[TUHS] The USL Toolchest from the 80s and 90s

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

arnold at skeeve.com writes:

> "new" awk was available there, as was Chris Ramming's awkcc, and ksh88.

There were all sorts of goodies. Honey Dan-Ber UUCP, and (I think)
Device Independent Troff were there.  But I cannot for the life of
me remember what the non-rogue software was that we bought.  HDB
is a likely suspect, as we ran a pretty busy UUCP/Usenet relay
at the time.

> The awk book from 1987 has instructions and the phone number for logging
> into the toolchest. IIRC you set up a UUCP account in order to get
> the software transferred.

I forget the exact registration steps, now.  But for delivery you
set up a UUCP login for the toolchest site on your host, then they
would call you and transfer the files over.  And bill you some
outrageous amount of money for the "long distance" charges they
incurred.  It was quite the scam.  If we had polled them instead
the LD costs would have been about 30% less.

--lyndon