Computer Files

Unless otherwise noted, these files are Copyright © 1991-1998 Thomas Insel, but you are welcome to use and distribute them, provided that you realize that these are provided with absolutely no warranty.

CDTOOL

Yet another tool for Linux to let you play audio cd's on a cdrom drive. This is, I think, the only command line program that can read Workman's database file to find the cd & track names.

It has since been updated by Sven Oliver Moll and then Wade Hampton, and include all sorts of fancy stuff like support for the CDDB internet database. The current newest versions are:

• cdtool-2.1.5-1.i386.rpm
• cdtool-2.1.5-1.src.rpm
• cdtool-2.1.5.lsm
• cdtool-2.1.5.tar.gz

You will probably also be interested in Josh Buhl's patches to add a cdclose command to reverse the effects of cdeject.

• cdtool_close.diff (for the tar.gz file above)
• cdtool_close_debian.diff (for the current Debian source)

It can also be found in with other CLI-based CD-ROM tools on MetaLab. My original release is:

• The README file
• cdtool-1.0.tgz

Bruce M. Simpson (bsimpson@mcs.dundee.ac.uk) has kindly supplied patches to cdtoool-2.1.5 for use with Solaris 2.5 and newer:

I don't have the use of a Sun with a CD-ROM, but it gives convincing error messages. For what it's worth, cdtool-1.0 probably works with SunOS 4.1.3, but I've never had a chance to test it, either. (OK, I actually have access to dozens of suitable computers now, but I'm lazy).

• The README file
• cdtool-2.1.5_SunOS-5.5-SPARC.tar.gz -- use with cdtool-2.1.5.tar.gz to compile on a Sparc. Includes binaries.

and for OpenBSD:

• cdtool-2.1.5_OpenBSD_i386.tar.gz

For users of Linux 2.3 (and 2.4 soon?), Jaakko Hyvatti provides the following patch:

• cdtool-2.1.5-patch1

Tartan for Java

A Java program for rendering a tartan from a list of colors and thread counts, together with a CGI-based database for browsing tartans by name.

• Try it out & more info
• source

Calculus Courseware for MATLAB

William Stein and I rewrote the software used for Berkeley's M-series calculus classes, updating code by Alex Gottlieb and Julie Mitchell. In addition to updating the modules for MATLAB 5.2, we completely rewrote the user interface, making it more attractive, more consistent, much easier to use, and generally more robust.

• Get the software from Berkeley (Copyright © 1995-1998 by The Regents of the University of California)
• Get the software from here. It is subject to this license.

Some random source code

A perl script to create graphs that answer, roughly, "how well must I do on the remaining tests to pass this class, to get an A, etc."

• graph_grades

A very simple program for generating city names which sound like Chicago suburbs, in perl.

• suburb.pl

Here are some really old programs I've written for class or to amuse myself. Please feel free to use and/or distribute any of the following files. If you were nice, you'd let me know if you found it useful, and would leave my name on anything you redistribute. (Yes, most of these are probably better done in Perl.)

• wlhack.tar.gz
  Simple program to interpret data on World Library CD-ROMs, such as the Electronic Home Library, Library of the Future, etc.
• speaker-linux.tar.gz
  An unofficial version of Eric S. Raymond's speaker driver as a loadable device driver for Linux 2.0 and newer. Also, speaker-linux-1.1.tar.gz for Linux 1.1.
• cal2unix.tar.gz
  Convert a MS Windows 3.1 Calendar file to human readable text.
• pdid.tar.gz
  Daemon to monitor a parallel port device interface board as described in the January 1993 issue of Computer Craft, "Recycling Old Computers" by Raymond H. Green.
• cs3d.c
  3D Game of Life shell for old Irises that I wrote for George Francis's Spring 1992 Math 198 class. With instructions.
• wwwseq.tar.gz
  Check which of a list of web pages have been updated and view the new ones. This is essentially useless now that most popular web pages are dynamically generated, and it's not very well written.

Introductory Unix Seminar Notes

In the Spring of 1999, I gave a Topics in Unix Seminar at the Berkeley Department of Mathematics. I hope that somebody might find these resulting notes useful:

• What is Unix?
  The design of Unix, how to use the shell, a list of many of the programs installed on Unix computers, Job control (running programs in the background), printing, etc.
• Cshrc and Login files
  Notes are available in PDF format.