BG> Dunno, I strip all SEEN-BYs here whilst the measages are being
 BG> tossed, but aren't they normally preceded by a '01 smiling
 BG> face, which is being used as a control character?

  "SEEN-BY" and "AREA" lines are exceptions - no 01'.

 BG> I really have no idea, and quite frankly, nor do I really care.
 BG> I suppose that having a look at the raw messages file would
 BG> give me the definitive answer, but Unlike Paul, I do actually
 BG> have a life beyond FTS-nn. 

  Try writing a mailer and you find that FTS-nnn takes over your
life, somewhat like the Blob.

  I bought myself 16Mb of RAM and a CD ROM; $270 and I'm really happy 
with the bargain... plus 8 hours of stuffing around. ROFL! With the
time I spent, I could have bought a whole new computer!

  A mystery remains. My $10 2nd-hand VLB EIDE board has peculiar
things written on it, especially "IDE MODE" with a choice of four
settings: 600ns, 500nS, 400nS and 240nS. It came set at 600nS so I
left it, but what does it mean? Should I set it to 240nS?

  I started off with the idea that all I had to do was plug the CD on
the end of the cable and my BIOS would work. Whata mistaka to maka!
But fortunately, the CD drive came with a full set of instructions on
the floppy (so the nice Chinese told me)... in fact, the entire README
was devoted to explaining the Hitachi driver's problems. The install
program was determined to use something called MSCDEX and it took me
an hour to work out it was meant to be part of DOS.

  But Hitachi were right about their driver and install program. It's
a heapa shit. When I let it have its head, it kept allocating Drive E:
to the CD ROM, despite my list going to F. Sigh. And then I spent most
of today trying to tease MEMMAKER into filling up the holes in upper
memory with the bloody extra drivers. Fucking Microsoft!

  But it was a real bargain.

  In fact, it's stunning. When I got the urge to upgrade back in March
16Mb of RAM, an EIDE card and a quad-CD was $700 at best. Three months
later it cost me $270. I called around yesterday, and quotes went to
$490! The range of prices is insane, at both ends.

   A gigabyte is only $240, and an AMD 586/133 motherboard is only
$200, installed! They throw in free installation but they're crazy;
labour is 40$ an hour. They're all Chinese who can hardly speak
English, and the heavier the accent the cheaper the price. I got my CD
at a house in Epping (circa $500,000!) where a beautiful loungeroom
had been converted into a computer junk shop! Strange...

Regards,
Bob
   
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

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