Hello herman,

Sorry for the delay. i was out on vacation (Luxembourg). We returned this
weekand and the to-do list was rather large...

 MvdV>> Hmmm. Perhaps find another BBS to post from. There
 Mvdv>> are still plenty around. Are you familiar with the
 Mvdv>> concept of the Nodelist?

 HT> As far as I know, the nodelist is a list of all the members
 HT> (nodes) of Fidonet.

Right.


It is primarily meant for mailers to contact each other, but it is an ascii
file and human readable. it /can/ be used to find BBS's carrying Fidonet
echomail.

 HT> I have never been one, having been content to operate a point node,

Point nodes can use the nodelist as well. Some point software even requires
a nodelist.

When you use the nodelist you can use the advanced features of pointing.
You canb directly contact other nodes than your boss node an request file
form them.

I became a point in 1992 and used the nodelist from the very beginning.

 HT> But is the nodelist accessible to nonmembers?

Sure. File request NODELIST from your boss node an you will get it.

 HT> Can one take a look at it by visiting some website?

There are many sites that allow downloading the nodelist.

Perhaps we should discuss the details in the POINTS area? i see you are
participating there.

 MvdV>> I am not sure it is a link problem. But if you tell
 MvdV>> me what region Jan is in, I could check on it.

 HT> Brevard County, Florida, USA.  The same county as the
 HT> Kennedy Space Center (or Cape Canaveral, or whatever
 HT> they're calling it these days)

Hmm, that's not very helpfull. I can't find that in the nodelist. When I
siad "region" I ment what Fidonet region. There are 10 of them in
North America numbered 10 through 19. When you get a peek at the nodelist
you will understand.

 MvdV>> Maybe Jan is cut off. Maybe hel left for other reasons.
 MvdV>> People do that sometimes. Their interests change and they
 MvdV>> just disappear. Where is Leslie Rohrer? All I know is that
 MvdV>> someday he just disapeared.

 HT> People loose interest.  If they loose their connection, but
 HT> not their interest, they find a way back.  Remember when we
 HT> cajoled Jeff Sterling back?

yes, I Remember that.

 HT> He had lost interest but came back anyway.  His return was brief.

The usual pattern. For our Dutch echos we have several systems that have
setup gateways so that people can access Fidonet echomail via a web page on
the InterNet. once in a while you will see an ex Fidonet participant poke
his head around the door and say hello. But they never stay long. They
werite a few messages and then they are gone gain.

 HT> I'll have been here for 10 years next April

I have been here slightly longer.

 HT> (April 1994 was when I bought my first modem, 1400 baud,

My first modem wasn't bought, I made it myself. 300 Bps. It was 1978 IURC.
Fidonet didn't exist then. I used it to connect to the mainframe at the
university where I worked at the time. A few years later I build another
modem. 1200 Bps. By then BBS's were coming up and I became hooked. All that
with ahome made computer. NOT IBM PC compatible.

When I finally submitted to the IBM crowd when my then boss shoved me an
IBM compatible down my throat, a friend of mine who ran a Fidonet system
saw his chance and came running in with a disk containing a point package.
That was 1992. One of the fiorst things I did when i learned about the area
manager was to connect this echo...

 HT> slipped it into my At&T PC 6300, and starting visiting the boards.
 HT> Within a few weeks I had a point, changed it a few weeks later to
 HT> one that was more reliable, and then one last time a few
 HT> months after that.

Cheers, Michiel

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