You seem be having a problem with your hard disk and you want to find the most current copy of the Apple hard disk setup utility program. Who do you know that might have a copy of that? And would they even lend it to you?
You just bought yourself a brand new high speed modem but now find out that you need a special modem 'script' (whatever that is) before you can even use your fancy smanchy million baud connection. Where are you going to get something like that? Huh? You're going to feel pretty foolish running that thing at 2400 baud.
You read an article in the New York Times about the latest World Wide Web browser and want to try it out for yourself. Even before your smart-alek neighbor gets his copy. Now where could you get that on a moment's notice?
You want to find a screensaver for your Mac but don't want to pay real money for a program just to darken your screen when you're not even sitting in front of it. Isn't there any place that has some 'freeware' screensavers that you could just copy?
You are thinking of setting up your own WWW server on your machine. Does anyone have any tools to make getting started easier? And already collected together in one place?
Your niece pays you a surprise visit and asks you if there are any fun games that you can play on that 'thing' on your desk. You don't want to disappoint her, do you?
You are all alone in a strange country, its late at night, and you suddenly discover that you have lost all of your traveller's checks,
I'll tell you what I do when faced with these types of situations and what thousands of your friends and colleagues do every single day in similar circumstances. Connect to the ASHD server! It will give you peace of mind to know that if you cannot find the solution there, then you don't really have a problem.
You are now looking at a window that asks you "Connect to the file server "ASHD server" as:". Click on the "Guest" button, and then click on the "OK" button. [(Note that registered users have access to an even wider variety of software, newer beta versions, etc.). The next window will present you with a list of items (volumes) that you may select from. Click on the volumes that you want to access and then click on the "OK" button. After a short delay, the disk icons will appear on your desktop, usually somewhere along the upper right hand part of your screen. You may, and should, close your Chooser window. [Note (an important note too, I might add): when connecting to any Macintosh file server, do not click in (or check) the box to the right of any of the server volume names. If you do, then your machine will attempt to connect to, and mount the checked volume, each time you restart you machine. Having file server volumes 'mounted' on your machine when you do not need them needlessly ties up system resources and actually slows down your machine! Yup. Through the use of "aliases", or the "Recent Servers" Apple Menu Item of System 7.5, mounting a server volume when you really want to use it is quick and easy.]
Apple Software - just like the name says, various Apple software. There are two folders, "Mac/OS system software" and "other Apple software". The first has the installation diskettes of various flavors of the latest Macintosh system software, and the second has all kinds of other stuff like network software, printing software, system enablers, etc.
ASHD0 - mostly the installation diskettes for QuickMail, and some auxiliary files
ASHD1 - the very latest versions of software that is popularly used here within the Yale Macintosh community such as NCSA telnet, Fetch, Netscape, Acrobat Reader, netnews clients, etc.
ASHD2 - the big kahuna. You either check it once a day or you fall hopelessly behind with what's new, what's hot, the latest shareware gizmo, etc. This is the repository for a rather extensive collection of Macintosh "stuff".
ASHD3 - in a word, 'games.' Some of the bigger and better ones around. (Whoa, check out the icon used for the ASHD3 disk.)
ASHD4 - QuickTime movies. Some of the more popular and famous titles, including a full length copy of the classic 1984 Macintosh commercial.
ASHD5 - sounds and lots of them. Find some favorites here to spice up your system alerts, etc.
ASHD6 - well, there isn't really an ASHD6. You tell me what you would like to see as another volume on this server.
ASHD7 - and if there are some really good ideas (see ASHD6), we always have room for yet another volume
ASHD8 - the latest version of software, and configurations of same, as installed by the good folks in C&IS;Network Services.
Web stuff - just like the name says. Maybe could have been and ASHD6 or ASHD7, but for now its called "Web stuff". Here are all the tools in one place to make it easy for you, let's see what you can come up with.
So there you have it. The ASHD server. Explore, there is stuff out there that even I don't know about. Let me know how I can make it more useful and even better. Use it now because it may be going away soon.