20000309: McIDAS License for OSU

>From: address@hidden (Matt Roberts)
>Organization: Oklahoma State University
>Keywords: 200003091931.MAA22931 McIDAS

Matt,

>I am revisiting the LDM/McIDAS installation at Oklahoma State University's
>Geography Department.  We should have the McIDAS product already licensed.

You do.

>Could you provide me with some information on:
>
>   o what products we are licensed to receive;

You can get all of the data in the NOAAPORT channel 3 (so called TG 
(telecommunications gateway)); the wind profiler data from the Forecast
Systems Lab of NOAA; the NLDN lightning data from SUNY Albany; and
any new, non-proprietary data that is conveyed over the Unidata Internet
Data Distribution system.  What you can not get for free are data that
requires individual contract with the providing entity.  This includes
the NIDS and NOWrad (tm) radar data from WSI Corporation.

>   o the host information, contact name and contact info for our current
>     primary feed and failover feeds;

You can look this up:

Unidata Home Page
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu
  Internet Data Delivery (IDD)
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/idd/index.html
    Current Operational Status 
    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/idd/iddgeneral.html#status
      IDD site contact list 
      http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/idd/sitelist.html

>   o login information to the FTP server from which we might download the
>     latest McIDAS source/binary software?

There is no binary release of the McIDAS software.  Users are obliged to
build the distribution from source.

Below, I am including the information I send to all licensed Unidata
McIDAS-X sites when they request the current distribution of McIDAS.
The information you need to get the distribution is located further
down in the text.

Please read the various notes and look through the online documentation
BEFORE you attempt to build the distribution.

As a reminder, the primary contact for McIDAS at a site should be
subscribed to our McIDAS-X email list so that s/he will be made aware
of important changes/additions/bugfixes to the distribution.  You can
subscribe online through the following web page:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing-list-form.html

The 7.60 distribution of McIDAS-X is Y2K capable.

Please note the following:

1).  As of the 7.40 release, we no longer provide hardcopy documentation
     for Unidata McIDAS.  Instead, we have made all of the documentation
     accessible online in various links under:

     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/pacakges/mcidas/mcx

     We also make PostScript (tm) files of the SSEC portion of the McIDAS-X
     documentation available.  Please look at the unix/760/docs directory
     and it subdirectories for these files.

2).  Please do not hesitate to report inconsistencies or omissions in our
     online documentation.  Since it is relatively new, there are bound
     to be things that need modification.

3).  McIDAS-X should be installed in an account named 'mcidas'.

4).  The McIDAS-X remote ADDE server be setup in an account named 'mcadde'.

5).  Do _NOT_ do a 'make clobber' after installing 7.60.  The object files
     and McIDAS-X and -XCD libraries will need to be there so that upgrades
     can be easily integrated into the 7.60 installation.

6).  Please do not hesitate to ask for assistance when building, installing,
     or configuring Unidata McIDAS-X.  The cleaner the installation
     on your end, the easier it will be for you to use and update and the
     easier it will be for us to support.

7).  As promised in the Known Problems page for McIDAS-X 7.50, there have
     been major refinements in the configuration of the Unidata NIDS
     and NOWrad (tm) servers.

8).  There will be continual changes to this and future releases of McIDAS-X.
     Some of the changes already planned are:

     o augmentation/modification of the Unidata Tcl/Tk GUI
     o documentation for Unidata Tcl/Tk GUI
     o development of ADDE servers for imagery in GINI format (GINI
       is the format of the imagery in the NOAAPORT channel 1 and 2 streams)
     o development of ADDE servers for imagery in TeraScan (tm) format
     o development of ADDE servers for DMSP imagery
     o other

9).  We have released a new distribution of ldm-mcidas decoders that
     are Y2K capable and McIDAS-X 7.60 compatible.  The new distribution
     is ldm-mcidas Version 7.6.1.

10). Unidata McIDAS-OS2 is no longer a supported package.  It support
     was sunset on July 31, 1999.

11). If you are not already transitioning to use of the newer ADDE
     routines in McIDAS-X, you need to start doing so now.  A large
     number of old, non-ADDE routines will be sunset in upcoming
     Unidata McIDAS releases.  Please review:

     Release Notes
     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx/release_notes.html

     and

     Sunset Items
     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx/sunset.html

     for further details.

12). If you are not already using the XCD package (bundled with Unidata
     McIDAS versions 7+), you will need to do so immediately.  The MD,
     GRID, PROFILER.CDF, UNIDATAS, and ADMIN.MSG products that were
     included in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream were removed on July
     1, 1999.  XCD decoders and IDD conveyance of global surface, upper
     air, ship/buoy, airep/pirep, synoptic, fous, NCEP model data, etc.
     allows any site to create global data files usable by Unidata
     McIDAS.  In order to conserve funds, and possible redirect some to
     enhance imagery products, we need to stop providing the above,
     redundant data in the Unidata- Wisconsin datastream.

The user name & password information for access to Unidata McIDAS is:

machine: ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
user: umcidas
pass: XXXXXX
directory for X: unix/760

The user name and password are the same for both FTP and web access to
the distribution.  We encourage you to grab the distribution files
through the web access that we have provided.  Please review the
Unidata McIDAS documentation at:

McIDAS-X
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx

Please keep us informed as to your progress.

>Thank you,

You are welcome.

>Matt Roberts
>OSU Geography Dept.

Tom Yoksas