The following are some brief comments about accessing and using the CSE server
productively.

A. Connecting to the CSE server

To access the CSE server from your personal computer, you'll use a terminal
emulation package and then connect to "north.cse.msu.edu".

On Windows systems, you may wish to install "SSHWin", which can be downloaded
from the CSE website:

  http://www.cse.msu.edu/facility/software/

Additional information about using that terminal emulator is available:

  http://www.cse.msu.edu/facility/howto/ssh/#winssh

There are several settings that you may wish to update:

  Edit ==> Settings ==> Tunneling (select "Tunnel X11 connections")
  Edit ==> Settings ==> Keyboard (select "Backspace sends Delete")
  File ==> Save Settings

When you execute the terminal emulator, you can then connect to the correct
CSE server ("north.cse.msu.edu").

On Mac OS systems, there is a built-in terminal emulator:

  Applications ==> Utilities ==> Terminal

  <prompt> ssh -X your_username@north.cse.msu.edu

B. Running software with a GUI

UNIX systems typically use the X Window System (X11) to support graphical user
interfaces.  Thus, you will need to run an X server package on your personal
computer if you wish to run certain packages (such as "xemacs" and "gedit").

On Windows systems, you may wish to install "Xming", which can be downloaded
from the developer's website:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming

Once it is installed, be sure to run the program in the background before
running any programs which use a GUI.

On Mac OS systems, an X11 package is usually part of the standard setup.

C. Running the circuit simulation package

The circuit simulation package consists of a library of C++ classes and a
shell script which compiles and links your source code to the appropriate
libraries.

The shell script is executed as follows, where "your_file.c" is the name of
your source code file.

  <prompt> /user/csearch/bin/sim your_file.c

If you add "/user/csearch/bin" to your search path, the shell script can be
executed as follows:

  <prompt> sim your_file.c

One easy way to update your search path is to edit your ".personal" file as
described on the CSE 320 website:

  http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse320/General/intro.sim

Alternatively, you can copy "/user/cse320/.personal" into the top level
directory of your account.