Hi Paul,

Paul Quinn wrote in a message to Richard Webb:

 RW> Appreciate all your work on this.  I'm surprised nobody's done it
 RW> before.

PQ> Trust me, it don't look anything fancy at the moment.  When it runs
PQ> there's all manner of output and it'll be worse for you if you get
PQ> your hands on the IfNumber tool, since the as-is executable spews
PQ> all manner of stuff for each call (IIRC); I hacked mine as soon as I
PQ> got pissed off enough with it. 

Understand how that works .

 RW> '97 when I took my fido board down.  WAs just getting ready to get
 RW> started with a fido board again before the big storm hit.

PQ> Groovy.  Another survivor, hey.  I didn't have dramas like yours,
PQ> luckily.  (We're apparently due for the 'cyclone of the century' any
PQ> year, so the locals say.)  I pulled my first BBS down mid-'98 but
PQ> the PC had a major meltdown later that October I think, just as my
PQ> wife sat down to vege-out in front of the TV, and, she saw the whole
PQ> thing. The machine had been running 24/7 for over 4 years, not only
PQ> running FrontDoor and RemoteAccess but also it was our household PC.
PQ> So, my node was 'down' for a couple of months till we/I replaced it
PQ> with one sporting a Binkley/w32 frontend.  (I lost pretty much
PQ> everything of the old configs on the HD, save for what was on
PQ> floppies.)

seen such a thing before.  Old blind man hopelessly stuck in the era of the
command line. I like dos or linux screenreaders better than any of the
products for windows out there which are expensive and not very functional
imho.

 PQ>> You'll also need a copy of "Replace.Com" by Gene
Garapic, back in
 PQ>> '88.  I still have a copy of the cscripted post by Bat Lang from
 PQ>> back in '97 which I use, so, I could simply post it here again.
 RW> THat might be an idea if it isn't a file available on bfds.

PQ> Actually I might speak with Ben Richley about that.  It seems to be
PQ> a fairly unique type considering that there are a few others.
I"m sure he'll be receptive to making that available.

 RW> I'd say do the replace functions once and use that cleaned up nodelist
 RW> for the searches.  IN fact, that could be part of one's weekly
 RW> nodediff processing automation imho. THe actual lookup function would
 RW> probably run smoother quicker and cleaner that way.

PQ> Yep, I thought so too.  Keep in mind that the fixed version might be
PQ> useless to run nodediffs against (does the CRC change?... it might).
PQ> It would be a matter of copying the latest-diffed nodelist someplace
PQ> that this search BATch could use.

I"d say you integrate the dif with new nodelist, process it for the
lookup utility and then do same next time you process a diff. THat way
you're not applying diffs to modified nodelist for the searches to work
against.

PQ> Cool.  My Fido stuff has been running in Win9x-something since late
PQ> '98.  My Radius node is running with Win98SE on a P-90/64meg, along
PQ> with a JamNNTPd server and a POP3/SMTP server.  :)  (I do the right
PQ> thing and reboot it twice a week, Saturdays and Tuesdays.) It's one
PQ> of six machines on our LAN, all connected through a hub to ADSL. 
PQ> IMHO, Win98SE has the last -best- DOS available.

HOw do you get it to boot automated without all that "shut down"
crap anyway?

PQ> Which brings me to talk about some 'environment' matters.  This is
PQ> where DOS keeps variable information such as the PATH, TEMP and
PQ> DIRCMD settings in.  My DOS's environment space is set for 2048
PQ> bytes through a Config.Sys setting, thusly: "SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM
PQ> C:\ /P /E:2048 /F".  (There's more than just the environment space
PQ> being allocated there, BTW.)

I've been thinking of expanding environment space available on this machine
anyway.  RUnning memory management so isn't raelly an issue. fOr my ham
radio work as net control I use environment variables to help my homebrew
programs know where we're at in the process. tHat and judicious use of
semaphore files .

 RW> Thanks for all your work on this project Paul.  as I said, I'm
 RW> surprised nobody did it before .

PQ> I can't recall seeing anyone ask before.  :)

I think I might have mentioned this in this echo back in '95 or '96.


Regards,
           Richard
... Braille:  support true literacy for the blind.
--- timEd 1.10.y2k+