Sorry this message is so long, but I wanted y'all to get the best picture of what's going on. We SURVPC'ers (and those we help) are about to lose access to a collection of older educational software. It's the OERI collection at the U.S. Department of Education. I discovered this while getting some extra info for Samuel Heywood in response to his message pleading for a setup disk for an IBM AT. Appended is the correspondence I've had today with the sysadmin; I've put it in chronological order so you all can read it more easily. The URL is <ftp://oeri2.ed.gov/gopher/software>. I've previously downloaded the IBM collection, and now since I'm on a Windows 95 machine, I'm downloading EVERYTHING. There are directories for Amiga, Apple (mostly Apple II but Mac also), Atari, IBM, and Tandy (mostly CoCo). The IBM stuff ranges in filedates from 12/1993 (presumably when the collection was established) to 10/1995. I don't expect to hear back from the sysadmin until next week concerning whether the collection is copyrighted, but in the meantime, does anyone have an FTP site where they could house around 80 megs of SURVPC-grade educational software, or have connections with a major site (like oak.oakland.edu, ftp.simtel.net, and the like) that might be willing to give the OERI collection a permanent home? That way if I get an answer that allows the collection to be mirrored elsewhere, we'll have a place for it to go. BTW, does anyone know of any OTHER sites that have older educational software that would run well on SURVPC's? Thanks! P.S. Note the webmaster's comment "We are not able to determine how useful it is to the public to continue to make these files available as we are not familiar with any particular audience that might be interested in this software." If nothing else, please send an email to the webmaster to let him know that there *is* an audience interested; the SURVPC community! >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 14:51:21 -0500 >From: Mike Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: FTP Access to OERI Gopher Files > >For some time, you all have had a gold mine on ftp://ftp.ed.gov that I cannot >"dig up" today. I refer to the OERI software collection; it hasn't been updated >in several years, which makes it a gold mine for those of us who help kids learn >with the help of older computers. > >Today I couldn't find the files on ftp.ed.gov. In fact, the entire gopher and pub >directories were missing! After monkeying around a bit on the website, I finally >found the files under gopher://gopher.ed.gov:70/00/software/IBM, but (correction; that's gopher://gopher.ed.gov:70/11/software, not 00) >in a format where I (or actually, the person I was referring to the site) >would have to add the extension to every file downloaded. > >Would you see what the deal is with ftp.ed.gov that I couldn't find those >files via that route? It would be very helpful. Also, PLEASE don't give into the >whims of any pointy-head who says "get rid of that old junk". Some of us find >"that old junk" very useful. > >Thanks for your help! ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 17:15:54 -0400 (EDT) From: INET SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Mike Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: FTP Access to OERI Gopher Files (fwd) Dear Mike, We are in the process of eliminating our Gopher service. One of the final remaining Gopher directories that is not already on our WWW site is the library of "older" educational software. We are not able to determine how useful it is to the public to continue to make these files available as we are not familiar with any particular audience that might be interested in this software. As we have moved to a webcentric offering of the Department's materials these files are no longer generally available through our generic ftp site <ftp.ed.gov> so you will have to point your ftp client directly to the particular server where they reside. Please use your anonymous ftp client and enter the host name <oeri2.ed.gov> which will put you into a directory where the following path will lead you to the software: /gopher/software/ >From here you can choose your platform from AMIGA, APPLE, ATARI, IBM, and TANDY. Be sure to read the about_xxxxx files which contain descriptions of the contents of the directories. --------- Regards, INET Webmaster ------ Forwarded Message Follows ------- To: INET SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: FTP Access to OERI Gopher Files (fwd) Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 18:15:47 -0500 > As we have moved to a webcentric offering of the Department's materials > these files are no longer generally available through our generic ftp site > <ftp.ed.gov> so you will have to point your ftp client directly to the > particular server where they reside. Thanks for the information. I regret that the files may be removed soon. Is there any copyright on the collection? If I were to find a home for these files, may the collection (esp. the IBM section) be copied as-is and continued to be made available to the public? Thanks for your assistance. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. 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