Re: Re: Just got this ...
  By: Ward Dossche to mark lewis on Sat Jun 06 2020 20:39:46


 ml> why are you such a jackass prick? i've been in fidonet as long
 ml> or longer than you have... of course i know how passthrough mail
 ml> works... i've used it since the beginning... whadda clod...

 WD> Bjorn shows up in the nodelist 8 years before you do ...

the nodelist is a lie... and you can't count... the nodelist history site shows
3 years difference but you don't know the whole story, either... so have a seat
and i'll tell it...

the Spirit of Support BBS in Virginia Beach, VA was my BBS being originally run
out of my office at the computer place where i worked... the BBS was originally
run off the demo version of wildcat and was available for callers after the
store closed since we were using one of the store's phone lines... the idea was
to have a BBS to support our clients... i left the company for several months
to work 100% on a project for one of our clients... the company didn't want to
touch that client's project but i was given the clear to do it if i wanted
to... i completed their project and came back to the company after 3 to 6
months or so...

during this time, jim putt, one of our friends and customers, had taken an
interest in the BBS... he was asked if he wanted to work on it while i was
gone... he accepted and looked at several other BBS packages because wildcat
just wasn't doing the job we had in mind... i think adam hudson's QuickBBS was
in place when i came back... we both worked on the new system trying to get it
working with a mail tosser but it was hell... netmail and echomail worked
inbound or outbound but not going both directions... the configs were harsh to
work with... the system was listed in the nodelist before we got echomail
tossing and scanning to work completely... since netmail worked and that was
all that was required to be listed we got listed... then jim found RemoteAccess
BBS (v0.02 IIRC) and installed it... we set out to get mail tossing working on
it... it was still a huge ugly mess to deal with... finally a new tosser
package came out, IMail, IIRC, that just worked and didn't require juggling
config files back and forth... that was when our system really got on the
network even though we had been listed in the Z1 nodelist for a while by
then...

policy 4 was posted in fidonews around this time (1987-1989)... jim and i
talked about P4, how we thought it would be for the network, and how it might
affect our BBS... we drank a lot of Bud Dry beer during these conversations...
we decided that i would cast the vote for our BBS with our NC in the upcoming
P4 process...

it was a year or more before our node finally appeared in the Z2 nodelist... i
was in full swing in the RemoteAccess support areas answering questions left
and right... one of our projects was another RA system running as a point
system under DESQview using frontdoor before frontdoor was multinode capable...
what was learned on this system was carried over to the Spirit of Support and
it became a multinode BBS as well...

after some time, i left the company again and came back here to NC... i brought
the RA point setup with me and set up my WPUSA system here... it took a few
months to find a net that would list me but once one was found, i was right
back in the RA areas providing the full support i had been providing before...
i'm still here...

above i say "the nodelist is a lie"... this is because the archives are
incomplete... the nodelist history site doesn't show the Spirit of Support
until 1991 but we were certainly listed before P4 was voted on... after i left
and came back to NC, jim attempted to keep the BBS running up there but life
changed a lot for him during that time... when i left, i lost track of
everyone... especially over the months it took me to find a net and get my
system listed... that mainly because all the existing nets in this neck of the
woods were long distance... i was finally able to get net3634 to give me a
listing and i did all the polling for mail so they didn't have to foot the bill
for in-state LD... all my echos were pulled out of texas or louisiana at
2400... net3634 was mainly military personel so there was a lot of churn as
folks were stationed into and out of fort bragg and pope afb... as time went
on, i was given the NC hat and i'm still wearing it since ~1997... today,
net3634 covers all of NC and i've also donned the R18C hat...

what i see in the nodelist history site is that BF didn't appear in the
nodelist until 1989... P4 was ratified in June of '89, the same month that BF
appears in the nodelist... our nodelisting was in place in the Z1 nodelist
before P4 was ratified... we had to be listed to cast our vote on P4... on 21
Sep 1987, a complete copy of a P4 proposal was included in the fidonews
archive... then neil curtain posted a P4 Draft in the fidonews in 25 Jan
1988... somewhere in this period is where we, jim and i, started discussing
P4... so there's roughly a one year period in which i was involved with fidonet
before BF came along and before P4 was ratified... there's no doubt that we
were listed before P4... that's a fact...


)\/(ark
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