Help using odepkg

[Allen.Windhorn]

I'm trying to use OdePkg to solve a set of somewhat stiff
differential equations (augmented Park's equations, in case you
wondered).  I want to use a solver from this package in lieu of
lsode, because they allow me to pass parameters to the function
that produces the derivatives.  OK, I could use globals, but
really, globals?  Shades of Fortran /COMMON/ blocks.  For the
simplified problem, I can easily calculate the derivatives
given the time, state variables, fixed (?) inputs, and a couple
parameter matrices that depend on the particular simulation.
I am running Octave 3.6.2 Mingw binary distribution on a 32-bit
Windows XP machine (also a 64-bit Win7) and I have installed
the OdePkg 0.8.2 from Octave-Forge.

First problem: the ODE solvers all seem to be present, but none
of the DAE or IDE solvers.  Is this because the package is a
beta build?  I'm interested in the DAE solvers because eventually
I will want to incorporate variable speed, and it will be more
convenient (probably faster) to let the solver do the entire
solution rather than solve for the derivatives separately.  Also
they're the only ones that say they are for "stiff" equations
(apart from the Euler Backward Difference odebwe.m).  This
equation set has about 10:1 difference in max/min TC's, so maybe
that's not stiff enough to worry about.

Second problem: is there a good way to include a forcing function
U(t) without writing it inside the derivative function?  If not, 
I could just use a piecewise-linear approximation for now.

Sorry for kind of vague questions.  I'll try reading the manual
some more.

Regards,
Allen