Volume 4, Number 25 6 July 1987 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief: Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet Association as its official newsletter. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1. Copyright 1987 by the International FidoNet Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact IFNA. Six Weeks to FidoCon! Table of Contents 1. ARTICLES ................................................. 1 A word from the Broadcast Echos .......................... 1 National EchoMail Conference List ........................ 3 FREEWARE: The End of Amateur Programming? ................ 14 Once Upon the Future ..................................... 16 New EchoMail Area for Mainframe Folks .................... 18 More Talk About PK vs. ARC ............................... 19 Mail Relays .............................................. 20 Turbo C - V 1.0 - A Product Review ....................... 22 Does IFNA Matter Outside the USA ? ....................... 25 The creation of FUN ...................................... 27 US Naval Observatory Time Now Available .................. 28 NEW FIDO(tm) OPUS(tm) SEADOG(tm) UTILITY ................. 29 2. COLUMNS .................................................. 31 Borland's Turbo C: Review, part 1 ........................ 31 The Regular Irregular Column ............................. 34 3. FOR SALE ................................................. 38 COMPUTER PACKAGE FOR SALE ................................ 38 4. NOTICES .................................................. 39 The Interrupt Stack ...................................... 39 regarding fnews424 ....................................... 39 Latest Software Versions ................................. 39 International FidoNet Conference Registration Form ....... 41 IFNA Order Form .......................................... 42 FidoNews 4-25 Page 1 6 Jul 1987 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= Glen Jackson Fido/SEAdog 100/517 Updates and such First of all, It's sure good to be back into the net. We went down around May 10th for our big move, and with the move came a new phone number. Please, if you are at all interested in the Broadcast Echos, jot this number down. 100/517 is now at 1-314-928-2501. We're slowly growing in our little echo. We now carry three seperate message areas dedicated the broadcast industry. They are 1)Conversations for the public and broadcasters, 2) Jobs and situations in the broadcast industry, and 3)for Broadcasters only. To keep you up to date, these nodes carry the echos. If you would like to participate, drop us netmail at 100/517, and we will co- ordinate you into the topology. PLEASE - we would prefer to do the co-ordinating so we can keep track of this echo. Here is who currently participates: 113/1 Small_Biz_Net Honolulu, HI 501/4697 SVT_Public_TV Stockholm, Sweden 135/1 Ram_Soft Miami, FL 104/69 Metroplex Denver, CO 151/301 BNC_Connector Boone, NC 125/406 KLOK_FM San Francisco, CA 151/108 Drums_Opus Cary, NC 11/107 Bourbonnis_BBS Bourbonnis, IL 19/3 Dark_Cavern Lawton, OK 150/614 Charis_TBBS Philadelphia, PA 135/11 FL 104/108 Micro_Link Littleton,CO 969/500 NY 150/600 Philadelphia_Hub Pydal, PA We currently set aside the time between 1:15 AM and 1:45 AM (Central) for polling. Since we now have SEAdog, polls can be accepted at any time. NEXT - MSGDB Recently we introduced a new utility, MSGDB. This is for OPUS and FIDO sysops that want to do full message bit editing in all of their message areas, or move a message from one area to another. It can be file requested from either 100/510 or 100/517. The file to ask for is MSGDB.ARC. FINALLY - another BBS interface FidoNews 4-25 Page 2 6 Jul 1987 We are also working on a full implementation of a WWIV BBS network interface. If any of you have had experience with WWIV, or logged on to a WWIV system, you know that this is a good message base BBS. When we finish, WWIV will be able to handle all netmail and echomail capabilities. If you have any comments on this, just leave me a note. NOW - the soapbox Short, but sweet. This week I dropped the SYSOP ECHO. After not being on the network for 6 weeks, I picked up all of my back logged sysop echomail. Nothing has changed much. No sense in carrying the same old same old and wasting disk space with it. LET'S FINISH We have a few TV people on the Broadcast echo that are asking for more participation. It seems like the radio people do all the talking. Is the reason the TV people are so quiet on the echo because they want to be seen as well as be heard? Let's hope not. I want to thank all of you for the support you've been over the last few weeks. I certainly enjoy the network! Give us a shout with any comments, etc at 100/517! ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 3 6 Jul 1987 This is the FIDONEWS version of the ECHOLIST. A more detailed version showing networks served, secondary "contact" nodes, approximate traffic volume, number of participating nodes and more can be File Requested as ECHOLIST.ARC from 107/316 Thomas Kenny 107/269 Mitch Kessler We hope that more SEAdog running BBSs will want to help distribute the ECHOLIST. Ideally such a board would allow first time callers to File Request or download the list at 2400 Baud. There's been a bit of a change in the format of the FidoNews version of the list this month: proposed conferences are at the end of the list in their own section, and ECHOS that do not name a moderator or coordinator are not listed. **************************************************************** AA_NA (Recovery) David Dodell 114/15 Abled David Dodell 114/15 Handicapped forum ADAM Discussion Bill Freads 11/700 ADAM Technical Bill Freads 11/700 ADS Tracy Graves 138/39 THIS CONFERENCE IS DEAD. Adults Adults only conference. (John Penberthy 129/28) AFNA Australian FidoNet Association AI Richard Clark 107/222 Artificial Intelligence conference. AIDS/ARC Bob Kovach 125/31 Amateur Radio John Dashner 133/10 Amiga Grey Mist 124/206 Amiga Prog Richard Clark 107/222 Amiga programmers technical information Animation Mike Bader 120/17 Conference for animation info & discussion includeing Japanese animation. APL Chris Lincoln 107/103 FidoNews 4-25 Page 4 6 Jul 1987 Apple Bob Abbott 157/511 Apple II Gary Vedrick 102/2801 Asian-American Arnold Chu 107/16 Asian-American Community happenings ASM Barry Dobyns 102/140 Astronomy Don Epand 114/18 alias StarNet AT&T Mark Pinkstone 150/613 Poll/Pickup from Host (138/39, 0150-0225 PDT) Atari Gary Vedrick 102/2801 Atari technical conference Audio Advisor Larry Digioia 129/17 Automotive Marcel Schmelzer 129/42 Beyond War Andy Kanter 101/301 National peace issues forum. Bible Bob Hoffman 129/34 Bible forum Bicycles Mike Talbot 151/103 Bicycle use in sports, touring, racing & transportation. Bitch Jim Bacon 103/507 Bloom Net Sysops Bob Stubbings 127/60 Books, Great Jim Bacon 103/507 Broadcast Glen Jackson 100/517 Radio engineering, programming & marketing. Broadcasting Jobs Terry Travis 104/69 Broadcasting jobs/situations. Business & Economics Randall Kobetich 150/130 Business information conference Buy&Sell Jim Deibele 105/3 Bylaws Bob Hartman 132/101 Only for Bylaws committee members? Bylfedbk Tom Marshall 107/324 FidoNews 4-25 Page 5 6 Jul 1987 DISCONTINUED C Language Ed Rauh 141/215 Career Discussions Lee Johnson 125/612 Host will poll/pickup Christ Net Baddlard Shackleford 108/70 Christian BBS only by coordinator approval. A non-argumentative forum for Bible study, prayer requests and fellowship. Cincy Jesse Armontrout 108/64 Local sysop conference COCO Echo Brian Bream 112/3 Tandy Color Computer Commodore Marv Shelton 107/311 C64 & C128 technical conference Commodore (local) Gary Vedrick 102/2-801 Conejo For Sale Gary Vedrick 102/2801 Conejo Music Gary Vedrick 102/2801 Conejo Tech Gary Vedrick 102/2801 Consulting Tracey Graves 138/39 Business of consulting. Cosmopolitan Hal Duprie 101/107 Boston Metro Area: Books, Food & Good Things of Life dBASE Alex Hartley 100/500 dBASE users forum Debate *NONE* Detroit, Chicago, Colorado. There may be to separate conferences!? DEC Rainbow Dave Rene 101/27 Host is 101/27 who polls all the nodes. DesqView Bob Spivack 143/3 DesqView users forum Doggies Tracy Graves 138/39 Fido clones & compatibles confernce, i.e. SEAdog, Collie, Guardian, etc. FidoNews 4-25 Page 6 6 Jul 1987 Dr Debug's Laboratory Larry Digioia 129/17 Questions/answers on all computers & software (mostly IBM compatibles). Dungeons & Dragons Eric Daymo 102/2803 Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. Echomail Coordinators Jon Sabol 124/210 For echomail coordinators only Educators Tracy Graves 138/39 Feminism Kim Storment 100/523 FireNet Christopher Baker 135/14 Fire/Rescue/EMS news and information exchange. Fish Net Leo Bores 114/14 Conference for Aquarists & fish keeping hobbyists. Fortran Barry Dobyns 102/140 Forum Tracey Graves 138/39 Private personal communications/sharing. Freemess Barry Dobyns 102/140 Los Angles Chatter Gaming Robert Plamondon 143/12 Role playing games conference. Gammaw Peter Kranz 102/2802 Gamma World role playing game. Genealogy Ken Whitaker 143/26 The national genealogy conference (NGC). Grand_Rounds (Mednet) David Dodell 114/15 Medical Related Discussions, primarily health care professionals. HACK, PC Kurt Reisler 109/483 *NET_109* PC HACK Q&A and war stories conference. HAM Eric Daymo 102/2803 Ham radio technical conference. Health David Page 109/604 Health related issues (MDs participating) There is also a larger group that exchanges files only. Healthnet David Dodell 114/15 FidoNews 4-25 Page 7 6 Jul 1987 Heath/Zenith Joe Rock 128/15 Heath/Zenith series 89, 90, 100-120 (not for Zenith 150 & up series) Help Wanted Eunhee Hunter 109/626 HOWSWA Bill Bertholf 107/102 How's the weather in WA state! HP3000TALK Tracy Graves 17/43 HP3000 conversations. Hunger Chris Irwin 108/68 IFNA Policy & Politics Ken Kaplan 1/10 International Fido Net Association. Restricted to SYSOPs only. INTERPER Randall Kobetich 150/900 Opinion forum: moral, ethical, social issues. Jobs Tracy Graves 138/39 Computer-related Employment Echo (Job Listings, etc.) JR-MSG Phil Kaiser 104/904 PC jr conference Laptops Ej McKernan 15/20 Laptop technical conference Law Mark Pinkstone 150/613 Lawyers technical/substantive forum Literature Steven Barnes 138/49 Conference about writers & writing. Lotus Randy Van de Loo 124/110 Lotus users forum MacIntosh (local) Eric Daymo 102/2803 MacIntosh technical conference MacIntosh Leo LaPorte 125/2 MacIntosh technical conference. Magick Brad Hicks 100/523 Merged with Alternative Religion conference. Meadow Chuck Lawson 124/102 Opus Sysop's conference. Mensa Jim Kay 109/612 National conference of Mensa run boards or where there is substantial membership interest. Menasn only Christopher Baker 135/14 FidoNews 4-25 Page 8 6 Jul 1987 Restriced to Mensa members. Metroforum Don Daniels 107/211 *NET_107* help conference for users Metronet Don Daniels 107/211 *NET_107* Sysop Conference Miaminet David Gilbert 135/1 *LOCAL_MIAMI* information exchange forum MIDI Bruce Oblander 161/594 Mindset PC James Pallack 16/635 Conference was dissolved but is back to life now! MOD1000 Neal Curtin 138/14 Tandy Model 1000 technical conference (Tandy T1K). Modula-2 Randy Bush 105/6 Modula-2 programming language conference Net 102 For Sale Barry Dobyns 102/140 *NET_102* Net 108 Chatter 108/68 THIS CONFERENCE IS DEAD. Net 108 Forsale Steve Sullivan 108/75 *NET_108* Net 108 Programmer Jesse Armontrout 108/64 *NET_108* Net 109 Astronomy Rick Ward 109/635 *NET_109* Net 109 Classifieds Alexander Wall 109/606 *NET_109* advertising, items for sale. Net 109 dBASE J Liebsch/A Griffin 109/605 *NET_109* dBASE users conference. Net 109 General chatter Alexander Wall 109/606 *NET_109* user chatter Net 109 Help Jim Kay 109/617 *NET_109* User questions & answers. Net 109 Lotus Jim Kay 109/617 *NET_109* Lotus users conference. Net 109 Meeting J Liebsch/A Griffin 109/605 *NET_109* 12 Step Program - Experiences. FidoNews 4-25 Page 9 6 Jul 1987 Net 109 Mensa Jim Kay 109/617 Metro Washington DC Mensa conference. Net 109 Opinion/Oratory Robert Rudolph 109/628 Net 109 Politics Glenn Ford 109/658 *NET_109* Net 109 Recovery Rick Ward 109/635 *NET_109* 12 Step Program - Chatter. Net 109 Reviews Kurt Reisler 109/74 Reviews of "anything". Net 109 Seniors Brian Hughes 109/634 Senior Citizens conference. Net 109 Sysop Kim Wells 109/652 *NET_109* Net 109 sysop conference. Net 124 Sysop Jon Sabol 124/210 Net 133 Sysop John Dashner 133/10 Net 138 Sysop Steve Butler 138/3 Net 138 Team Steve Butler 138/3 Net 143 Sysop Todd Looney 143/27 Net 161 Sysop Butch Walker 161/2 Networking Dave Oshea 107/35 NY Mets Jean Coppola 107/301 NY Mets baseball team conference. Officers Ric Wentz 138/39 Conference about & for law enforcment professionals. Ohio Phil Ardussi 157/502 Park Richard Clark 107/222 US National Park Service only PIB Bob Klahn 150/1 Pitt Fido Sysop Stu Turk 129/26 Pittsburg area Fido sysop conference. Policy Jim Bacon 103/507 Conference for discusion of the FidoNews 4-25 Page 10 6 Jul 1987 create of the policy4 document. Politics Bill Bertholf 107/102 Politics and public policy forum Political (local) Stu Turk 129/26 *LOCAL_PITTSBURGH* religion & current events debate forum Programming Butch Walker 161/2 Programmer's conference. Prolog Barry Dobyns 102/140 QNX Ken Mcvay 340/10 Quantum Software's QNX Operating System Questions & comments Gregg Zegarelli 129/29 Questions & comments concerning current issues. RBASE Leo Bores 114/14 RBASE User's Forum Real Estate Al Arango 107/323 Real Estate and finance Records Roger Smith 18/14 Record collecting and music in general Region 15 David Dodell 114/15 *REGION_15* general news/info Region 17 Sysop Rob Barker 138/34 Region 17 Sysop conference Region 17 Tech Steve Butler 138/3 Rights Steve Butler 138/3 Shareware author rights, information exchange. THIS CONFERENCE IS DEAD Robert Arnz show Glen Jackson 100/517 Robert Arnz call in radio talk show. Science Fiction Authors David Dyer-Bennet 14/341 Science Fiction and Fandom. Discussion of science fiction movies, television, book, comics, and all other media. Doctor Who, Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guid to the Galaxy, Zelazny, Moorcock, Asimov, Danger Mouse, Battlestar Galactica, etc! Science Fiction/Fantasy Mike Jacobs 150/900 Conference for fans of science fiction and fantasy. Scuba Rod Lamping 104/610 FidoNews 4-25 Page 11 6 Jul 1987 Shortwave Listening Larry DiGioia 129/17 Sirius Bob Klahn 150/1 Sirius users forum. SMART Neal Curtin 138/14 SMART Software System package from Innovative Software SOBnet Anne Capola 107/107 Adult HotChat by Coordinator approval Non-argumentative uncensored adult topics SOCAL Barry Dobyns 102/140 Software Careers Lee Johnson 125/612 Merged into Career Discussions. Spark Beta Spark Software Beta testers Sports Ed Meloan 360/1 All national sporting events. Sysop Jon Sabol 124/210 *NATIONAL* THE National Sysop conference. Fido bugs/fixes, news and sysop chatter. Restricted to Sysop's ONLY! TBBS Dave Dodell 114/15 Tech Butch Walker 161/2 *NATIONAL* *TECHNET* Telecomm Hal Duprie 101/107 Telecommunication conference. Telix Rob Benner 148/1 UNIX Mike Johnson 170/329 Merged into C_ECHO. USA Wide Rick Ward 109/635 Small national general chit-chat conference. VAX Barry Dobyns 102/140 DEC VAX technical conference. Vietnam Vets Todd Looney 143/27 Vietnam Vetern's conference. Wildlife Richard Clark 107/222 Discussion of nature, outdoors, hunting, fishing, conservation. **************************************************************** FidoNews 4-25 Page 12 6 Jul 1987 PROPOSED CONFERENCES -------------------- Applications (James Deibele 105/3) 10/17/86 Autocad (Jim Quiesner 104/18) Aviation Net (Mark Stappenbeck 14/609) Airline & General Aviation Boating (Paul Esterle 157/697) Desktop Publishing (Larry Kayser 102/2800) Divers (Rod Lamping 104/610) EQUUS (Mark Indictor 104/606) Equestrian related topics. Fido Developers (Jim Ryan 141/9) Share source code for FidoNet Compatible systems Fossil (Vince Perriello 141/491) Health Net, Allied (Bill Hliwa 260/10) IEEE (Bill Wilkes 107/211) Lifestyle Alternatives (Adam Selene 107/269) Polyfidelity, Family Synergy, Celibacy, Feminism, Communalism, Single Parenthood, Foster Parenting, ... For anyone whose lifes path is not "mainstream". Packet Amateur Radio (Jim Brooker 124/13) Photography (Bill Thomas 132/225) Portables (John Penberthy 129/28) Region 19 (David Drexler 147/1) Star Trek (Eric Daymo 102/2803) Turbo Pascal (Bob Klahn 150/1) get ECPROG for this topic Users (Tom Baughman 119/13) Womens Space (Gillian Boardman 107/269) By and For Women WordLore (Hilda Stubbing 127/70) Discussion of word usage, nuances, grammer, etc. WordPerfect (Mark Pinkstone 150/613) FidoNews 4-25 Page 13 6 Jul 1987 Writing (Christopher Baker 135/14) ***************************************************************** ** Echomail Conference List, Issue 1, Number 2 (6/4/87) ** ** Copyright 1986,87 by Thomas E. Kenny. All rights reserved ** ***************************************************************** -- ATTENTION ECHOMAIL COORDINATORS AND CONTACTS -- -- PLEASE send updates to IFNA node 107/316 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 14 6 Jul 1987 FREEWARE: The End of Amateur Programming? ----------------------------------------- "Why aren't there very many new programs being uploaded any more?", she asked after looking over the file areas on the board. "Now that's a good question.", I replied. "I really don't know. It looks as if nobody is writing any of their own programs anymore. I wonder why....." That is a part of the conversation that prompted this article. I don't know if the rest of you are noticing a similar lack of original software being uploaded by your users but it is certainly very evident here at The Power Station. Now, that is not to say that there are no uploads, just that there is no uploading of local, original software. It doesn't seem that long ago (not more than 2 or 3 years) when almost EVERYBODY who owned a computer was writing software for it. Most of the programs were written in BASIC and were kludgy and slow as molasses in the spring, but all that aside, the programmer was PROUD to have contributed something and couldn't wait to share their offering with others. All of that seems to have changed, now. The reason.... FREEWARE / SHAREWARE / User Supported Software! There is an abundance of good (in fact EXCELLENT) software available to do almost anything a person needs or wants. This software is of sufficient quality to rival a large portion of the commercial software available at a fraction of the cost (for those who choose to pay for it - but that's a different story). Why would anybody want to slave away for hours (or days) piecing together a program to do something when there is a FREEWARE package readily available that does the same thing faster and easier? The tremendous amount of software available is largely responsible for more and more computer systems being purchased by people with no desire to learn to program. These people view the systems as tools to be used to make a job easier or faster just like any other tool. We are becoming "users" as opposed to the computer "hobbiests" and "enthusiasts" that used to be the norm! This is becoming increasingly evident by the number of program requests and "wish lists" being passed around. Those of us who do still take the time to "patch together" the occasional utility in BASIC, are ashamed to show it to anybody else because we cannot compete with the software readily available and are afraid of being ridiculed for our "obvious" lack of programming skills. Don't get me wrong, I am very pleased with the vast selection of quality software available and would probably not be a part of FidoNet without it, but I can't help feeling a little sorry for FidoNews 4-25 Page 15 6 Jul 1987 all the "average" programmers out there that will never get the chance to experience the joy associated with sharing their efforts and, in some small way, being recognized for it. FREEWARE: The End of Amateur Programming? Think about it the next time somebody uploads something that is less than perfect! Bob Swift The Power Station (140/24) Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 16 6 Jul 1987 James Zachary 115/537 "Once Upon the Future" (c) 1986 James Zachary The location is an unnamed park, in an unnamed Midwestern city, sometime in the future. A young boy approaches an old man sitting on a park bench. "Mister..." The young boy is insistent. "MISTER!" The old man looks around nervously then puts a finger to his lips to silence the child. He then takes his thermos of coffee and pours it over the bracelet on his left wrist. After a few moments of wincing from the pain, he speaks. "The only way to knock off the protein bio-chip in these dang monitor bracelets is heat, a LOT of heat. The government still hasn't figured how to fix that glitch. Dang things let them know where you are and everything you say. You'll be required to wear one as soon as you turn 13. NOW, we have only about 15 minutes to talk before "The Monitors" pull up to find out why my bracelet went dead. I'll just say I spilled the coffee by accident. When you see a strange vehicle or person approaching, just stop talking and walk away. Talking in public is not allowed ya know, especially to an old person..." he winks, "we remember too much of the past that they want forgotten." "Mister, why don't they let people say what they think? Did people talk much in the old days?" Leaning back on the park bench with his face glowing from pleasant memories, the old man answers. "Surely they did, child! Back even before my time, long ago when the country was still young, towns used to have meetings in the square for folks to talk. They had debates and arguments. No topic was taboo. Then telephones came along and you could talk to anyone, anywhere in the world that also had a phone. Nowadays, you have to have a license for a phone and anything you say is digitally recorded and checked for "subversive" talk by those super-smart computers. Television, radio and newspapers were not owned by the government back then. You could read, see and hear many facts that would help you make up your own mind as to what was going on. We also had CB and HAM radio, and something we called the BBS..." His voice trails off as he again looks around nervously. FidoNews 4-25 Page 17 6 Jul 1987 "What was a BBS, Mister?" A deep sorrowful sigh comes before his words. "Back in the 1980's the BBS was kind of a throw-back to the old town meetings. Literally hundreds of people could call a Bulletin Board computer with their personal computer and leave messages, tell jokes, chat, argue politics, make friends..." Tears fill the old man's eyes. "Then the government must have figured that so many people talking wasn't healthy, too many diverse opinions and ideas. So, they started regulating and licensing all forms of speech, all ways of thinking. Was gradual at first but they finally closed them all down. I was both a D-dialer and a BBSer! We all had real names back then instead of government numbers, but we also had handles, kind of like nicknames. Lord, I remember meeting some special, wonderful folks like Lady Galadriel, Lord Ming, Bruiser, Zap, Ingvar, Oods, K-9, Badger, Hex40, Hose, Hoagy, Mac The Navigator, Lawyer John, Grumpy, Haus Frau, Poet, By Tor and Reiny, Opti and Falcon, The Masked Twinkie, Deep Thought, Air Wolf, Double M, Boysie Oakes, Rocker, Multi, P.C. Kid, Ziggy, Prak and hundreds of others just like 'em! " "What ever happened to them all, Mister?" "Oh, the government had trouble putting them down, they were fighters! They were finally captured at the battle of Staehle's vineyards. Some say MadZax escaped from the institution," he smiles slyly, "but no one really knows for sure." "Who were you, Mister? What was your handle?" The old man makes a slight hand gesture to the child, indicating that someone is approaching. As the child begins to walk away the old man whispers a parting thought. "Don't matter who I was then, son. I'm nobody now..." ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 18 6 Jul 1987 Steve Bonine Cope BBS, 115/777 Proposal for New Echomail Area I attended a seminar a few weeks ago which was hosted by one of the mainframe software vendors. They [the vendor] have a product which is a BBS for mainframe systems programmers. For only $2600 a year, you can call it and swap problems and solutions with your peers. The speaker at the seminar was extolling the wonders and advantages of bulletin board systems. We've been familiar with those for some time, haven't we? I'm not prepared to charge anyone, so I guess that means that any service which we might provide via echomail couldn't possibly be as valuable as what this vendor was offering. However, it did point out to me that there exists a potential market for a new echomail area. As far as I know there is nothing currently in place which addresses issues important to those of us who earn our living ministering to large mainframe-based systems. If you are in this category, please indicate your interest by sending me a netmail message on 115/777. If there is enough interest, I'll start something. This conference might even give you a legitimate excuse to call your BBS from work, or even to run a BBS sponsored by your company. Maybe the subject is too broad. After all, I'm not even sure what the definition should be for "mainframe". Maybe we'll end up with several conferences. Maybe I only THINK that many of you who participate in FidoNet are involved with mainframes. I'll handle the initial distribution, and if we grow then we'll worry about how this topology should be built. It would be helpful in the "I am interested" message if I knew whether you can accept crash mail, and what hours might be best. Any other comments are more than welcome. If something like this already exists, my project is redundant. If interest is indicated, I would like to get started around the middle of July. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 19 6 Jul 1987 Alan D. Applegate The Entertainment Line Fido 104/36, Lakewood (Denver), CO Further Observations About PK vs. ARC It seems that the discussion about PKARC/PKXARC versus ARC will never cease. Both of these programs make our lives easier and save space on our disk drives. Much has been said about the incompatibility of PKARC's archives with ARC. Not often, if ever, is PKARC's "/oct" switch mentioned in comparative testing. The "/oct" switch simply forces PKARC to make archives that use file compression and time stamping techniques that ARC and other compatible programs will understand. When this switch is used in making the archive, either PKXARC or ARC can be used for file extraction. My underlying question, then, was whether PKARC still would make smaller files than ARC, despite the absence of the newer compression method that PKARC usually employs. The answer is yes. In my testing, I used four files with a total of 76,799 bytes, with one .DOC file, one .SYS file, one .EXE file and one .COM file. ARC made an archive of 46,523 bytes. PKARC made an archive of 45,930 bytes, a savings of 593 bytes. Time was not a tested element here; let it suffice to say that PKARC was substantially quicker. The results were not amazing, but in theory (actual results may and probably will vary) 2 megabytes of ARC's archives, if re- archived with PKARC using the "/oct" switch, would take up around 25,500 bytes less. Without the "/oct" switch, I would venture to guess that they would take up even less space. As a control, I used ARC to de-arc the archive made by PKARC, and used PKXARC to de-arc ARC's archive. Both were successful. To summarize, although PKARC performs better WITHOUT the "/oct" switch, it still appears to out-perform ARC in both speed and and archive file size categories. When PKARC is used with the "/oct" switch, substantial time savings are realized during the archiving process, without sacrificing compatibility with ARC. Direct inquiries to: Alan Applegate, Sysop The Entertainment Line Fido, 104/36 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 20 6 Jul 1987 Mail Relays In regards to the article on overly large nodelists, I wonder if the following routing scheme might work? EXAMPLE: Mail originates from my node 137/71 bound for a node in California. Instead of direct routing, this mail would be sent to his Relay Node. 137/71 160/33 160/20 (A) Origin ------->Relay ------->Destination The thought behind this is that the originating station calls the Relay station, this Relay station would be in the same city as the destination station, where a long distance call is not required to reach the destination Node. If you have 30 nodes in one city, then one of them will be the Relay Node for the other 29. That eliminates 29 Nodes from the Nodelist and this is just one city! It would eliminate a lot of Nodes from the Nodelist and get it back down to a reasonable size, which would be much easier to work with. What about Crash Priority Mail, or mail with attached files? No problem, the Relay Nodes would have a batch file written to immediately forward Crash mail to destination upon receipt of same. Attached files; same as regular mail. How will we know which Node serves which other Nodes? Publish one Master Nodelist, showing the Relay Nodes and the Nodes they serve. This would be an ascii text file and could then be updated when Relay Nodes add or drop Nodes they serve. Only the updates would be published as each Node already has the Master Nodelist. Nodes being served might have to help out the Relay station in terms of some kind of monetary help, as he might need a large hard disk for temporary message storage if he is handling a large volume of mail each night. I'm sure this could be worked out between the Relay and Destination Nodes without too much problem. They would have to have a volunteer Relay station, but there should be no problem here either, since some are already serving as inbound gates, etc. In large metro areas, two or more Relay stations might be needed. In small rural areas the Relay station might be the destination station. EXAMPLE: NET 137 FidoNews 4-25 Page 21 6 Jul 1987 137/71 is the only node in Naples, so I would be my own relay station. (1) Nodes other than Relay Nodes would have a Nodelist consisting of only Relay Nodes for the entire Network. All traffic would be routed to these Relay Nodes for forwarding to destination Nodes. (2) Relay Nodes would have a Nodelist consisting of all Relay Nodes in the Network and the Nodes they serve. Regional Coordinator duties and policies might have to be redifined to some extent to include the Relay stations, etc. Also, I wonder if all Regions/Networks/Nodes could switch to GMT time? This would eliminate the problem of different time zones. Sysops could inform their users that they were now using GMT time for mailing purposes. I don't know of any user who calls a BBS for a time-of-day check, so this shouldn't be a big problem. We wouldn't have to worry about daylight savings time, EST, CST, MST or any of the time zones, as all would be indicating the same time, year round. You asked for input, so here is mine. Keep up the good work. Sincerely, Bud Rogers, Sysop CRT Classifieds Naples, FL 137/71, 813-775-9444 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 22 6 Jul 1987 -- Borland International Product: Turbo C (R) (Version: 1.00 ) Program: Turbo C (R) -- A C compiler Author : Borland Intl. (Address Below) Purpose: Turbo C is a C language compiler. It has a compiler, linker, integrated package, make, and libraries. Requirements: MS/PC-DOS Version 2.00 or higher, 1 - Floppy Drive or Hard Disk (Recommended) Amount of Memory to operate: 384 K (Minimum) Computers that product runs on: The MS/PC-DOS Family of Computers Program Functions: Turbo C features a full integrated development environment, as well as a command line compiler/linker/make development envronment. Some Features include: -- Full ANSI C standards -- Integrated Development (With editor) -- Command Line Compiler, Linker -- Fast Compiler using Memory instead of Disk -- Full Featured Libraries (See Below) -- Make Utility -- Lint Utility Program Upgrades: First Version Introduced. Obtaining Program: Turbo C can be purchased from Borland Intl, or most computer software stores, (mail order as well). Product Availability: Turbo C is a Commercial Program. You must purchase a copy of it. Turbo C V. 1.0 Cost: $ 99.95 Borland International (Retail) 4585 Scotts Valley Drive Scotts Valley, CA 95066-9987 1-800-255-8008 -- 1-800-742-1133 (in CA) Product Support: Borland offers various support for Turbo C. They are available on Compuserve (type: GO BOR), or by US Mail [Attn: Tech Service Dept] at above address. Program Quality -- "The reviewer's opinion of the product" FidoNews 4-25 Page 23 6 Jul 1987 After using Microsoft C (4.00) for only the period of December - May 1987, and only having that much experience with C itself, I can't say I'm very qualified to speak of a C compiler. Currently, however, I (we) have switched over to Turbo C from MSC because of the advantages of the Integrated Package. The 2 books that come with Turbo C (A "User's Guide", and a "Reference Guide" -- In Softbound book form), are easier for a novice to digest than the MSC. The User's Guide devotes a full chapter to the Turbo Pascal User who is just getting into C (a nice chapter to include!) with examples side by side of Turbo Pascal, and Turbo C. The Reference book goes through the Libraries, and the ANSI language extentions that Turbo C provides, complete with examples on selected material. I found the libraries to have more useable functions than the MSC. Such as: BIOSCOM (comm ports), BIOSEQUIP (equipment), BIOSDISK (Disk I/O), BIOSMEMORY (Memory Size), FILELENGTH (filesize in bytes), FINDFIRST (First filename in dir), FINDNEXT (next in dir) [both return a structure of the DIR information, EG: Attrib, time, date, size, name], FNMERGE (Filename Merge -- name with path), FNSPLIT (Filename split -- name and path), POKE (send value to mem), LOCALTIME (converts date/time to struct), and others..... Needed Improvements: A CodeView type Debugger, or make the code CodeView compatible. Help screens could be better written/designed, and be referenced more (EG: See xxx for more details). There are others, but lets not detract on a good review for some minor adjustments. Overall: A worthy opponent to MSC 4.00. Should be interesting to see how well the "establishment" views it. Excellent purchase for the "novice" C programmer, and for the experienced C programmer. PS: Some of those who might have assumed that this was vaporware, were wrong. There's no way that they could have put this product out that quickly, because of it's quality. FidoNews 4-25 Page 24 6 Jul 1987 Reviewer: David Gilbert (Sysop) RAM-SOFT BBS (135/1) (305) 226-3310 (2400 b) RAM-SOFT Archive Library (now over 1,300+) ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 25 6 Jul 1987 Steve Townsley Opus / SEAdog 2:510/17 CCITT V21,V23,V22,V22bis Does IFNA Matter Outside The USA ? One of the interesting observations made about the USA from this side of the Atlantic is your use of grand titles. I refer particularly to things like 'The First National Bank of Smallville'. In the online world 'The Source' sounds like some great prophet from the Ten Commandments rather than a computer information bank. Equally we English can also get confused with the 'World Series' and in FidoNet 'The International FidoNet Association', incorporated in Missouri !!?? In fact, after last years' conference at Colerado Springs IFNA looked a lot like the World Series. (A strange game with a grand title that only Americans played.) People began writing in FidoNews that WE had created a new international organisation. Others talked of a kind of new Mafia wanting to 'control' the net. The surprising thing was in the echomail conferences that got to this side of the Atlantic this bitching was even worse because it was seen out of context, without any common reference points. Then the by-laws arrived. Well, my users thought it was a good laugh. I took a copy of the by-laws and put them up on my system, that provoked some interest. As a foreign language exercise it was quite interesting to try to discover what the by-laws were actual saying about an INTERNATIONAL association. That hurdle was followed by further waves of apathy, if you can have apathic enthusiasm, for the interim elections to the board of directors. Of course the major problems faced by British sysops were; how do I get reliable communications with the USA, what happens when Fido cannot handle the nodelist, how can we participate in helping to develop Fido Compatible software, what is the Usenet gateway and are there other gateways? Then later on we wanted to know: what is Opus, how can we get news about it, participate and help those in the USA working on software for it, what do Help nodes actually do(!), how can I join IFNA as a foreign sysop ? I could add a further 1001 pratical questions that we, as Net 510 Hosts, have dealt with over the year since the Colorado Conference including the almost daily use of Norton Utilities to get Fido to PULSE DIAL instead of TONE when a new sysop gets a distribution copy of Fido, (which of course he has wrongly guessed does not work!). FidoNews 4-25 Page 26 6 Jul 1987 Yet, we have grown. One year ago only one Net (503) in the UK now there are four nets, new sysops, new ideas. Some of the old favourites like Frank Thornley of Compulink have gone on to very different things far outside FidoNet. At present IFNA matters little to the UK sysop. The day to day struggle of getting batch files to terminate for odd combinations of mailer programs is the main pre-occupation. If we want to just be in the nodelist , then "prune" and "nodesiev" are the weekly routine of running a Email-ing BBS so that it can indeed Email someone! My most common requests as Host are for cut down customised nodelists, ie a nodelist that includes Europe and Australia (its a shame that Texas won't fit on, with the 1200 limit!). However there is hope. The new sysops in the UK, like ourselves, joined FidoNet in order to talk to the world. Little things like an incomprehensible constitution, poor communication of International aims in IFNA, illegal non-standard modems (sorry Ma-Bell), and the whole of the world outside North America dropping off the nodelist won't stop us. IFNA does stand a chance. If you have a good conference, report accurately what you discuss, explain your decisions and argue in 'friendly' way we may even take what you do seriously. There is a massive expansion of FidoNet in Europe and most of it is new blood. If you involve us, however remotely, in the decisions which affect the software we have on our systems you may get an international association. To those of you, both for and against the IFNA, the case for membership, even for existance at all has not yet even been put to Europeans in a way we can respond to. A lively conference where you concentrate on all Fido's, not just North America, will help people over here see relevance in what you do. I personally think IFNA could be a big worldwide organisation of amateur computer communications enthusiasts associated via FidoNet. I want to join. By running a successful conference please encourage us to want to get others over here to join too. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 27 6 Jul 1987 I was thinking of fun things to do and decided to officially create an un official organization for the elimination of UN_FUN. Now this isn't an easy task, first I had to define what the major objectives would be. First to mind was just eliminate all those things in our lives and hobbies that aren't fun. After giving that some thought I realized that most of us don't know how to have fun so if we eliminated the UN_FUN aspects we would have nothing left. So the next idea (and the one I like the most (I don't work too hard on any problem)) was to replace the doldrums with something fun to do. What that means is if your getting tired of doing something, don't just stop doing it but find some way to improve it. The second major objective would be to eliminate the UN_FUN being forced upon us by UN_FUN people, when someone gets on our case just tell them they are vying for the UN_FUN person of the week award. We will have a vote, not tally the results and tell everyone nominated that they won. Hopefully they can be brought into the societies fold. Maybe we will have contests and guest speakers on how to have fun once again and award the winners and speakers with a resounding round of laughter. Now I know many of you are going to want to join this elite organization so I will tell you what you need to do to become a FUN person. First of all have a good laugh, second take the sacred OATH. Repeat after me "I am a FUN person and I vow to eliminate UN_FUN where ever I may encounter it." There, now you are a member. Lastly comes the matter of money, we all know how important this organization is, so what I think would be fair is that you allocate $25.00 and take someone out for a FUN time, maybe the kids to a miniature golf course, or the wife out to dinner. Remember though that you have to have FUN or it doesn't count. Lastly (this time for real), you can tell people that you belong to a non secret organization dedicated to the overthrow of UN_FUN in your signature. Bill President and Chairman of the Board of FUN, an elite organization for the elimination of UN_FUN. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 28 6 Jul 1987 Jean Coppola 107/201 US Naval Observatory Time Now Available UPDATE.EXE is a utility to load the exact time generated by the U.S Naval Observatory time clock directly into your PC's DOS CLOCK. The program accesses your modem and calls Washington, D.C. When the USNO answers it spits out repetitively the date and time. This version does not extract the date. A future version will. If you really want time accuracy then this is the program for you. It has been designed to work as an eXternal event from both opus and seadog systems. I heard about this service USNO had, so I thought I would try to use it to my advantage and this program is the result. NOTE: If you have a clock calendar card, that will have to be reset by whatever software came with it. Only the DOS clock gets updated. Credit has to be given to Bill Boyer for steering me in the proper direction. This and many other fine utilties are available on 107/201. Request UPDATE.ARC from 107/201 for this program. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 29 6 Jul 1987 NEW FIDO(tm) OPUS(tm) SEADOG(tm) UTILITY COMPLETE Message Editor for FIDO(TM) OPUS(tm) and SEADOG(tm) systems...released by the S1S Partnership Project: Rits Board (314)-426-7144 OPUS/SEAdog 100/510 Broadcast Software (314)-427-4064 Fido 100/517 Complete pre-registration release of MSGDB will be available for downloading from these two boards on May 25th, 1987. What IS MSGDB ??? MSGDB allows you to change the attributes on each message in each area you have set up. The following can be changed with MSGDB: private/public crash recv'd sent file attached forward orphan kill/sent local hold res/sent file request recpt request return recpt request audit You can also change FROM, TO, SUBJECT, COST, and # READ. PLUS (there's more!)... how many times have you wanted to easily move a message from one area to another without complicated batch procedures, renaming and/or renumbering? MSGDB allows you to move a message to another area, and gives you the option to leave the original message in the original area, or delete it and keep it only in the new area. How are we distributing it? Well, for those of you that keep up with the Sysop echo, we kind of like Bob Hartmans' idea of FLIRTWARE. We'll have a working copy available on May 25th for downloading on both of the boards listed. The Rits Board also uses SEAdog, so you can file request it from area 8. The copy you will get will do most of the basic editing functions, and will come with some limited docs. We're going to ask for a registration of $20.00, and this is to cover cost of updates and new releases, plus the time we're taking to offer such a FANTASTIC Utility. (you know how it goes). Registered owners will be sent a FULL BLOWN working copy that will do everything but blow your nose, along with FULL documentation. FidoNews 4-25 Page 30 6 Jul 1987 There are more utilities in the works, and registered users will be automatically sent out copies of new Utilities from the S1S Partnership Project. By the way, if you haven't yet sent Bob Hartman $35.00 for the full set of the FASTSCAN series, it's well worth it. Saves MUCH time on scanning and tossing. One more thing. MSGDB obviously is a SysOp only utility. We thought long and hard on whether or not to include the ability to change a private message to a public message. It is our conclusion that it should be there, for one important reason. Many times newer users will ask technical/help questions privately to another user or to the SysOp. These questions, and later answers, would in most cases be beneficial to ALL users. If you have any thoughts on this, communicate to us through the SysOp echo. Mark Peters 100/510 Glen Jackson 100/517 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 31 6 Jul 1987 ================================================================= COLUMNS ================================================================= Eric Ewanco, private SEAdog 130/3 Borland's Turbo C: Review, part 1 For a long, long, time, Borland has promised us Turbo C. Ever since I contracted a passion for learning C, I have been dying to get it. I have finally realized that dream. And I must say, in all truthfulness, Turbo C is *THE* compiler of the century. Turbo C is what we've all been waiting for. Many people, include myself to some extent, were disappointed with Turbo BASIC. Somewhat bug-ridden, non-standard, and to a degree weak (keep in mind I'm speaking from a "C and Pascal snob"'s point of view), it reflected the usual disadvantages of all BASICs. Don't let Turbo BASIC give you a bad impression of Turbo C. Turbo C is all that you would expect in a good C compiler. Borland has long been known for fast compiling and executing, inexpensive compilers, packed features, good documentation, and excellent customer acknowledgement. However, they are also known for non-linking, non-libraries, non-standards, and compilers that just don't fit in well. Turbo C ends all that. Before I got Turbo C, I feared that it would be packed with annoying "extensions" and be essentially another language only similar to C, like Turbo Pascal. Do that was fine for Pascal, but C is different; I thought if Philippe tried to make a splash with a new twist to C, he'd drown. But all my fears have been laid to rest. Turbo C is ENTIRELY K&R C, with almost all UNIX functions implemented by MicroSoft C (what I considered the very best compiler and closest to UNIX, a consideration I may have to rethink) and a full implementation of ANSI draft C. (ANSI C has not been approved; it is only a draft, so a conformity to "ANSI C" cannot be claimed, only to "ANSI C draft.") Turbo C also offers many more functions, surprisingly, they are along the lines of the UNIX functions that MS C missed and some nice hardware dependent stuff. Borland did not forget that C is a low level language and was meant to be hardware oriented, a concept that if neglected could be fatal for marketing. Philippe in his infinite insight did not neglect that concept. I have found no glaring bugs in Turbo C that I didn't already know about; and in fact, one bug that was listed on the Borland forum I tried to correct and it was already corrected. Another I saw in Echomail had to do with some obscure convolution of the environment, but not something you'd run into every day, or even in a year, probably. I have complete faith that any bugs that ARE in there will be corrected in the usual Borland style, with upgrades sent free to users with bugged versions. RUN TIME LIBRARY FidoNews 4-25 Page 32 6 Jul 1987 The run time library is the most complete I've seen, with over 300 functions. Strangely missing, but not very missed, are the Borland screen I/O, graphics, sound, and other extensions found in Turbo Pascal, Turbo BASIC, and Turbo Prolog. Since C is a language not meant for such applications, I will not miss it. Turbo Pascal 4.0 will surely have them, and have them in a library we can steal from. Borland does offer some striking functions. For instance, the much-needed findfirst() and findnext() functions are included, used for processing wildcard specs. searchpath() will search the current directory then the PATH spec for a specified file. keep() will terminate and stay resident and take care of the nasty memory cleanup. hardxxxx() routines are used for handling annoying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" errors. fnmerge() and fnsplit() process a file spec and its individual components; drive, path, filename, and extension. getpass() is a conio function that prints a prompt, disables echo, reads in up to 8 characters, and returns them in a string. Absolute disk i/o is supported. You can get and set a file's time or date. Set the DOS time or date. Get country dependent information. Binary search, quick sort, and linear searches. Signals. printf with pointer value display. Math error trapping. Sharing and locking. Get FAT information. Many time functions. Get disk free space. Full and complete string functions. Sleep so many seconds. Set interrupt vector. And every function in MS C except 4 functions (mentioned below). Every one is labelled with portability considerations and cross references. It also supports predefined macros that expand to compile time, compile date, Turbo C version number, line number, source file name, memory model, ANSI C compatibility, and much more. COMPATIBILITY As far as I can see, Turbo C is virtually identical to MS C with the exception of a few functions. Some functions are named differently in Turbo C and Borland was very thoughtful and included #defines in the header files to take care of this. The only glaring exception is that signal() is implemented as ssignal(), but as far as I can see that's the only difference. Turbo C has an explicit method for handling control break, but I'm not sure if it can be done via ssignal() like it can in MS C. The functions I found not supported explicitly in Turbo C that are found in MS C are the following: tempname(), tmpfile(), tmpname() (mktemp and creattemp exist) rmtemp() onexit (implemented as atexit()) and that's about all. Turbo C is not wimpy; it implements all global variables MS C does (error strings, error numbers, _osmajor, _osminor, __LINE__, __FILE__, sys_errno, etc.). In porting MS C programs to Turbo C I had little problem, even programs from a book published by MicroSoft Press for MS C (as soon as I changed the signal() to ssignal()). Turbo C offers ANSI only code generation (disable extensions), optimization FidoNews 4-25 Page 33 6 Jul 1987 speed/space, optimization of redundant jumps and reorganization of loops and switch statements (don't ask), turn off stack checking, string merging (ever wonder why two string constants with the exact same value take up separate places in the object file? Turbo C resolves that), suppression of "redundant load operations by remembering the contents of registers and reusing them as often as possible," nesting of comments, nesting of #includes, selectable 1-32 significant character identifiers, 80186 instructions, enabling/disabling of 27 different warnings (including unreachable code, code has no effect, 'x' is assigned a value that is never used, function should return a value, possibly incorrect assignment (like "if (a=b)", usually an error) and various portability warnings), assembly code output, and enable/disable register variables. Clearly Turbo C is no wimp. Turbo C also includes startup source, a main() that does not access the library, and a statement saying you can get the complete library source licensed for $295. I get the sincere impression that Turbo C will be well supported. Do I see a source code debugger in the works? Next week I'll discuss the environment, benchmarks, codesize, and hardware interfacing (writing interrupts, TSRing, converting to .COM files, inline assembler, etc.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 34 6 Jul 1987 -- The Regular Irregular Column -- Dale Lovell 157/504 This has not been a good week. I'm beginning to believe that I'm cursed. It started out well enough, but come the weekend it became a disaster. As a result, I didn't have a chance to look over too many of the new products that have arrived here. Maybe by next week I'll have looked over some of it. In the meantime, I've learned a lot over the past week and taken a look at one very interesting program. -- The Curse -- It started off innocently enough, with a visit to my local dealer Friday night. While I was there he showed me one of the new AT clones he's just starting to carry in quantity. He's usually had two or three AT clones in at any one point in the past, but since the prices started dropping he's decided to change over. Instead of stocking XT clones in quantity, he's going to start stocking a variety of AT clones. This wasn't a major revelation to me. In the past year prices have dropped dramatically. A year and a half ago I bought my first IBM compatible system from him, and have been very pleased with it. It has never given me any trouble, and he's always been able to help me when it came time to expand (hard drive, modem, etc.). The problem is that I can now get an AT for what I paid for my XT a year ago. Since he was finally buying ATs in quantity, his priced had dropped to something I could afford. I'd been able to afford an AT for some time but didn't want to go the mail-order route. My dealer has always been able to help me out when I had any questions, and usually lets me look over any software package I'm interested in buying (in the store). Well, I decided to take one home that night. He tried talking me out of it because the first shipment of ATs had just come in, and none of the machines had been tested yet. My problem is that I'm impatient. We opened up one of them (a 10 mhz machine none the less) and hooked everything up and tested it. Fifteen minutes later I was satisfied that everything was working and talked him into letting me take it home that night. Saturday was spent transferring boards and the data on the hard drive between my old XT and the AT. This took a while as I wanted to make sure everything came through this minor surgery in one piece. After everything was transferred I called up a friend who had been drooling over the XT and proceeded to sell him my old machine. MAJOR MISTAKE!!! Later that night the keyboard on the new system died (or close to it). I had a meeting after work on Monday night and it wasn't until Tuesday that I was able to get back to the store and swap keyboards. In the meantime the system stayed up (for my night calls) and polled my host for mail. I was even able to get the AUTOEXEC.BAT file set up to automatically bring up SEAdog in case of a power failure. The problem was I wasn't able to get any work done on this column until Wednesday (the day I usually send 'em off to Thom). There are two lessons I learned from this experience. 1) Never rush your local dealer, they FidoNews 4-25 Page 35 6 Jul 1987 usually know what's best and 2) Never get rid of your old equipment until you've been using your new equipment for some time. Please don't make the same mistake that I made. My dealer, and hopefully yours, was very understanding when I got back and promptly gave me a new keyboard. I am very glad that I didn't pick up the system from a mail-order company. It could have taken over a week with everything being sent through UPS. -- QubeCalc (FormalWare Co. $49.95 Registration) -- Ever since Visicalc was introduced, everyone has tried to improve on the basic idea. Multiplan added sorting to the spreadsheet, and Lotus added graphing capabilities. That pretty much sums up all the improvements made to spreadsheets in over 5 years. I was pretty much convinced that the area had been "panned out" until I came across QubeCalc. While QubeCalc can't cover as much 2 dimensional space as something like Lotus 1-2-3, it does do some things that Lotus (and many other expensive, commercial spreadsheets) can't do. Since the product is marketed under the shareware/user supported software/etc. plan, you should be able to download from a local board and decide if it will work for you. If it does, send in $49.95 and you'll receive the latest version, the full typeset manual (a partial manual is included in the publicly distributed program) and they'll make sure you know about any updates or new versions as they come out. The basic difference in QubeCalc is that it isn't limited to the two dimensions of most commercial spreadsheets. Instead of representing one page, QubeCalc represents several pages stacked on top of each other. This means you no longer have to arrange your spreadsheet with every month's data being in another section of the page. Instead you can have a different page for each month with the sums of a section going "down" instead of scattering them over a spreadsheet. You don't have to remember how you organized the years statements, instead each month or weeks statement is on its own "page" with one page being a grand total of all the pages. QubeCalc also lets you rotate the data so you could turn the "pages" into a column with the old columns becoming the pages. I've never seen a program that allows you to rotate and analyze data before, so I'm pretty impressed! Some of the other features that I've been impressed with include the capability to recalc a specific block of the "spreadcube" (my term, not theirs), and a DataFill command that can generate all types of curves (versus a constant step rate). I've been using the product for several days and have been wishing I had acquired it a year earlier. I had been working as a night auditor for a hotel and ended up spending most of a day working on a spreadsheet to generate my daily report. My problems all came about because of the three dimensions of my report (month-to-date totals, daily totals, and column of figures). It would have greatly simplified my life if I could have gone in, instead I had to go sideways like crazy. This program could have saved me several hours of work. This brings up the major strength of QubeCalc. Since it has several pages of data, you can EASILY have it generate regular reports without having to worry about FidoNews 4-25 Page 36 6 Jul 1987 going sideways or down and possibly running out of room before the end of the week/month/year. The only limitation is the version I was given (version 1.01) only handles a cube of 64x64x64. This means you can go to 64 columns, 64 rows and 64 pages. This limits you to 262,144 cells. While this may not sound like much, think about how many reports you do that would exceed this limit. I don't think it would be very many (if any at all). While I don't think it's a serious limitation, I do hope that it has or will be increased in the near future. I had no problem becoming used to QubeCalc's commands. Just about anyone who is familiar with Lotus 1-2-3 should be able to use it without any problem. My only difficulty was that all formulas start out with the equals sign ("="), and I'm too used to starting my equations with either an "@" sign or a plus sign. Many of the menus look similar to Lotus, and as long as you read the menus instead of trying to operate on "full auto" it shouldn't be that difficult to use. The setup program included allows you to set it up to run from any directory (it has overlays and needs to know where they are) and set the screen colors to your personal preferences. The installation program does a nice job of letting you "personalize" the program. I've seen quite a few commercial programs that were nowhere near as friendly as QubeCalc. Overall it is a very impressive program. Anyone who is dealing with a regularly prepared report should look into QubeCalc as it can often handle these reports easier than many commercial spreadsheets. Consider the $49.95 price, and you come out far ahead on my spreadcube! -- Winding down -- Unfortunately, I spent the most of the weekend without a machine, so I didn't have a chance to look over any games this week. I did have a chance to go over several books and found several I enjoyed. One of those was "Programmer's at Work, 1st Series" with interviews by Susan Lammers (Microsoft Press, list price $14.95). This is another of the books like "Hackers" or "The Soul of a New Machine." Instead of concentrating on a particular program, language, or technique; it looks at the people who are actually creating these strange machines (and programs). Some of the more well known names include Bill Gates (one of the founders of Microsoft) and Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc and Dan Bricklin's Demo Program). Each "chapter" is an interview with a programmer and starts off with some background on the individual. Each programmer was asked to donate some actual piece of work. While most of the code pieces are incomplete, there are a few "complete" pieces of work that can be keyed in and run. I found the book fascinating, as I learned the design concepts behind several of today's most popular programs or the beginnings of some major advances in personal computing. If you enjoyed the other people computer books I've looked at, here is one more you should consider adding to your library. That ties it up for this week. I'd enjoy hearing what you think on anything I've written about (or missed writing about). Many thanks go out to the many of you who have been reading my FidoNews 4-25 Page 37 6 Jul 1987 column on Usenet. I try to respond to all the mail received, although I do miss one every now and then. Below you'll find my US mail, FidoNet, and uucp address (I now have several more sites for you Usenet people). FidoNet people should route mail to me through 157/1 or 157/0 as I'm a private node. Dale Lovell 3266 Vezber Drive Seven Hills, OH 44131 FidoNet: 157/504 (or 1:157/504.1 for an extended address) uucp: decvax\ >!cwruecmp!hal\ cbosgd/ >!ncoast!lovell /--!necntc/ ames---\ / talcott \/ harvard / sri-nic/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 38 6 Jul 1987 ================================================================= FOR SALE ================================================================= Jean Coppola Sysop 107/201 Computer & Software Package For Sale ==================================== Panansonic Sr. Partner 640K Internal Ram 8087 Co-Processor Installed Built In Printer Built-in Monochrome Monitor Two 5 1/4 Inch Drives One 22 Megabyte Hard Drive Tandy RGB Color Monitor Hayes Type 1200 Baud External Modem All Cables, Power Cords, Etc; Software Included In Above Package ==================================== PC DOS 3.1 Software Carousel MS DOS 3.2 Print Shop Turbo Prolog Lotus 1-2-3 Disk Optimizer dBase III+ Cubit Norton Utilities Microsoft Windows Mace Utilities Microsoft Quick Basic Compiler Norton Commander Copywrite Doctor Dos SEAdog PcTools DoubleDos 1Dir SuperKey Fastback NewsRoom Pro Turbo Pascal IBM PC LAN And Much Much More...... Best Offer Over $1200.00 Gets This Package Contact Sysop 107/201 For More Details, etc; ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 39 6 Jul 1987 ================================================================= NOTICES ================================================================= The Interrupt Stack 1 Aug 1987 Third Annual BBS Picnic in Edison, NJ. Please register before July 10th. Admission is $7 for adults, $4 for 12 and under, free for 5 and under. Contact John Kelley at 107/331 for details. 20 Aug 1987 Start of the Fourth International FidoNet Conference, to be held at the Radisson Mark Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, VA. Contact Brian Hughes at 109/634 for more information. This is FidoNet's big annual get-together, and is your chance to meet all the people you've been talking with all this time. We're hoping to see you there! 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to FidoNet node 1:1/1. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sorry to say that Edition 103 of echolist will be delayed... Since I'll be on vacation July 5-11 I don't expect to have every thing done til sometime around July 20th (I hope). Again sorry for the delay! ----------------------------------------------------------------- If it wasn't the middle of the summer, I would have sworn that issue 4-24 of Fidnews was an April fools issue. The editorial was a bit of a downer but the rest of the issue was uniformly light harted. Could it be that our editor actually edited that issue instead of the old FIFO system? Could it be that our editor just was fed up with trojan hackers and disk crashes and decided to celebrate April 1 on June 29? Will we ever know? Do we want to know? Why am I asking all the questions? Why don't I find something usefull to do? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Latest Software Versions BBS Systems Node List Other FidoNews 4-25 Page 40 6 Jul 1987 & Mailers Version Utilities Version Utilities Version Dutchie 2.51* EDITNL 3.3 ARC 5.21* Fido 11w LISTGEN 05.25.86 ARCmail 0.60 Opus 0.00 Prune 1.40 EchoMail 1.31 SEAdog 4.00 RouteGen 2.81* FastEcho 2.00* TBBS 2.0M* TestList 8.3* Renum 3.30 XlatList 2.81* * Recently changed Utility authors: Please help keep this list as current as possible by reporting new versions to 1:1/1. It is not our intent to list all utilities here, only those which verge on necessity. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 41 6 Jul 1987 OFFICIAL REGISTRATION FORM FOURTH INTERNATIONAL FIDONET CONFERENCE RADISSON MARK PLAZA HOTEL ALEXANDRIA, VA. AUGUST 20 - 23, 1987 Name _________________________________ Date _____________ Address ______________________________ City & State _________________________ Phone (Voice) ________________________ Net/Node Number ______________________ Phone (Data) _________________________ Number in Your Party _________________ Staying at the Radisson? _____________ Number of Rooms? _____________________ Arrival Date? ________________________ Departure Date? ______________________ Registration Fees: How Many Total Full Conference $60.00 each ________ $________ Late registration $10.00 each ________ $________ (after Aug. 1) Friday Night Banquet $30.00 each ________ $________ Saturday Luncheon $16.50 each ________ $________ Total Amount Included (Registration and Meals) $________ IFNA MEMBERS ONLY: How many in your party will be attending the Sunday morning Board of Directors meeting? ________ Send your registration form and a check or money order to: Fourth International FidoNet Conference 212 E. Capitol St., Washington, D.C. 20003 Attn: Brian H. Hughes -- voice: (202) 543-4200 This registration form does not include hotel accomodations. If you wish to stay at the Radisson Mark Plaza Hotel, please contact them directly and mention you are with the FidoNet Conference. Conference room rates are $80/night for single or double occupancy, and $20/night for an extra cot. Radisson Mark Plaza Hotel 5000 Seminary Rd., Alexandria, Va. 22311 1-800-228-9822 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-25 Page 42 6 Jul 1987 INTERNATIONAL FIDONET ASSOCIATION ORDER FORM Publications The IFNA publications can be obtained by downloading from Fido 1/10 or other FidoNet compatible systems, or by purchasing them directly from IFNA. We ask that all our IFNA Committee Chairmen provide us with the latest versions of each publication, but we can make no written guarantees. Hardcopy prices as of October 1, 1986 IFNA Fido BBS listing $15.00 _____ IFNA Administrative Policy DOCs $10.00 _____ IFNA FidoNet Standards Committee DOCs $10.00 _____ SUBTOTAL _____ IFNA Member ONLY Special Offers System Enhancement Associates SEAdog $60.00 _____ SEAdog price as of March 1, 1987 ONLY 1 copy SEAdog per IFNA Member International orders include $5.00 for surface shipping or $15.00 for air shipping _____ SUBTOTAL _____ Mo. Residents add 5.725 % Sales tax _____ TOTAL _____ SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO: IFNA P.O. Box 41143 St. Louis, Missouri 63141 USA Name________________________________ Net/Node____/____ Company_____________________________ Address_____________________________ City____________________ State____________ Zip_____ Voice Phone_________________________ Signature___________________________ FidoNews 4-25 Page 43 6 Jul 1987 *IFNA Membership Application __ The World's First / \ BBS Network /|oo \ * FidoNet * (_| /_) _`@/_ \ _ | | \ \\ | (*) | \ )) ______ |__U__| / \// / Fido \ _//|| _\ / (________) (_/(_|(____/ (jm) Membership for the International FidoNet Association Membership in IFNA is open to any individual or organization that pays an annual specified membership fee. IFNA serves the international FidoNet-compatible electronic mail community to increase worldwide communications. ** Name _________________________________ Date ________ Address ______________________________ City & State _________________________ Country_______________________________ Phone (Voice) ________________________ Net/Node Number ______________________ Board Name____________________________ Phone (Data) _________________________ Baud Rate Supported___________________ Board Restrictions____________________ Special Interests_____________________ ______________________________________ ______________________________________ Is there some area where you would be willing to help out in FidoNet?_______ ______________________________________ ______________________________________ Send your membership form and a check or money order for $25 to: International FidoNet Association P. O. Box 41143 St Louis, Missouri 63141 USA Thank you for your membership! Your participation will help to insure the future of FidoNet. ** Please NOTE that IFNA is a general not-for-profit organization in formation and Articles of Association and By-Laws were adopted by the membership in January 1987. An Elections Committee has been established to fill positions outlined in the By-Laws for the Board of Directors. An IFNA Echomail Conference has been established on FidoNet to assist the Elections Committee. We welcome your input on this Conference. FidoNews 4-25 Page 44 6 Jul 1987 -----------------------------------------------------------------