About all I want to put here, for now, is a pointer to the version of TeX that I collected together for myself, and people in my department. This is a dos/Windows version, which I don't use any more, but it works pretty well.
The TeX distribution is just emtex, arranged the way I thought it should be. There is also a previewer (dviwin) for MS-Windows, that allows you to use the Print Manager to print the documents from within Windows. If your printer works under Windows, it'll print .dvi files without special drivers. The viewer is automatically updated every time the file is re-tex'd.
The distribution is in one beeeeg file, tex.tar. While on a unix system (or use gnu tar for DOS), unpack that file after you download it by entering ``tar -xvf tex.tar''. That will create 4 directories, disk1 through disk4. Each is the size of a 1.44 meg floppy. Copy them onto floppies, and follow the instructions in the README files to unpack it. Let me know if you have a problem with it.