This is an extraction of what is in the full document. It was created by Chuck Bramlet specificly as a handout for the 1997 University of Scouting, held Feb. 22 at the Heard Scouting Pueblo, Grand Canyon Council, Phoenix, Az. Anyone who finds this information useful is encouraged to obtain the entire text from the MacScouter or Scouts-L archives.

1.0 The Basics

There are a variety of free and shareware applications available to support both Macintosh and Wintel platforms. Some of them are listed below. To obtain these, you will usually need to use an ftp client of some sort.

1.1 Macintosh Basics

For those of you who are using a Macintosh, there are several free or shareware applications that will make life easier, if your ISP supports them.

An excellent resource for Macintosh applications is the Info-Mac Hyper- Archive Root. There is an excellent search engine there to help you find what you are looking for. Most items available have an abstract. You can choose to download items you select. You will need a de-binhex helper and an unstuffit helper. Stuffit Expander works best for both functions.

Terminal Emulators:

The Telnet terminal emulator and ftp client is available at: ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mac/Telnet . The current version is Telnet 2.7.

Electronic Mail Clients:

Eudora is a very nice offline mail client. It requires a POP3 mail server running on a UNIX computer. Eudora automatically logs onto the host, at predetermined intervals, and copies all pending mail to your computer. Eudora comes in two flavors, a freeware version, and a commercial version ($60/copy), from Qualcomm. If you are interested in the commercial version, which does provide many enhanced functions, either contact Qualcomm or check out your favorite computer software catalog. The freeware version of Eudora may be obtained via anonymous ftp at: ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/eudora/mac/ .

If you find PC files in .zip archive format, you can unzip them using the Unzip utility, which can also be found at: ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu//3/mac/infomac/cmp

Encoding and Decoding Applications:

Many encoding and decoding functions are built into Mac applications. As an example, AppleSingle, AppleDouble and Binhex are built into Eudora. Fetch has BinHex, AppleSingle, and MacBinary II built in.

The BinHex 4.0, and BinHex 5.0 applications are available via anonymous ftp at any Info-Mac archive site, such as: ftp://grind.isca.uiowa.edu//3/mac/infomac/cmp

When you run across files that need to be either uuencoded or uudecoded, you can use either UUundo 1.0 or UUTool, available at the same site. I am partial to UUTool -- it seems more robust and able to handle exceptions easier.

1.2 Wintel PC Basics

The following was updated by Steve Bushore, bushore@best.com.

The best site today is www.tucows.com for all your Microsoft Windows 3.1x and 95 network software needs. As an alternative, most PC programs can be obtained at any of the major Internet archives, including but not limited to wuarchive.wustl.edu (fsp, gopher), ftp.cica.indiana.edu (ftp, fsp, gopher), oak.oakland.edu (ftp) and their mirror sites.

Terminal Emulators:

Most available Telnet clients will perform well, but EWAN is probably the easiest to use for normal internet telnet operatons. If your telnet requirements include logging into PC bulletin boards via internet, you will need the PC ANSI support that NetTerm (16 or 32 bit) or ComNet (Win 95 only) provide. Both of these shareware programs support PC ANSI and normal telnet terminal modes.

Electronic Mail Clients:

Eudora is a very nice offline mail client. It requires a POP mail server running on a UNIX computer. Eudora automatically logs onto the host, at predetermined intervals, and copies all pending mail to your computer. Eudora comes in two flavors, a freeware version, and a commercial version ($50/copy), from Qualcomm. If you are interested in the commercial version, which does provide many enhanced functions, either contact Qualcomm or check out your favorite computer software catalog. The freeware version of Eudora may be obtained via anonymous ftp at: ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com//quest/eudora/windows .

Encoding and Decoding Applications:

For DOS, the best choice is UDEC.EXE (udec1_0.zip) by Peter Liebel (liebel@cip.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de). This universal decoding program handles UUENCODE, XXENCODE, MPACK(MIME), SHIP and HEXBIN files. For Windows, the decoder of choice is WINCODE (wmcode26.zip) by George.Silva@wadsworth.org which handles UUENCODE, XXENCODE, MPACK(MIME), and HEXBIN. Both programs are FREEWARE and are available at most archive sites.