In my recent message on Inputs, I spoke of how the
material flows into the PAL. Mirrors play a key role
in this (see the message on inputs for more detail).
Likewise, mirrors also play a key role in the PAL's
output to the users. Walnut Creek CDROM's host, for
example, runs the same mirror software that Washington
University at Saint Louis runs and uses this mirror
software to keep a complete copy of the PAL (that is
updated every 24 hours). Other hosts, such a cnam,
sw-eng, and commercial sites, run mirrors that copy all
or just part of the PAL.
I also feed still other hosts and distribution systems
manually. Simtel.Net (the current incantation of the
old SIMTEL20 system on which the ASR was based more than
a decade ago) is a system that I feed manually. I really
view this as an important part of the PAL's purpose ...
to make Ada, VHDL, and software engineering information
and assets available to as wide an audience as possible.
Through the Simtel.Net tie, Ada et al appear on a level
playing field with the MSDOS and Windows communities,
right along with C/C++, Java, and Visual Basic (among
others). When an MSDOS user chances across an article on
Ada and pulls out his trusty SIMTEL CDROM, he finds an
Ada section, courtesy of the PAL. Obviously, the MSDOS
and Windows communities are quite large. Simtel.Net,
which is owned by Walnut Creek CDROM, has mirrors on
web servers all over the world (so, the Ada collection
in Simtel.Net is also scattered all over the world on
the same sites):
Australia - 2 servers
Austria
Belgium
Brazil - 2 servers
Canada
Czech Republic
Finland
Germany
Hungary
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Korea
Norway
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa - 2 servers
Switzerland
United Kingdom - 2 servers
United States - 5 servers
Simtel.Net also extends into a larger number of FTP
servers:
United States - 3 primary sites (like the one primary site
for the PAL at wuarchive, but Simtel.Net has 3)
United States - 11 alternate sites (one of which is AOL)
Argentina
Australia - 3 sites
Austria
Belgium - 2 sites
Bulgaria
Brazil - 3 sites
Canada - 2 sites
Chile
China
Czech Republic - 3 sites
Finland
France - 2 sites
Germany - 8 sites
Greece
Hong Kong - 3 sites
Hungary
Ireland - 2 sites
Israel
Italy - 4 sites
Japan - 7 sites
Latvia
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands - 2 sites
Norway
Poland - 3 sites
Portugal - 2 sites
Romania
Singapore
Slovakia - 2 sites
South Africa - 3 sites
South Korea - 3 sites
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan - 2 sites
Thailand - 2 sites
United Kingdom - 5 sites
Finally, Ada is now on DVD. Walnut Creek, in September,
published the Simtel collection on Digital Video Disk.
4G bytes (compressed) of material, including an Ada
collection from the PAL.
If you are interested more in Simtel.Net, go to the online
PAL FAQ and you'll find a URL pointing to it.
This is one of the things I'll be talking about at Tri-Ada 97.
FYI,
Rick
--
Richard Conn
mailto:[log in to unmask] http://www.monmouth.com/~conn/
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of anyone else.
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