Hi Matt,

> My board and fido node in the late 1990s got up to 3 lines running USR
> V.Everything modems.  In early 2000 I sold two of them on ebay but still kept
>the last one to this day.  Not sure if it still works but I plan to keep it as
> an antique collectable from the era.

I still have two V.Everything modems that I swap between for my one phone
line over here with BBBS's mailer ... and somewhere in a closet here I know
I have a U.S.Robotics I-Modem... that was such a great modem   Of
course at the time I used that one, I had a dedicated 64K ISDN line in
Kentucky  - boy, was that idea killed fast though in the U.S. it seemed :(

> I wrote several tools which I employed on my system.  I haven't written
>anything significant since so one of my primary motivation for showing up is t
> begin doing that again and possibly extend that to adding a feature or two to
> software packages already in circulation.

Hey that sounds great... :)  There's plenty of places it will be welcome no doubt.

>> Understand and I hope things are going ok for you "wherever
you are" in
>> the world.  Are you in the States now? And I also understand if you
>> can't say.

>If you start digging in about North Texas or Oklahoma to the other side of the
> world that is roughly where I am located!  :-)  Buy, I should be back in the
>states close to thanksgiving.  But, that won't stop me from spinning up a node

Very cool :) :)

> One goal is to start up a file repository (library) of old utilities.  I
>realize that is somewhat overdone.  But I was surprised how much stuff I could
>not find in one place when I started looking for them.  I do believe one of th
> faults fido has is the lack of resources for new users not familiar with the
> technology.

Understand.. sometimes it's because authors are "gone"..
sometimes it's because authors perceive that say putting their software in
main distribution, like the Filegate somehow might limit the distribution
of their sofware.  It's all "out there", but it's true sometimes
a particular package isn't easy to find. We try to help with that kind of
thing in the Zone 1 Fidonews with links to software and tutorials, etc. 
But that's another whole story :)

>> Run Linux like I do.. there are a bunch of doors that are available...
>> you just have to look.. or look for the keygen stuff, it might be there
>> as well, I wouldn't know since I run Linux here..

> The host I would do this from runs CentOS 7.  I might do a quick look at
> FreeBSD (my old favorite) but I do need to learn CentOS 7 as much has changed
> between 6 and 7 and it would provide the perfect motivation to learn the
> details of operation.

From what I understand between the two there probably won't be much
difference, but I don't really know... I ran CentOS's precursor (RH) about
what seems now like a bazillion years ago Lol... it was just after I
switched from OS/2 to Linux... I loved how easy development was under
Linux... :)

>> And yet we were freed from the clutches of the PHONE COMPANY (evil
>> creeps in NY at least (laugh)) so that

> As much as I value IP there is something I miss about the idea of the modem.

You should be able to run both like I do...There are several others here
who do the same with a variety of fido compatible software packages :) 
Right now I don't get many callers on that line but before we moved here to
the Ithaca NY area, there were several callers in the Binghamton NY area
that came in via modem.

> It is almost as if the more scarce something is (bandwidth) that the more you
> appreciate it.  Nonetheless I miss the late night echomail runs.   You always
>knew that the largest of bundles would come in around 1-2 am.  It took a while
> for the traffic to trickle down if you were 2 or 3 levels deep in local
> distribution.

And now essentially we are constantly connected to uplinks and downlinks so
much so that messaging is essentially "instantaneous"..


> It is weird to say but the volume of traffic grew disproportionately to our
> ability to move it.   We see far less traffic in relation to the availability
>of bandwidth.  Just imagine what Fido would have been in the era of Cable, DSL
> and BinkP!

Yes, I know what you mean there :)  But now our numbers are so very low in
all zones, that doesn't help.  We stopped having huge numbers of users way
back in early 90's I think when the Internet hit the "world" as
I'm sure you remember... Now and again users do check things out though,
and likewise now and again sysops like yourself decide to come back :)

>> Like I said, really glad to see you here :)

> Thank you for the kind words.

Let us know if you need any tools, someone here will have an idea of where
to look no doubt :)

Take care,
Janis

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Dada-2