Downloading Software and Lab Worksheets

This page contains information on downloading the Macintosh software and lab manual I have written to accompany the book The Most Comples Machine: A Survey of Computers and Computing, by David Eck (eck@hws.edu). You can also read descriptions of the programs used in the labs, and summaries of the individual labs.

You can download a large file containing all the software and the entire 112-page lab manual. You can also download the manual separately. I intend to make most of the sortware available in smaller, single-program files, as I find the time to write up suitable documentation. As I do this, I will add them at the bottom of this page. (The lab worksheets already contain enough information about using the programs, but I want to provide separate documentation.) I will also submit some of this material to public software collections such as info-mac.

The software and worksheets are compressed using Stuffit and then BinHex encoded. You will need a decompression utility such as Stuffit Expander to decode the files.

The lab manual is in PostScript form. To use it, you will need a PostScript-capable printer, and you need to know how to print plain PostScript files to it (for example, with the LaserWriter Utility that comes with Apple LaserWriter printers; or, you can use the free utility program Drop_PS, described below). If you don't have a Macintosh and would like to see the labs, you can download the uncompressed PostScript file, but note that it is very large. For a Macintosh, you can download the much smaller BinHexed Stuffit archive intstead.

Lab manual and software

You can download the software through Gopher or anonymous FTP to math.hws.edu (in the directory /pub/TMCM/mac). If you prefer to download it using your WWW browser, you can use these links:

• TMCM-software-and-labs.hqx (966K) -- A complete collection of nine programs, the lab manual in PostScript form, and data files used in the labs. This is a BinHexed self-extracting archive.
• TMCM-labs-July95.sit.hqx (516K) -- The lab manual only, in PostScript form. This is a BinHexed Stuffit archive.
• TMCM-labs-July95.ps (1,659K) -- The lab manual, as an uncompressed PostScript file.
• Drop_PS.sit.hqx (44K) -- A free utility from Bare Bones Software (bbsw@netcom.com) -- the creators of BBEdit -- for sending text files containing PostScript code to any PostScript printer connected to an AppleTalk network.

Individual programs:

• xLogicCircuits 1.2 (89K) -- a program for building simulated logic circuits on your computer screen. This package includes instructions and a number of sample circuits.
• xSortLab 1.2 (44 K) -- for investigating sorting algorithms (bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, merge sort and Quicksort).
• xModels 1.2 (108 K) -- two programs, xModels-2D and xModels-3D, that teach about geometric modeling for computer graphics. This package includes full documentation in the form of nine "tutorial examples".
• xTuringMachine 1.3 (51K) -- a program for constructing and running Turing machines. This package includes documentation and seven sample machines.
• xComputer 1.2 (77K) -- a simulated "visual computer" where you can view registers and memory as the computer executes machine language programs. You can write programs in a simple assembly language. This package includes documentation and several sample programs.

(See the program descriptions page for more information on individual programs.)

(More free Mac programs--not related to the book--are available from my home page.)