IMPORTANT: Windows 95/98/ME does a remarkably poor job of process load balance. If you change the focus from the cygnus window, performance will immediately drop by at least 1/3, and the timings will be inaccurate. It is recommended that you leave the focus on the install window throughout the entire install procedure. This is not necessary for Windows NT/2K/XP. ATLAS requires unix-style make and /bin/sh commands in order to install on a windows system. A fairly complete unix-style environment is available free of charge at: http://www.cygwin.com/ From this website, you can download the package, get installation instructions, etc. You will want to download the "full" version of cygwin, which includes compilers, shells, make, etc. Be sure you get all the compilers you are interested in (ATLAS requires gcc, and you will probably want g77 or gfortran as well). The cygwin installation is quite simple, involving downloading an executable and installing with Windows' usual install procedure (you can remove it from your machine with Windows' ADD/REMOVE if you later decide you don't want it). After this is done, simply follow the instructions given in atlas_install.pdf, running all command in a cygwin window. By default, ATLAS will be compiled with the gnu gcc compiler that comes with cygnus. Gnu gcc provides better ATLAS performance than does MSVC++, Watcom C, or Intel icl, so we recommend that you leave gcc as the compiler. If you need to interoperate with Native windows compilers like Intel icl or MSVC++, we suggest you build using the MinGW compilers. See the install guide for further details, and check the errata file at: http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/errata.html#WinBuild