What is this site for?

Sharing information

John Steele worked in IT from 1963 until he retired at the end of 2018. He was a hardware designer for Ferranti in their Industrial Process Control division. His initial task was to design the Argus 400 computer logic, one of the world’s first computer to use the then new Integrated Circuits which were also designed in-house. He then became the team lead for most of the peripheral devices including printers, magnetic tape decks, paper tape and punched card readers and punches. He also deigned controllers to read signals from, and to send controls to, industrial plants. He later joined another company CTL and became team lead for the team that wrote the multi-user Operating System for a multi user data processing system. He later, when working for Data Logic, designed an multi-user dealing system for banks to use to trade financial products which rapidly developed into a multi-million pound a year business and took him to Japan to support their trading partner there Later he broadened his expertise to include both local and wide area networking (LAN and WAN) with a specific interest and expertise in system security leading to many projects for industry and especially local and national government projects where system security was paramount. He had regular contact with the UK national security body.

Over many years he has collected many IT related programs and tutorials, of interest to himself and perhaps helpful to you, and which are shared on this website. Other items have been contributed by friends. All programs listed and all documents, hosted on this site, are (unless otherwise stated) free to access for non commercial use – see individual copyright notices. Suggestions and corrections are welcomed!

John has also created a number of technical support documents and given presentations on many aspects of computer technology over the years to interested local groups. His most recent documents and presentations are available on this site in the hope that they are useful to others. Further documents are regularly added and suggestions for further guides (or even contributions) are welcomed and should be submitted to John for consideration.

Finally John has also summarised his extensive industry experience spanning over 50 years in his CV (published on this site), and provided links to video interviews that have been recorded, that cover his career and described some of his memorable projects in some detail.

How to use this site

Many links to external sites for programs, and other technical information, have been collated under a number of categories and are accessed via the menus in the page header so they can easily be found. Most are free but where there is a charge this is noted (the information given was believed to be correct when the item was listed but may have changed). The content is reviewed and updated where necessary. The structure of these menus also is evolving so if you can't find something it may have moved – just ask if you need help.

The menus at the top of the page each contain pull-down lists leading to sub-topics. It is hoped that these are self explanatory. They currently include links to:

Feedback

Comments, suggestions, or contributions are welcomed. Contact can be made via email using the Menu John Steele → Contact John.

That contact link needs to be clicked reveal the contact email address to limit spammers harvesting his email address.

Updated 8 Dec 2025