* Tony Frank writes to Rowan_Crowe, on Wednesday September 17 1997
   at 19:49:

 TF> Well, I've had a 486dx2-66 sitting around for a while now, but until
 TF> recently only had an 80 meg HD for it (not enough for a decent unix
 TF> box)  now I have a 600 odd meg HD which ought to serve fairly nicely.
 TF> Only 8 meg ram, but from what I understand that's enough to do just
 TF> about everything.

Plenty! My home router is a 386dx40 with 8Mb of RAM, its only function is
to route IP packets and provide primary DNS for 'sensation.net.au' and a
couple of other domains. Even 8Mb is fairly generous for what it does, but
it's spare RAM so it's not going to waste. The "office" router is
a P90 with 24Mb RAM as that runs a HTTP/FTP proxy, news, several dialins
and permanent links, routing daemons, etc. My 2 unix boxes are at fairly
opposite extremes.

 RC>> It might be possible to do a disgusting hack and somehow run a
 RC>> linux DOS emulator under a FreeBSD linux emulator? :)

 TF> 

 TF> Ideally I'd be able to run part or all of the BBS through a unix
 TF> machine.  The idea is to have the unix machine sitting on the local
 TF> ethernet, and also having the modem & associated line connected to it.
 TF> During regular "normal" use, it'd run the BBS, with
Binkley handling
 TF> any mailer calls etc.  However whenever someone wanted to get their
 TF> email or do some web browsing, and the line is free, the system would
 TF> then dial up our ISP and we can then get mail etc.

Why not get a dedicated line? :) I was doing dialup with my BBS/mailer line
and was finding I was online for hours at a time, during that time people
couldn't get their mail polls through...

If you've got the ca$h then think about a permanent link... Telstra charge
$500 install once off, then 19c per Mb inbound. No monthly charges, just
pure volume charging.

Or I can offer you a perm link at similar rates... ;)

 TF> I can run the BBS part of the system just fine on the current system,
 TF> and telnet in to it from the unix machine over the ethernet, (I have
 TF> RLFOSSIL setup successfully for local logins over the network already)

 TF> I guess the only "stumbling" block at the moment is
incoming/outgoing
 TF> mail calls.  I dont know enough about unix systems to know if I can
 TF> rig something up to get a mailer to connect over the network with
 TF> binkley on the current BBS machine, such as if a user dialled in, I
 TF> was thinking the user could connect to the BBS using telnet or rlogin
 TF> or whatever from the unix machine, but I don't know if this can be
 TF> automated so an incoming mail call can be picked up by Bink on the BBS
 TF> machine.

I'm in a similar situation. The DOS machine and frontdoor is almost a
legacy, for people to log into Sensation Brunswick they come through the
DOS machine. Unfortunately the ^&*{at}# likes to lock up at least a few
times a day, sometimes when a user is online.

It would be good if I could move the fido mailer (and thus the modem) over
to the unix box, so then I didn't have to worry about the DOS box taking
out users. Unfortunately I think that to use a fido mailer on the unix box,
I'll also need to use a unix tosser etc. I'm not sure that I want to fiddle
that much with a) something that already works b) something that I'm not
really too interested in fiddling with.

 TF> I guess the "ideal" situation would involve another modem
& phone
 TF> line for the ISP connection, but I'd rather try to avoid that if
 TF> possible.

Depends what you do. :) In the long run a permanent link, if you can afford
the relatively steep install, could be the go.

What about a cable modem?

Cheers.


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