Product Support
If you require assistance or have questions about something
not covered in these WWW pages, please contact
support@syz.com via Internet email.
The purpose of this section is to provide updated information and
software to registered users of The Digital Universe. The
information and files available here should change fairly regularly, so please
check back from time to time. Ensure that "Load to Local Disk" is selected
in your web browser before you download any information.
Several updates on this site will be in the form of "patch" files,
ending in .pch and generated by the SAS/C "scompare" utility. To
apply these patches, you require the spatch.lha
software package. Documentation on how to use the utility is included
in the archive.
Software Upgrades
Version 1.03 of The Digital Universe is now being shipped. Owners
of previous versions can upgrade their package themselves by obtaining the patch
files available on this site. Patches must be applied to the file
entitled DigitalUniverse, found in your DU: directory.
The file DigitalUniverseNoIntro is just a link to DigitalUniverse
so the patch should be applied to both executables automatically. If it is not,
just type MakeLink from DigitalUniverseNoIntro to DigitalUniverse at a shell
prompt.
The following files are available:
- History of changes
- 96/09/14:Upgrade 68000 version of executable from 1.02 to 1.03
- 96/09/14:Upgrade 68020+ version of executable from 1.02 to 1.03
- 96/09/14:Upgrade 68020+/68881+ version of executable from 1.02 to 1.03
- 95/12/16:Upgrade 68000 version of executable from 1.01 to 1.02
- 95/12/16:Upgrade 68020+ version of executable from 1.01 to 1.02
- 95/12/16:Upgrade 68020+/68881+ version of executable from 1.01 to 1.02
- 95/11/07:Upgrade 68000 version of executable from 1.00 to 1.01
- 95/11/07:Upgrade 68020+ version of executable from 1.00 to 1.01
- 95/11/07:Upgrade 68020+/68881+ version of executable from 1.00 to 1.01
Ensure that you obtain the correct patch for the version of
The Digital Universe that you are using on your machine! Also,
you must read the DU_Patch.readme file found within the
archive and follow the instructions contained within about generating
new preferences files. If you do not follow these instructions, your
executable will not work properly.
Hypertext Upgrades
The following patches to the hypertext are available:
- History of patches to
DU:chapters.guide
- 95/10/21:chapters.guide_1.00_1.01.pch
- Patches here should be applied to the
chapters.guide file found in your DU: directory.
- History of patches to
DU:chapters2.guide
- 95/12/16:chapters2.guide_1.00_1.01.pch
- Patches here should be applied to the
chapters2.guide file found in your DU: directory.
- History of patches to
DU:duhelp.guide
- 95/12/16:duhelp.guide_1.01_1.02.pch
- 95/11/07:duhelp.guide_1.00_1.01.pch
- Patches here should be applied to the
duhelp.guide file found in your DU: directory.
- History of patches to
DU:duobjects.guide
- 95/12/16:duobjects.guide_1.02_1.03.pch
- 95/11/07:duobjects.guide_1.01_1.02.pch
- 95/10/21:duobjects.guide_1.00_1.01.pch
- Patches here should be applied to the
duobjects.guide file found in your DU: directory.
- History of patches to
DU:spacecraft.guide
- 95/12/16:spacecraft.guide_1.01_1.02.pch
- 95/09/29:spacecraft.guide_1.00_1.01.pch
- Patches here should be applied to the
spacecraft.guide file found in your DU: directory.
Image Upgrades
The following updated astronomical images should also be downloaded and added
to your Digital Universe package to reflect some of the changes made in
the hypertext. They are not necessary if you received version 1.03 of duobjects.guide
when you purchased The Digital Universe, as you will have them already.
- 95/12/16:vesta.iff
- This should be copied to
DU:data/pics/smallobjects/vesta.iff.
- 95/12/16:betapictoris.iff
- This should be copied to
DU:data/pics/stars/betapictoris.iff,
replacing the file of the same name already located there.
- 95/12/16:m16.iff
- This should be copied to
DU:data/pics/deepsky/m16.iff,
replacing the file of the same name already located there.
Database Upgrades
- 96/03/01:hyakutake.uof
- This UOF file allows you to use The Digital Universe to calculate
the path that
Comet Hyakutake will take across the sky. It is expected to become
a very bright comet from March to May of this year - likely the brightest
since Comet West of 1976! Keep in mind though that comet magnitude predictions are
rather unreliable, and the magnitudes as calculated by The Digital
Universe should be taken with a large grain of salt.
- 95/09/29:moreasteroids.lha (511K)
- When Jost Jahn supplied the orbital elements for comets and asteroids,
more information was provided than could fit onto the distribution disks.
14,000 faint asteroids which were only observed once, or which had orbits
that were not well known, were not supplied with the package. This
archive contains the orbital elements (in "Universal Orbit Format", or
UOF files) for these objects. Un-LHA the file into your
DU:data/orbits directory and you will be able to access them with
the "Miscellaneous Objects" window.
- 95/09/29:newcomets.uof
- This short file contains orbital information for comets Bradfield,
P/d'Arrest, P/de Vico, and Hale-Bopp. Just copy the file to your
DU:data/orbits directory to be able to load the information in with the
"Miscellaneous Objects" window.
Earth-orbiting satellites
Since satellite orbits change over time due to atmospheric drag
and other complicated and often unpredictable effects, new orbital
information should periodically be obtained for accurate calculations.
If you wish to obtain recent satellite orbit data sets, you have one of two
options. You can either obtain them directly in "two-line" orbital element (TLE)
format (pretty much guaranteed to be the most recent sets available), or can
obtain them pre-converted to the UOF format required by the software. Note that
if you decide to get UOF files, they may be as much as a month or two old. If you
obtain the original data sets, you must use the utility program "tle2uof" provided
with The Digital Universe to convert the files to UOF. You may also need
to decompress the files with the Unix "compress" utility.
Go back to The Digital Universe Page.