On 2018 Jul 08 11:32:26, you wrote to me:

 ml>> the inclusion of "POTS" is the only reason... no traditional FTN
 ml>> mailer identified itself as a "POTS Mailer"...

 MV> Of course. When POTS was the only game in toen, there was no need tp
 MV> explicitly call them POTS mailers. That addendum only came after POTS
 MV> was the only game in town.

that would be when ISDN came around... ISDN doesn't have a dial tone... dial
tone is what distinguishes a POTS line from any other...

 MV>>> If your FrontDoor needs a fossil to dial POTS nodes, then it is
 MV>>> incomplete.

 ml>> no, it is not... no moreso than a BBS that requires a FOSSIL driver...

 MV> I once run a very simple BBS, It was a script written in Telix, the
 MV> script language for a popular terminal programme who's name I have
 MV> forgotten. No fossil...

yeah, so? that script language was called SALT... i ran the same thing a few
times but not in place of my BBS...

 ml>> FrontDoor and RemoteAccess BBS both require a FOSSIL driver to
 ml>> communicate with real and virtual serial devices...

 MV> FOSSIL --> Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer.

no kidding?

 MV> A fossil was needed to make use of the advanced features of the 16550
 MV> UART. It is a HARDWARE interface.

your lack of vision is hindering you... the concept of a FOSSIL was to have a
set of communication routines that could be used by anything that needed to
communicate... guys that knew how to talk to the hardware would handle that
side of the fence and the other software, like a BBS or even a terminal
program, would talk to the FOSSIL... this allowed for things such as FidoBBS to
be able to be compiled and run on so many variations of (at the time) serial
hardware... the only thing needed was a FOSSIL... FidoBBS could even run on
mainframes and minis... it only needed a FOSSIL... the FOSSIL guys would
concentrate on how to talk to the serial interface... they could specialize and
ensure that everything worked properly... the software guys didn't need to
worry about hardware or how to talk to it... they only needed to talk to the
FOSSIL... FOSSILs were also important when ISDN came around... but you know all
this...

 MV> Calling a virtual interface a FOSSIL is an abuse of terms.

who has done that? no one that i know of... but so what if there is a FOSSIL
that talks to virtual com ports? who gives a shit? as a BBS, terminal, door
game writer, i don't care... i still talk to the FOSSIL and it handles talking
to whatever is on the other side... if that's a PDP11 serial hardware board or
a IBMPC serial UART chip or even a ISDN modem (ahem), who cares... we can
communicate... if a FOSSIL driver can be expanded to simulate communications
hardware, who cares? if that simulated hardware is a simulated COM port,
great... if that simulated interface is actually not hardware but a protocol
conversion block, who cares? now, instead of being limited to writing BBS or
door games for POTS connections over a serial interface, i can write them for
telnet/vmodem connections... i don't need to know anything about the hardware
or the protocol... i don't care if it is communications using TCP/IP or
NetBEUI/NETBIOS... i don't care if it is communications using a powerful laser
to modulate the data into a light beam being pointed at the moon or mars...

 MV>>> My InterMail did not need a fossil. It could deal with the UART all
 MV>>> by itself.

 ml>> interesting... so you didn't have to load BNU or x00?

 MV> Indeed, no need for that. InterMail had the functionality build in.
 MV> There was an option for using an external FOSSIL, but I never saw any
 MV> advantage in that.

apparently there wasn't much advantage in talking directly to the hardware,
either...

 ml>> if that's the case, that's the first major difference between
 ml>> intermail and frontdoor since the code-splitting...

 MV> Possibly.

absolutely it is...

 MV>>> If your FrontDoor can dial internet nodes with an advanced fossil,
 MV>>> then the combination is more than a classic POTS mailer.

 ml>> there is no ""advanced FOSSIL""... there is the FOSSIL... it talks to
 ml>> the COM ports, real and virtual...

 MV> No. What do you think the second 'S' in FOSSIL stands for?

who cares? a rose by any other name it still a rose... the concept was limited
by time and vision... later the concept was expanded when other similar needs
for protocol conversion came along... ISDN rings a loud bell... and you know
the funny thing? there have been FOSSIL drivers used to talk to modems that
were physically connected to parallel ports... no one bitched about it being a
FOSPIL driver and not a FOSSIL driver...

 MV> If it talks to virtual ports, than it is not a FOSSIL, but something
 MV> else.

ummm, virtual serial ports are still serial ports... besides, who gives a shit
what the name of the thing is? as long as we can talk to it on one side and
have our conversation pop out the other side so you can understand it, we're
doing great... hell, one could even consider a language translator as a FOSSIL
driver... i speak English into this side and Swedish pops out the other side...
you speak speak Dutch or Papiamento into your end and it comes out over here as
English... i don't care how... it just does and we communicate...

 ml>> there is no difference between the COM ports as far as the mailer or
 ml>> BBS are concerned...

 MV> I can make a gadget that has wheels that can go on a railway track. I
 MV> can put my car on it and have the wheels of the car drive the railroad
 MV> wheels of the gadget. I can then drive my car on railroad tracks. But
 MV> that does not make my car a train.

oh ye of little mind and imagination... we lined up wagons and used horses and
oxen to move them across the land... they were called wagon trains... we have
little toys that ride on various forms of rails that are called trains but they
can't move people and materials like a much larger version can... there's even
trains that ride on on rail and some that don't touch any rail at all... are
the connected cars that ride on the rails on a roller coaster not a type of
train? should we even bring up other things like sweep, court, panel watteau
and chapel trains?

face it... the use of the technology we know as FOSSIL has expanded further
than what the original letters stood for... FOSSIL is more a concept, these
days... one that folks associated with fidonet technology will easily
understand... other folks may very well have others terms to describe the exact
same thing in their familiar tasks...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it
wrong...
... And it shall be good.
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