...
 BS> Oh now i understand what Squish has to do with 
 BS> confmail, thanks for the explaination :-)
 ...
 BJ> My hard disk crashed before I could investigate further -- 
 BJ> and in the mean time, Fidonet had shut down adding 
 BJ> nodes so that they 
 BJ> could introduce the two (or was it three) d nodelist format -- which 
 BJ> is when the 255 node limit was removed.... 

 BS> Yes then it was a 255 * 255 limit? Or did the 
 BS> nodenumber up to 32768 bee allowed? (afaik is this the limit now).

When the 255 (or so) node limit was change, the new format used 16 bit ints
and not 8 bit unsigned integers for the new format.  So, 2d was about 32K *
32K for the limit.  Some software process the 16 bit ints as signed (since
the "default" address for the node applying for a node number
became -1/-1, at least in some software.....  

In actuallity, Net and Zone numbers had some structure to how they were
originally assigned.....  If I remember correctly, we had some European
nodes in the 2d setup....  This forced an issue with the netmail hour that
was established in / for the North American continent, which got solved
when zones were introduced....

 BJ> When I finally got back 
 BJ> to hardware that I could use Fidonet with (with appropriate 
 BJ> resources) fidonet was up to three dimentional 
 BJ> nodelists, and I found 
 BJ> that my area already had a local net.....  

 BS> Okey, then Europe got into fidonet too i guess :)

Yes.....

Originally, zones were one digit, regions were two digits and nets were
three digits, with all uniquely assigned through out fidonet.  Eventually
some duplication started to appear in Zone 2 because they needed more
region and net numbers, but they kept similar numbering conventions.  And
when the second round of three digit net numbers ran out in zone 1, four
digit net numbers were introduced in zone 1.  Last I looked, net 343 exists
in both spain (in zone 2) and the US (zone 1).....  Yes, the 2d addressing
in echomail path and seen-by lines can cause problems *if* echos are not
properly gated between zones.....

 BJ> The first fidonet node I 
 BJ> had (local) access to (#56, if I remember the 
 BS> number right -- run out 
 BJ> of the local HeathKit store) also went down about the time fidonet 
 BJ> went from 1-D to 2-D.]

 BS> Hmm.. i don't know HeathKit, something like D'Bridge?

No.  HeathKit made electronic kits.  Some of their last kits were the H-100
and I believe a H-150.  The H-100 was the kit form of the Zenith Z-100, and
the H-150 was the kit form of the Z-150.  [I believe Zenith bought HeathKit
before HeathKit went out of business...]  I put two H-100's together....  A
fair amount of soldering at the time....  Because electronic manufacturing
became cheap enough, HeathKits became to expensive to sell relative to
electronic equipment already put together....  In their day, you could
build clocks, Ham Radio equipment, computers, radios, weather stations,
etc.....  almost anything electronic.....

We probably should move this to another echo if we continue it (or to
netmail)....  We're getting a bit far from Squish, which like other mail
mashers, only has 2d path and seen-by lines.....

Take care......

Bob Jones, 1:343/41


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