Volume 4, Number 28 27 July 1987 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | /|oo \ | | - FidoNews - (_| /_) | | _`@/_ \ _ | | International | | \ \\ | | FidoNet Association | (*) | \ )) | | Newsletter ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor in Chief: Thom Henderson Chief Procrastinator Emeritus: Tom Jennings FidoNews is published weekly by the International FidoNet Association as its official newsletter. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in FidoNews. Article submission standards are contained in the file ARTSPEC.DOC, available from node 1:1/1. Copyright 1987 by the International FidoNet Association. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact IFNA at (314) 576-4067. Three Weeks to FidoCon! Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ................................................ 1 Is Echomail Doomed? ...................................... 1 2. ARTICLES ................................................. 2 The Maxum Turbo XE - A Serious Computer .................. 2 FidoNet in Japan ......................................... 6 MegaList: A Cross-System File Listing .................... 10 Public Key Encryption for FidoNet Mail ................... 11 Sirius 0.50 - A Review ................................... 18 Sports Net ECHO Conference ............................... 23 3. COLUMNS .................................................. 24 Broadcast Booth - In The Network ......................... 24 The Regular Irregular Column ............................. 25 4. NOTICES .................................................. 30 The Interrupt Stack ...................................... 30 Latest Software Versions ................................. 30 International FidoNet Conference Registration Form ....... 31 IFNA Board of Directors Ballot ........................... 32 FidoNews 4-28 Page 1 27 Jul 1987 ================================================================= EDITORIAL ================================================================= Is Echomail Doomed? For some time now, and even more so lately, we've been watching the consequences of our regrettable lack of security. FidoNet is reasonably secure about sending mail to the right people (if you don't look too closely at mail pickups), but it's wide open when it comes to receiving mail. In normal network mail this isn't all that much of a problem, but with echomail we find ourselves holding a kettle of fish of quite a different color. I have seen two major conferences whither and almost die under what amount to terrorist attacks. Can we defend ourselves? Security measures can be developed, surely, but will they do the trick? I suspect not, for a few reasons. 1) Most of the measures proposed are for securing predefined conference links, which leaves normal network mail wide open. 2) For good reason. Securing normal netmail is not practical. How can you prearrange security measures with a new node across the country that you didn't even know existed? 3) Even if we secured all links between all systems everywhere, that still won't stop people from willingly linking in a known terrorist. 4) Besides, anyone could fabricate messages for propagation over a secure line that appear to originate anywhere at all. It starts to look pretty hopeless. Is echomail doomed? Well, not quite. When one looks at which conferences were attacked, it becomes apparent that it is only the large national or international conferences that really present a good target. Terrorists thrive on attention and response, which they don't really get in the smaller conferences. Not to mention that in a smaller conference it is correspondingly easier to identify where the terrorist is linking in. Echomail will thrive. People will continue to establish new conferences for every topic under the sun. Echomail is far too important a part of our subculture to die out now. But I suspect that the heydey of the large international conference may be drawing to a close. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-28 Page 2 27 Jul 1987 ================================================================= ARTICLES ================================================================= From 107/246 The Maxum Turbo XE - A Serious Computer The following is an in-depth review of a fine clone that you should consider in your shopping list if you are looking for a new computer in the near future. Data Sheet For MAXUM TURBO XE Personal Computer ----------------------------------------------- MAXUM TURBO XE COMPUTER Sold by 47th Street Photo. The basic unit comes configured as follows: Maxum Turbo XE system unit. Phoenix type fast Ram test BIOS. AT style keyboard with indicator lights built in. 256k Ram (256k Chips)-(Expandable to 1024k). One full height 5 1/2 inch 360k floppy drive. One disk controller for up to 2 floppy drives. Built in game port. 8 Expansion Slots (2 Half - 6 Full Size Slots) FCC approved slide type case. Approved as Class B computing device. 180 Watt Power Supply. MS-DOS 3.2 And GW-BASIC are included. Dual speed (4.77/8 Mhz 8088-2) processor. Socket for 8087 co-processor chip. Built in (battery powered) clock/calendar card. Keyboard (key operated) lock-out switch. Power, Turbo, Hard Disk indicator lights. Built in reset switch in rear of machine. Internal speaker in front of system unit. 4 power plugs coming out of power supply. Price as configured above is $499.00 plus tax. The unit comes securely packed in a double carton and each unit is tested before being released for sale. There is a sticker attached to the rear of each unit with a number to call for service and/or advice (not toll free) you might need. We called twice and each time the phone was answered by a polite technician who had a thorough knowledge of the computer and was a great help in setting up the computer. Each unit comes with a 5 book set of documentation complete with excellent instructions for the novice as well as the experienced user. I would judge that anyone could have this unit unpacked and fully FidoNews 4-28 Page 3 27 Jul 1987 operational inside of 25 minutes from opening the carton for the first time. The documentation is from Microsoft for the most part and is well written and should be a great help in setting up the system as well as utilizing the Ram from 640k to 1024k should you decide to install the extra Ram yourself at the time of purchase or at a later date. The system as tested had some extra features that were user- installed at the time of purchase. They were: Full 1024k Ram on the motherboard. IBM type RGB color card from Maxum. RS-232 card from Honeywell. One extra 5 1/2 inch floppy drive. One 22 Megabyte Miniscribe hard drive. Orchid Turbo 286E Card with 2 Megabytes Of Ram. Copy II Pc copy board. Approximate cost of system as tested is: $ 2399.00 The system runs all the usual PC software such as Lotus, Wordstar, Flight Simulator, dBase III+, as well as Fido, Opus, SEAdog, Telix, PC-TALK, Qmodem and Crosstalk XVI. Lattice C, Turbo Basic, Quick Basic, Microsoft Cobol, and the Microsoft Assembler were all tested and ran with no problems whatsoever. The system appears to be 100% compatible, as we have not found any software that will not run on this system at the time this article was written. Below you will find some data we compiled from the various tests we ran on the system. There are 3 results reported for each test. 1) Normal speed mode is the mode in which the computer boots up and according to Norton's Sysinfo is slightly faster than a normal PC. 2) Turbo speed is the user selectable speed increase gained by typing the Cntrl-Alt-2 combination of keys. This IS NOT the Orchid turbo speed which follows. 3) 286 Turbo speed is when the Orchid 286E card is activated and running. In this mode you are running for all intensive purposes an IBM AT clone at 8 Mhz with an Intel 80286 chip handling the processing. Please note that in this mode it is possible to access 704k for DOS to run in, as opposed to a maximum 640k for the other two modes we tested. Maxum Turbo XE In Normal Speed Mode FidoNews 4-28 Page 4 27 Jul 1987 ----------------------------------- SI-System Information, Version 3.10, (C) 1984-86 IBM/PC Built-in BIOS programs dated Monday, September 15, 1986 Operating under DOS 3.20 5 logical disk drives, A: through E: DOS reports 640 K-bytes of memory: 68 K-bytes used by DOS and resident programs 572 K-bytes available for application programs A search for active memory finds: 640 K-bytes main memory (at hex 0000-A000) 32 K-bytes display memory (at hex B800-C000) BIOS signature found at hex paragraph C800 Computing performance index relative to IBM/PC: 1.7 Maxum Turbo XE In Turbo Speed Mode ---------------------------------- SI-System Information, Version 3.10, (C) 1984-86 IBM/PC Built-in BIOS programs dated Monday, September 15, 1986 Operating under DOS 3.20 5 logical disk drives, A: through E: DOS reports 640 K-bytes of memory: 68 K-bytes used by DOS and resident programs 572 K-bytes available for application programs A search for active memory finds: 640 K-bytes main memory (at hex 0000-A000) 32 K-bytes display memory (at hex B800-C000) BIOS signature found at hex paragraph C800 Computing performance index relative to IBM/PC: 3.0 Maxum Turbo XE With Orchid Turbo 286E Card Installed ---------------------------------------------------- SI-System Information, Version 3.10, (C) 1984-86 This computer might be identified by this: (C) Copyright 1986 More Computing. All Rights Reserved. Built-in BIOS programs dated Monday, November 8, 1982 Operating under DOS 3.20 5 logical disk drives, A: through E: DOS reports 704 K-bytes of memory: 87 K-bytes used by DOS and resident programs 617 K-bytes available for application programs A search for active memory finds: 640 K-bytes main memory (at hex 0000-A000) 127 K-bytes display memory (at hex A040-C000) Computing performance index relative to IBM/PC: 9.2 So as you can see from the test results above the stock machine in TURBO mode is much faster than a normal PC and of course when FidoNews 4-28 Page 5 27 Jul 1987 the 286E co-processing board is added the speed jumps from 3.0 to 9.2. The Maxum XE in my Benchmark Test using PKARC to archive the following group of files used in my ARC tests. Filename Length Method Size Ratio -------- ------ ------ ------ ----- AUTOEXEC.BAT 33 Crunched 31 7% COMMAND.COM 17664 Crunched 14787 17% CORRSTAR.OVR 57344 Crunched 28768 50% INTERNAL.DCT 35584 Squeezed 33871 5% LF.COM 512 Crunched 382 26% MAILMRGE.OVR 11520 Crunched 7533 35% PROKEY.EXE 13824 Crunched 6360 54% WC.EXE 12288 Crunched 8315 33% WINSTALL.COM 1152 Crunched 746 36% WINSTALL.OVR 38528 Crunched 22784 41% WPE.COM 21376 Crunched 16622 23% WPEMSGS.OVR 29056 Crunched 16072 45% WPEOVLY1.OVR 41216 Crunched 33172 20% WS1.PRO 29 Stored 29 0% WSCOLOR.BAS 6656 Crunched 2967 56% ---- ------ ------ ----- 0015 286782 192439 33% The following results were recorded when PKARC was used to create an archive file from the above files. Normal Speed Turbo Speed 286 Turbo Speed -------------------------------------------- 01:12:43 00:44:99 00:20:00 -------------------------------------------- Using Wordstar and Nodelist.184 I performed a standard move cursor to end of file test. The length of the nodelist used was 149436 bytes. Normal Speed Turbo Speed 286 Turbo Speed -------------------------------------------- 00:33:33 00:16:12 00:14:75 -------------------------------------------- Using PC Lab's Bench02 test which basically finds prime numbers the following results occurred. Normal Speed Turbo Speed 286 Turbo Speed -------------------------------------------- 00:27:00 00:17:00 00:05:00 -------------------------------------------- All in all, a fine computer. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 4-28 Page 6 27 Jul 1987 Yoshi Mikami, November 26, 1986 FidoNet in Japan [Editor's note: Sorry for the unusually long delay on this article. It came to us via a very circuitous route.] *** DOMESTIC NEWS *** FIDO/COLLIE SYSOPS' MEETING The November Fido/Collie Sysops' meeting was attended by Tatsuyuki Arai, Yoshi Mikami, Maki Ohtoh and Junsei Yamada. It was held on 11/14/86 at 7:00, at Renoir coffee shop