NetTamer and Minuet and a wattcp programme called ftp07. Presumably if you enter ftp.simtel.net into the url address box in Arachne you don't get into the ftp server, as you do with Minuet. But anonymous login still seems to be working with that programme. Oh, by the way, I did not feed Minuet the full address, which is something like ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/ in case it choked on anything bigger than the server address - which some ftp programmes do. Regards --aj Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered
