-=> Rick Christian wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

 RC> I only use free in terms of no cost. I never went or will go along with
 RC> the silliness that a certain Linux group misueses words.

Have to be clear. :)


 TL>  wasn't FD shareware?

 RC> FD was/is shareware. I don't remember the what if any limit there was..
 RC> If anythin I recall a commercial BBS needed a license, I had no BBS,
 RC> and no commercial operations. My company only provide a home, power,
 RC> and phone lines. :)  FD worked for me

Yeah, I thought FD was shareware, but I don't recall the specifics of the
licence either.

 RC> I only ever used FD, and Terminate for a couple points that I needed to
 RC> keep simple.

 RC> Bink just makes no sense then or now.

Opposite for me. :)  Bink just seemed to work with my head. :)

 TL> I don't remember that issue.

 RC> I do alot with BBS's that were HST/HST+ and they wouldn't connect for
 RC> Terminate
 RC>  or Telemate or anything, or FIDO. I had a couple I had to route to
 RC> their NC or
 RC>  HUB to send stuff to.

Never had any of those issues down here.  The main BBS used to have links all
over the place, several international, without issues.

 RC> These issues seemed to show up starting when the 14.4 and 28.8 stuff.
 RC> Although I had a 33.6 external no name clone that did seem to work
 RC> better than Zoom and other name band stuff. The biggest issue was
 RC> making sure to get hardware modems, which is one reason I stuck to
 RC> externals mostly, and I like blinken lights! :) ;) Made for great
 RC> ambiance lighting! :) ;)

Yes, hardware modems were a must.  The "Winmodems" were a pain, and external
modems were the safest way to ensure one had a suitable modem.  And yes,
blinkenlighten are awesome! :D  By the time winmodems became prevalent, my
dominant OSs were Linux and OS/2, so I was very particular about having a
hardware modem.

 TL> I programmed in BASIC, Pascal (generally Turbo Pascal), and various
 TL> assembly languages, including 8080, 8086, 6809, and even PIC16F84.

 RC> In a time long long ago. I started with BASIC on various things from
 RC> VAX/VMS to
 RC>  PDP's to Atari 4|800's to some CP/M based things. The PDP needed
 RC> assembler to do some things, and that progressed into similar on
 RC> various other chips. My EE project needed 68HC11 software, I had this
 RC> really whizo emulator that I could do all kinds of things to create my
 RC> software way quicker than those that had to
 RC>  play with the actual testbed boards. I did PASCAL for my CIS class
 RC> language as
 RC>  I had TP and, again could do it all at home versus fighting for
 RC> terminal time or calling into the mainframe. I just had to provide full
 RC> source and with the binary.

I started with various BASIC dialects on microcomputers, both Applesoft (on
Apple IIs) and other dialects on various Z80 based micros.  I did dabble in
very small amounts of Z80 assembler then, but I did a fair bit more assembler
at university, mostly on the 8086 (various PC clones), but did do 6809.  The
6809 emulator was on one of the engineering mainframes.  I loved 6809
assembler, it made a lot more sense to me than 8086 (eww segment registers!) or
8080/Z80.  PIC has an addressing quirk not unlike segmentation, where you have
to switch address spaces fo

 RC> I am not sure what GIGO did on OS/2, I never touched it. I only
 RC> begrundignly used stuff passed DOS, as I was forced to. I needed an

Yeah, there was a server that was built for GIGO that ran on OS/2, worked quite
well.  I'd probably do things differently, need some more SMTP "smarts" to deal
with spam these days.  The way GIGO worked was that GIGO generated all of the
bounce messages, which means generating "backscatter" for the forged spam
that's around now.  I'd like to have a SMTP server than knows the valid users,
so it can reject obvious spam during the session, and also have the other anti
spam tools available.

 RC> ICLID program and to get
 RC>  the one I needed, it needed win 3.1. Then I needed network stuff so I
 RC> got Wfwg. I ran that well into 90's. I probably was one of the last
 RC> still running 10Base2. I even had this cute little hub that would take
 RC> 10B2 and split to 10Base5 or Cat5 like today. I ran that well into
 RC> 2000-2001. Ain't broke, don't break it! I even packed it all up 3 times
 RC> and reset it up! I was limited to ISDN well into 2000's by location.

For a while, I was able to use work "hand me downs", as work upgraded from
10Base2 to 10BaseT hubs, then to 100Mbps switches over the years.  My first LAN
was 3 PCs linked by coax. :)

 RC> Anyway. GIGO would definitely need to use SMTP and NNTP user accounts
 RC> or full NNTP accounts, but a standard NNTP account from say NewDemon or
 RC> something would
 RC>  be the prefered route. There might be a few uucp places out there, but
 RC> I've not had an actual modem on things in years. The AIO on the network
 RC> does it all now.

Yeah I haven't used a real modem for close to 10 years myself, actually might
be even longer.  Still got plenty in the shed - more from work when they
decomissioned their dialin servers.


... A man who buys a mobile home doesn't get a lot.
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