ESOMIDAS release 96NOVpl2.1 available on CD-ROM

["Rein H. Warmels" <rwarmels@eso.org>]

Dear MIDAS Users,


The MIDAS Support group of ESO is happy to announce the ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM 
containing the release 96NOVpl2.1 (patch level 2.1) of ESO-MIDAS. Below 
follows an overview of the contents of the CD-ROM and the minimum system 
requirements to be able to use it. 

Available on this CD-ROM
------------------------
      - ESO-MIDAS 96NOVpl2.1 sources 
      - ESO-MIDAS 96NOVpl2.1 binaries for: 
              PC/Linux 2.0.28 or higher 
              HP-UX 9000 A.10.10 
              Sun/Solaris 2.5 
              Silicon Graphics IRIX 5.3 
              Alpha/OSF1 V4.0 
              IBM/RS6000 AIX 4.1 
      - Calibration data for all platforms above 
      - Demonstration data for all platforms above 
      - ESO-MIDAS 96NOV documentation in: 
              Postscript format 
              DVI format 
              HTML format 
      - ESO-MIDAS 96NOVpl2.1 ready to run from CD-ROM on PC/Linux 
      - Complete RedHat 4.2 distribution for PC/Linux 
      - Complete Xephem 3.0 sources and binary for PC/Linux 

System Requirements
-------------------
      - PC with microprocessor 386 or higher (486 or higher recommended) 
      - 8 Mbyte of RAM (16 Mbyte recommended) 
      - 200 Mbyte of hard disk space, depending on space requirements
for 
        actual data 
      - CD-ROM drive 
      - Super VGA with 256 colours 
      - Linux operating system, version 2.0.28 or later 

How to Order
------------
The CD-ROM is available to everyone interested in the ESO-MIDAS.
Registrated 
research institutes will received the ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM in the coming
weeks. 
Other sites wishing to receive the CD-ROM should contact the MIDAS
Support 
Group, either by e-mail (midas@eso.org) or via the ESO-MIDAS WWW help 
interface (http://www.eso.org/esomidas/). 

Individuals wishing to receive a copy of the ESOMIDAS CD-ROM are kindly 
invited to contact the Education and Public Relations Department 
(e-mail: ips@eso.org). 

To remind you, the ESO-MIDAS products contained on the CD-ROM, are
available 
via our anonymous ftp server: ftp://ftphost.hq.eso.org/midaspub. The ftp 
services include regular patches and updates of ESO-MIDAS. 

Errata and Warnings
-------------------
Below you find a number of corrections of the text in the booklet that 
comes with the CD-ROM, and in the inlay card. 

1. In the MIDAS CD-ROM booklet
 
Section: RUNNING FROM THE CD-ROM (ONLY FOR LINUX)
   Run MIDAS with the command:
     % inmidas -h /cdrom/midas

   or set the variable MIDASHOME to /cdrom/midas before executing: 
     % inmidas 

Section: INSTALL THE PRODUCT(S)
   On Solaris the CD-ROM may be mounted automatically as 
   "/cdrom/96nov_pl2_1#2". The character "#" may affect some WEB
browsers 
   like "netscape 3.01" if you try to load MIDAS HTML documentation. If
so, 
   dismount the CD-ROM and mount it as just "/cdrom", or copy the HTML
MIDAS 
   documentation to your local disk. 

Section:STEP 3 - TEST THE INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
   The MIDAS verification procedures requires to install the package 
   "verify.tar.Z" first, otherwise the "verify3.prg" test will fail with 
    the message: "Warning: Cannot open file:nttexample.mt". 

2. In the MIDAS CD-ROM inlay-card

The ESO Skycat Tool was dropped from the MIDAS CD-ROM for capacity
reasons. 

The mountain Paranal where the ESO Very Large Telescope is being
erected, 
is located 130 km south of Antofagasta. 

-- 
Rein H. Warmels                    O  \     Internet: rwarmels@eso.org 
European Southern Observatory     /_-->\(@) Fax:      +49-89-32006480   
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2  *###\,## \\   Voice:    +49-89-32006292 
D 85748 Garching bei M"unchen  (O)     (O) 	      +49-89-320060
---------------------------------------------------------------------