Dear Mike et al.:

Thanks, Mike, for the clear tutorial. I'll go over it and come by ACS for a lesson on WebCT if necessary. You have an amazing and effective microcomputer system in operation.

Best,

Carl

At 2:01 PM -0700 4/6/05, Mike Stark wrote:

Carl and all,

You can in get True BASIC for pc or mac from:

ftp://ntserve.ucsd.edu/True%20BASIC%99/

(also known as \\ntserve\pub in the winows world, or ntserve in zone acc in the mac world. If you use windows or mac networking, look in the true basic folder. The names ntserve and acsftp are actually the same machine for users of the ftp protocol, but via windows networking NTserve also supports the campus Microsoft technet subscription as well as the Novell patches & help system).

True BASIC is available in either compressed format (ZIP/SIT) or folders for direct installation to pc or mac. This address above is limited to the .ucsd.edu network, so if off campus you need to identify yourself via either the VPN or Proxy services. See how to use these file sharing protocols at: http://software.ucsd.edu/download.html and how to use the proxy at:

http://www-no.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/ and the VPN at:

http://www-ono.ucsd.edu/documentation/vpn/

For platform neutral course drop folders, I understand that WebCT in the current release allows dropping off assignments in either a file by file format, or a whole folder of files at a time. Most students will already know how to use WebCT, or will need to very soon, as it is used in hundreds of classes. So it is probably the most common tool for getting assignments and turning in work. The quick user guide to WebCT as a PDF is at:

http://iwdc.ucsd.edu/webct.shtml

http://iwdc.ucsd.edu/turnin.shtml discusses dropping off assignments.

For getting a drop folder on the PC desktop, If you have created a drop folder in your public course folder you are 90% there. (This is accessed by the shortcut all your students have on their windows desktops in the lab), Then assignments can be dropped off there, just like dropping onto a classic mac alias pointing to a server based drop folder. All that is needed is a unix side script that fixes the ownerships on the dropped files, so that you and your TA's can then own and manipulate them. The group you reach at acs-consult@ucsd.edu has done such a script before. This could be run manually or via a "Cron" job at particular sane intervals.

Sorry to hear of problems with your account. Did that happen on a particular machine or in a specific lab? Or was it on multiple machines? Control + alt + delete keys should deal with any crash type issues, either bringing up a dialog with options, or rebooting, if the system had not been allowed to finish a software update.

Mike