[DECtalk] Announcing the new DECtalk archive

[Tony Baechler]

Hello all,

It is with great sadness that I announce that Jayson Smith is officially 
no longer in charge of the DECtalk archive.  For those of you who don't 
know, it was originally started by Andre Louis and eventually taken over 
by Jayson Smith.  Due to bandwidth and cost issues, he is no longer 
running it, at least for now.  As some of you might also be aware, I've 
wanted to take over the archive for a long time for several reasons.  
The first is that I currently don't have bandwidth issues and I have 
lots of disk space.  The second reason is that I would like to do some 
reorganization.  Finally, I've wanted to run the archive for my own 
interest because I have always wanted to be an archive maintainer.

So, therefore, I am now the new archive maintainer.  I've moved the 
archive to my server and all appears to be working.  Everything should 
be current as of when Jayson shut public access to his archive down.  
While there are still things to be fixed and while I'm sure there are 
bugs, it is accessible again to the public.  I still need to do 
something about the README file and work on some sort of home page, but 
it's good enough for now.  To access it, go to:

http://dectalk.goldenaudio.net/

Note that there is a bandwidth limiter in place, so downloads will be 
very slow.  I'm sorry about this, but I see no other choice for now.  
I'm actively seeking archive mirrors.  Most residential connections will 
not work, but if you have a high speed connection and rsync access, 
please contact me.  The bandwidth usage is about 70-75 GB per month.  
The archive requires 1.6 GB of disk space.  If you're interested, please 
let me know and I'll make arrangements.

Currently, uploads are disabled.  I will again allow uploads once I 
figure out the best way to handle them, but for now you can't upload.  
If you have something for the archive, either contact me privately or 
wait until I can get ftp working.  I'm thinking a special ftp account is 
probably best.  Also, don't try to download everything with an automated 
download manager or mirroring program.  If you do, your IP address may 
be blocked permanently.  There are measures in place to make sure no one 
can grab everything at once.  Besides, it would take an eternity because 
of the slow download speed.

If you're still reading, here is another site which might give better 
service, but no guarantees:

http://dectalk.goldenaudio.net.nyud.net/

If you have any questions or comments, post them here or contact me 
privately off list.  I'm in the process of setting up a special email 
address for DECtalk related matters, so for now probably this list is 
best.  Thanks to Jayson for keeping the list around and running the 
archive for years.  I wish him the best of luck and hope to keep him as 
a friend and co-maintainer.