USUS SOFTWARE LIBRARY
IN THE WEST WING OF THE JEFFERSON COMPUTER MUSEUM

TERAK MUSEUM - UCSD PASCAL MUSEUM - USUS LIBRARY
ANCIENT ALPHABETIC ART - LIBRARY - ALTAIR AND IMSAI EMULATORS
REVIVING CASSETTE DATA - DISK UTILITIES - COMPUTER RESCUE
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE


What was the USUS Software Library?
Once upon a time there was a user group known as the UCSD p-System System Users Society (USUS).  They maintained a library of Pascal floppy disks containing source code and programs.

I have found several people who own all or portions of the collection.   Someone sent me the disk images for volumes 1 through 29 of the US library, and volumes 3 and 4 of the USUS UK collection.  Using my disk utilities, I have burst these P-System disk images into their native files.

I put all the files of all the disks in a single Zip file that you may download.  Note that the conversion process was aimed at producing an archive of text files in directories with long filenames with DOS line endings. The few .CODE program files in the library have been rendered useless by this process.

You may also grab the raw disk images if you want to mount them directly on a P-System machine, or if you want to select different options for my disk utilities to preserve the .CODE programs or other files with hidden header blocks.

What happened to USUS?
There's few traces of them on the Web, and in several years of casual research, I've been unable to find anyone who admits to being the last of these Mohicans.   They were once reachable at
USUS, Box 1148, La Jolla, CA 92038, or at Datamed Research, or at Softech MicroSystems.  According to the Apple II FAQ, Keith Frederick was once secretary, and the group was described as "an international non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and influencing software standards to aid in the development of portable software. They have a large software library including a lot of source code (for almost every language or computer)."

According to a history of the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer, which could run the P-System, Robert Peterson was voted president of USUS in September 1982, in Dallas, Texas.

What's the copyright status of these files?
Back in those wild and wooly days, computer users were not as stringent about copyright as we are today.  In this case, it means the USUS disks contained less-than-precise messages about copyright.  The most common message is "For not-for-profit use by USUS members only. May be used and distributed only according to stated policy and the author's wishes."  I suspect that USUS once tried to control the sale of disks from its collection as a means of fundraising.


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