Telecommunicating for

OCC CSC Courses


There are a few options that you can pursue to work from home on this course if you're running Windows. If you use other operating systems, let me know and I'll try and find some other choices.
 

ASCII Interface with Telnet

The simplest strategy might be to simply download a telnet package. I would recommend NetTerm http://www.netterm.com/html/downloads.html which is pretty full proof and can provide a non-graphic interface to our servers.  Every CSC course has an ASCII Telnet icon within the web page suite and, except for Java exercises that use GUI elements, all course exercises can be completed in this environment.  There are some configuration notes here.

GUI Interface with an Xclient

If you want an environment that is identical to the OCC labs, you'll need both telnet and an Xclient. This is trickier to configure and firewall and anti-pop-up utilities may make this impossible for you to use.  We've been successful in using two tools.  The VNC software that is used in the OCC labs is freely available from this site http://www.realvnc.com/download.html, and is used on your home computer in a manner that is comparable to the use in the OCC labs.  There are some configuration notes here. The MI/X software http://www.microimages.com/mix/ might be a little easier to install, but has a cost associated with it.  There are some configuration notes here.

File Transfer with FTP

All other options will require you to move files from your computer to online.oakton.edu.  To perform this, you'll need some ftp software.  We recommend FTP Explorer http://www.ftpx.com/download.html .  There are some configuration notes here.

Compiling on Your Computer

There are many compilers that you can purchase.  I may have actually used one or two of them. Most commercial compilers, as long as they are not too old, are probably adequate for our purposes.  I'll only discuss free ones here. In every case, you will need to use ftp to move course support files for the assignments from online.oakton.edu to your computer.  In some cases, you will need an ASCII editor.  Emacs is not necessary and Notepad (which comes with MS operating systems) will do fine here, although WinEdit http://www.winedit.com/download.asp is probably better.

C/C++

For C or C++, you can get the MinGW compiler available at http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml .  Get a single download the the MinGW system.  There are some configuration notes here.

Java


For Java, you can get the Sun Development Kit available at http://java.sun.com/j2se/downloads.html.  The documentation that comes with the product is quite huge, so don't bother with that.  There are some configuration notes here.

FORTRAN


For FORTRAN, you can get the F compiler available at ftp://ftp.swcp.com/pub/walt/F .  There are some configuration notes here.


Send comments and questions to mailto:somplski@oakton.edu?subject=telecom