F I D O N E W S -- | Vol. 9 No. 28 (13 July 1992) The newsletter of the | FidoNet BBS community | Published by: _ | / \ | "FidoNews" BBS /|oo \ | (415)-863-2739 (_| /_) | FidoNet 1:1/1 _`@/_ \ _ | Internet: | | \ \\ | fidonews@fidonews.fidonet.org | (*) | \ )) | |__U__| / \// | Editors: _//|| _\ / | Tom Jennings (_/(_|(____/ | Tim Pozar (jm) | | | Newspapers should have no friends. | -- JOSEPH PULITZER ----------------------------+--------------------------------------- Published weekly by and for the Members of the FidoNet international amateur network. Copyright 1992, Fido Software. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact FidoNews. Electronic Price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . free! Paper price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.00US For more information about FidoNews refer to the end of this file. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ..................................................... 1 Editorial: Remotely yours ..................................... 1 2. ARTICLES ...................................................... 2 So, You wanna be a sysop? ..................................... 2 PreRapture International Message Exchange (PRIME) ............. 3 3. LATEST VERSIONS ............................................... 5 Software Versions List ........................................ 5 4. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .......................................... 6 FidoNews 9-28 Page 1 13 Jul 1992 ====================================================================== EDITORIAL ====================================================================== Editorial: Remotely yours by Tom Jennings (1:1/1) Your intrepid reporter is still (still) at a secret remote location somewhere in the Specific NorthWest. This will be the last week that FidoNews is done remotely at this time. Amazingly enough, when I called in, expecting the usual, weekly NO CARRIER, it all worked! I started extra early today, assuming everything would go wrong. A nice short Snooze today. One article, one echo announcement. The BBS here answered the phone. Assuming it does a second time (one call I read mail, move articles around; I hang up, write this gunk; second call I upload it and produce the FidoSnooze file) I might even get out of here this afternoon! It look like the modemectomy that Tim Pozar performed last week on FidoNews BBS (1:1/1) worked -- the patient survived. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 9-28 Page 2 13 Jul 1992 ====================================================================== ARTICLES ====================================================================== by Scott Munhollon, 1:128/66@Fidonet A day in the life of a sysop. June 30, 1992 I came into work this morning to find my BBS had crashed during midnight maintenence. This happens about once every two weeks now, I have a little utility that counts how many times a file has been downloaded and inserts the number into my FILES.BBS listings, it runs at midnight, about every 2 weeks I come in to see it staring at me from the screen. It's been sitting there since midnight. Ususally a reboot and a re-run of the midnight batchfile clears it up. Not today. I have removed it from the midnight event and am in desperate search of a new one that works. For some unforseen reason there was no backbone echomail yesterday, this is very unsettling to my users, they are experiencing withdrawl symptoms without their 24 hour fix of mail, I just answered 3 messages explaining that there would probably be double the mail today. Since I poll between midnight and 5:00am for national mail there is none today, the download counter was counting downloads all night. I'll have to force a poll during daytime fone rates again so my users don't die from lack of echomail. So I do the poll. It looks like my new V.32bis modem will only work reliably when it's locked at 19,200bps, it's supposed be able to lock at 57,600, it errors out when I lock it above 19,200, it won't accept a 16500 UART chip. So much for trying to save a dime by bying the cheapest one out there. I can't wait to see the errors when I add a second line and run this modem under desqview. A customer is here, she insists that she brought the power cord in when she dropped her computer off for a hard disk upgrade. I pull a spare one out of my surge protector that the BBS is plugged into. WRONG CORD, I just unplugged my BBS. It was tossing 2 megs of national mail. Shit. Plug it back in, D'Bridge continues tossing the mail, the second of 2 packets that came in. What happened to the first meg of mail? It's in the bit bucket, I wonder if my message base is still intact? Mail tossing is complete, 653 messages, it should have been 3653 messages. I Undelete the mail bundles that D'Bridge had deleted when it tossed them, there's only 1, the second one, Where's the first one? The bit bucket, that's where. I Run CHKDSK/F, found 956,546 bytes in 1 lost chain, convert it to a file? YES. FidoNews 9-28 Page 3 13 Jul 1992 I run PKZIPFIX FILE0000.CHK, then PKUNZIP PKFIXED.ZIP, 2 PKT files extracted, the third one fails CRC check and PKUNZIP aborts. I move the packets to my inbound files directory and run D'Bridge. D'Bridge tosses another 1000 or so messages, I'm still missing about 2500 messages, oh well, I read somewhere that echomail is like Dorito's, They'll make more, lots more. My C: drive is making funny noises, sounds like bearings. I loaned my tape backup to my brother a while back, I don't have a backup of my hard disk. I fill another cup of coffee and look at my printer, it's buried under a mountain of tractor feed paper, why? When the download counter locked up it apparently started the printer, it printed the screen continuosly until it ran out of paper, about 500 sheets, probably printed for hours. I look for my cigarette lighter, my cigarette is already lit, I'm going to burn that mountain of paper along with the printer. Two nodes in our net lost hardware due to lightning this week. Our NEC lost everything but his HST modem, this was our nets HUB for national echomail, luckily he had spare hardware to bring it back online by the next day. He is praying to the good hands people that the insurance will cover it. I don't have insurance. I have a 2 year old surge protector. My modem is not protected. Our NC lost 2 HST modems yesterday, probably lightning. I have worse thunderstorms in my area than they do. It's 10am, I light my 6th cigarette this hour, I smoke non-filters, I'm 28 years old, I feel like I'm 50. Well, it's time to read my daily mail... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Winter 98:98/1 Please spread this info around. Thanks!! 'The sun never sets on the PRIME network' -={ PreRapture(tm) International Message Exchange }=- USA, HONG KONG, SINGAPORE, BELGIUM, RUSSIA, BULGARIA, and growing. * Both Religious (Christian) and non-religious conferences. * A wholesome, family oriented network with a strict policy against profanity, lewdness, obscenity etc.. Features echos on educational and technical topics. * Elaborate Bible Discussion and Debate * False Preachers Exposed * FidoNews 9-28 Page 4 13 Jul 1992 919-286-3962 * 919-286-3606 * 919-286-3266 Using USRobotics Dual Standard Modems HST 16800 / V.32bis 14400 * FREQ PRIME.ZIP from 98:98/1 or 1:227/150@FidoNet for network kit * This should work as a private nodelist (PreRapture BBS was illegally dropped from the FidoNet nodelist by corrupt FidoNet officials) : Zone,98,PRIME_IC,USA,Steve_Winter,1-919-286-3962,9600,CM,HST,V32b,UIC ,1,PreRapture_BBS,Durham,Steve_Winter,1-919-286-3962,9600,CM,HST,V32b ,2,PreRapture_BBS_2,Durham,Steve_Winter,1-919-286-3606,9600,CM,HST,V32b ,3,PreRapture_BBS_3,Durham,Steve_Winter,1-919-286-3266,9600,CM,HST,V32b ,4,PreRapture_BBS_4,Durham,Steve_Winter,1-919-286-4617,9600,CM,HST,V32b ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 9-28 Page 5 13 Jul 1992 ====================================================================== LATEST VERSIONS ====================================================================== Software Versions List Please refer to the article in this issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 9-28 Page 6 13 Jul 1992 ====================================================================== FIDONEWS INFORMATION ====================================================================== ------- FIDONEWS MASTHEAD AND CONTACT INFORMATION ---------------- Editors: Tom Jennings, Tim Pozar Editors Emeritii: Thom Henderson, Dale Lovell, Vince Perriello "FidoNews" BBS FidoNet 1:1/1 Internet fidonews@fidonews.fidonet.org BBS (415)-863-2739 (9600 HST/V32) (Postal Service mailing address) FidoNews Box 77731 San Francisco CA 94107 USA Published weekly by and for the Members of the FidoNet international amateur electronic mail system. It is a compilation of individual articles contributed by their authors or their authorized agents. The contribution of articles to this compilation does not diminish the rights of the authors. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of FidoNews. FidoNews is copyright 1992 Fido Software. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact FidoNews (we're easy). OBTAINING COPIES: FidoNews in electronic form may be obtained from the FidoNews BBS via manual download or Wazoo FileRequest, or from various sites in the FidoNet and via uucp. PRINTED COPIES mailed may be obtained from Fido Software for $5.00US each PostPaid First Class within North America, or $7.00US elsewhere, mailed Air Mail. (US funds drawn upon a US bank only.) BACK ISSUES: Available from the following sources (and possibly others), via filerequest or download (consult a recent nodelist for phone numbers). Back issues are *NOT* available from FidoNews 1:1/1. FidoNet 1:102/138 (All issues) FidoNet 1:216/21 (All but 18 issues) Internet ftp.ieee.org, in directory ~ftp/pub/fidonew/fidonews SUBMISSIONS: You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission requirements are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from the FidoNews BBS, or Wazoo filerequestable from 1:1/1 as file "ARTSPEC.DOC". FidoNews 9-28 Page 7 13 Jul 1992 "Fido", "FidoNet" and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered trademarks of Tom Jennings of Fido Software, Box 77731, San Francisco CA 94107, USA and are used with permission. Asked what he thought of Western civilization, M.K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea". -- END ----------------------------------------------------------------------