Acornet 0.20 ============ 23 August 1997 Acornet is a suite of software which will allow you to use the Internet over a dial-up connection. It is not a single application, but a convenient meshing together of a number of applications written by many people. The Help file (see below) contains full details. Details of releases, upgrades and other support information can be found on the Web at http://freenet.barnet.ac.uk/acornet/ Licence ------- Generally the applications comprising Acornet are Freeware: that is, they may be freely distributed in their original form so long as no charge (other than nominal cost of media and carriage) is made, but the copyright remains with the authors. But see the documentation on each application for precise terms and conditions. The Acornet collection as a whole is 'CiderWare', which is a super-set of 'FreeWare'. All the conditions of FreeWare apply, but with the added stipulation that if you bump into the original author (Phillip Temple) in a pub, you are obligated to buy him a decent pint of Scrumpy. Should Scrumpy not be availably, a suitable decent dry cider may be substituted instead. The software is provided in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty of any kind. Requirements ------------ RISC OS 3.10 or greater. Probably 4Mb RAM. A hard disk with >10Mb free (about 5Mb for initial installation, then to allow space for news, email and Web cache). A modem. An account with an Internet Service Provider (e.g. Demon) which allows access via a dial-up SLIP or PPP link. If using PPP, the Shareware PPP driver written by Sergio Monesi (the DCI2 version, i.e. version 1.xx). This is available from (amongst other places) http://cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it/~pel0015/pppdriver.html and an older version is on the Acorn User CD ROM 2 in the SHAREWRE directory. Installation ------------ You should have received Acornet either as a single Spark archive or as a set of five archives. If a single archive, unpack its contents into a directory (folder) on your hard disk. If a set of archives, unpack the contents of all the archives into the same directory on your hard disk, thus merging together the contents of the !Acornet application directories from each archive. It is recommended that you use either the root directory or a first level subdirectory. This is because Acornet and its component applications use many levels of directory, and if the full filenames so generated are too long it may cause problems. If you have received Acornet as a multi-part archive (e.g. split over a number of floppy disks), extract the contents of each archive into the same directory to merge the parts together. Updating your System folder --------------------------- Run the SysMerge application. Drag your existing !System into the window, followed by the !System which you extracted from the Acornet archive. Note: If your machine is fitted with RISC OS 3.50 or later (e.g. a Risc PC or A7000), your master !System folder is found inside the !Boot application. Do a SHIFT double-click SELECT on !Boot to open it as a Filer window and then double-click on the Resources folder to open that; inside you will find !System. The System update feature of the built-in Configure utility, which normally runs when you double-click on !Boot, is faulty and will not perform the update correctly. Once you have updated your !System, you must SHUT DOWN and RESTART the machine in order to kill any old versions of modules which may be in memory. If you don't, things may not work as expected, and may even cause the machine to lock up. Help information ---------------- Information on various aspects of Acornet may be obtained by clicking MENU over the !Acornet application and selecting the App.'!Acornet'‰Help menu item. When Acornet is running, the help can also be accessed from the 'i' icon on the control panel. Setting up ---------- Double-click on the !Acornet application. After few seconds of initialisation, you will be put straight into the configuration utility, NetConfig. Follow the instructions to supply the various details as required. (When you have done this set-up, on future occasions, running the application will launch you straight into Acornet itself.) Versions -------- The versions of the component applications included in this release of Acornet are: * FreeNet 1.02 * SlipDial 0.42a * SerialDev Rev 12 * ArcWeb 1.90p1 * Freeterm 1.32 * FreeTime 1.03 * Newsbase 0.59d * Messenger 1.02 * Groups 0.20 * QEdit 0.58e * NewsHound 1.21 * POP 0.99 * FreeSMTP 1.21 * FreeFTP 0.45beta * Ping 0.13 * Finger 0.13 * NetConfig 2.5 * StrongHelp 2.03 * AnUpgrade 1.00 -- Written by Colin Hogben (acornet@nyphot.demon.co.uk) Modified by Carol Carpenter (carol@nocturnal.demon.co.uk)