F I D O N E W S -- | Vol. 9 No. 5 (3 February 1992) The newsletter of the | FidoNet BBS community | Published by: _ | / \ | "FidoNews" BBS /|oo \ | (415)-863-2739 (_| /_) | FidoNet 1:1/1 _`@/_ \ _ | Internet: | | \ \\ | fidonews@fidonews.fidonet.org | (*) | \ )) | |__U__| / \// | Editors: _//|| _\ / | Tom Jennings (_/(_|(____/ | Tim Pozar (jm) | ----------------------------+--------------------------------------- Published weekly by and for the Members of the FidoNet international amateur network. Copyright 1991, Fido Software. All rights reserved. Duplication and/or distribution permitted for noncommercial purposes only. For use in other circumstances, please contact FidoNews. Paper price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5.00US Electronic Price: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . free! For more information about FidoNews refer to the end of this file. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents 1. EDITORIAL ..................................................... 1 Editorial: Where was I ........................................ 1 2. ARTICLES ...................................................... 3 FOSSILs: ancient history ...................................... 3 A day in the life of an overworked UK sysop ................... 4 UpComing Software - Tic Zipper ................................ 7 Country Computing ............................................. 8 I TOLD YOU SO!!! .............................................. 9 3. LATEST VERSIONS ............................................... 19 Software List ................................................. 19 4. FIDONEWS INFORMATION .......................................... 25 FidoNews 9-05 Page 1 3 Feb 1992 ====================================================================== EDITORIAL ====================================================================== Editorial: Where was I by Tom Jennings (1:1/1) It's amazing how we can take incredible things for granted. For the last few months I've been working for a telecomm. service provider, writing some sort-of fancy testing software involving bit- serial stuff. It turned out to be kind of interesting; I had to learn how to do high-precision arithmetic, high-precision division, and quickly. Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" SEMI-NUMERICAL ALGORITHMS (dry as a desert) and all that. An as you might imagine, I have fairly decent serial port drivers (my integral "Fido" driver that later became the basis for FOSSIL) and a FOSSIL interface. I use Ray Gwinn's X00, run under DESQview, with my Fido BBS (Dual Std HST) in it's own window. I don't think too much about it. I installed it who-knows how long ago. Couple of years. I touched it twice in the last year; once when someone sent me a new version (the old one worked just fine) and once when I got a 16550 and second serial card. It's a nice, boring program. (Who wants excitement in a device driver?) For testing this thing I usually run it in a DESQview window, which works at 19,200 and below just fine; even at 1920 bytes/sec send and receive, it drops very few bits, and only when Fido is writing disk files. (Note in this case, the same X00 driver code is being accessed by Fido from one DV window, and my test program in another.) For high-speed testing I have to take DESQview down; sustained 38,400 baud halts DV altogether! (It's 100% busy reading bytes; when you pause the data it comes back to you.) So I'm testing this new program, outputting data at 3840 bytes/sec (long-term average), into a shorting plug that loops the data into the receive side, and comparing the ins and outs, debugging my new printf(), whatever. Testing consists of a few minutes run (million bytes or so), and and end-of-day test (overnight, 8 hours), does 100 million bytes. Error rate: no bad bytes. Great. Then I realize -- wait a minute! I'm running on the FOSSIL driver, not my integral driver! No changes whatsoever, and half the time, there are two programs using the same driver! (And it turns out my old-fashioned integral IBM driver is signifigantly slower than the FOSSIL!) Ray Gwinn's program, at least for the pclone world, has become the part of the bedrock upon which FidoNet sits. It is hot stuff, and also boring when it should be! The FidoNet's history of technical development is interesting, and I think completely unappreciated by "industry" with a few exceptions. FidoNet has made, and broken, some modem manufacturers -- some like U.S. Robotics and Telebit, actually listened to us, and made changes to their products and marketing that assured their niches. FidoNews 9-05 Page 2 3 Feb 1992 It's safe to say that the FidoNet serial-communication technology is the most advanced on PCs; we have collectively pushed serial performance far beyond what even the hardware was considered capable of. To us, 19,200 fixed-DCE rate and 10,000 bytes/sec, and faster, are common. Believe me, there are many large businesses that believe this completely, flatly impossible. And we do it routinely. I think it's time that each of us consider that maybe, we should tell software and hardware manufacturers that the FOSSIL interface is now a defacto standard, and ask, when are they going to support it directly? This past summer I had to hack a driver to run at 56,000 bits/sec over a leased telephone line, PC to PC, using KA9Q's NOS package. It was like going back in time. (Though NOS has it's own "generic" interface for serial, ether, coax drivers.) The manufacturer of the serial card (SEALEVEL Inc, quite nice I may add) hadn't heard of a FOSSIL driver. They provide the usual "sample driver code" that is the barest fragment; wouldn't it be nice of they could ship fully functional, high- performance drivers? For free? Like giving away razor blades to sell razors... If you have any contacts or influence in places that use serial technology for any reason (modems, printers, LANs) tell 'em about FOSSIL. Tell them about how our programs use a FOSSIL interface, if one is present. Give them code, and FSC-0015 (the FidoNet technical standard document covering FOSSILs). I think we tend to sell ourselves short in where we stand in the world at large. (I have a theory regarding the proportional relationship of head in the sand too-busy-bullying-local-sysops vs. dealing with the outside world, but I'l leave that untouched for now.) We have an incredible body of technical wizardry here. Our FidoNet technology doesn't make sense sometimes to more "traditional" telecomm. people, because FidoNet was designed in a vaccuum, developed along unique lines (PCs), and now, because we far outpace existing networks in some areas. (Social sophistication isn't one of them.) As much as we like to think we're so big and smart, not many people are actually aware of how FidoNet is put together. Just something to think about. Somehow in all of this I ended up writing a history of FOSSIL development; to avoid boring you I put it into a separate article. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FidoNews 9-05 Page 3 3 Feb 1992 ====================================================================== ARTICLES ====================================================================== FOSSIL drivers' ancient history Tom Jennings 1:125/111 The FOSSIL interface was originally the Fido internal serial library interface; the calls are fairly generic in design. I had been using it for a few years before Fido, in programs like Phoenix Technologies' TELINK (later Ptel) program. (The original TELINK program was written in BDS "C" for CP/M, and yes, it contained it's own internal driver of amazingly similar design (but no interrupts (but I digress)).) At the time, the "IBM PC" was brand new and expensive, and every hardware platform (Compupro, Tandy 2000, TI Professional, Computer Devices' DOT, Otrona Attache 8:16, etc) had completely different hardware. I had a "driver layer", and wrote simple drivers that were hardware-specific, and linked them into the program. (During those years I was writing MSDOS BIOSes, not ROMs but the hidden \IO.SYS that actually contains the MSDOS.SYS interface. MSDOS.SYS opens files etc, and passes requests to the driver, IO.SYS, which in turn gets the job done using whatever the hardware is. What I did was write IO.SYS in two layers; a very smart one that handled error checking, blocking, segment boundary handling (can't DMA across a 64K boundary) and all that really hard stuff, and was quite stable and completely hardware independent. The hardware drivers were stupid, did no error checking and talked directly to the hardware, and talked to the smart guy through a table. With this scheme we were able to do complete MSDOS ports to virgin hardware, boot ROM, IO.SYS, disk formatter, utilities, etc, in under a week...) Anyways, the original Fido used the same scheme for serial I/O. The driver was linked into the FIDO program using an object linker. Even post-IBM, there were enough non-IBM machines (DEC Rainbow, Sanyo 555, etc) to warrant me writing drivers and linking up Fido programs for them. Some machines weren't worth the trouble -- and I usually didn't have access to hardware. (The DEC Rainbow driver took 3 months, and was written OVER THE VOICE PHONE, as John Madill's Rainbow 100A was in Balto. The most painful code I have ever written.) For a typical Fido release in 1985, I created five versions: IBM, DEC, VICTOR 9000, SANYO 555, and OTRONA ATTACHE 8:16 (I had the hand-wired prototype (no schematics, not ROM listings!, which caught on fire two years later). This was getting ridiculous! So I decided to pass the buck: I documented the serial device functions (read, write, ready test, etc) and using the existing IBM ROM INT 14h as a model, made another Fido version, the poorly-named GENERIC Fido. Then, when someone called me with some wacko computer, I could finally say "You do it!" FidoNews 9-05 Page 4 3 Feb 1992 The history from this point on is contained in document FSC-0015, written by Rick Moore. I'll merely summarize from it. While I considered myself off the hook at this point, the "Generic" driver was barely enough to do the job. Thom Henderson (who also had his own SEAdog drivers) and Bob Hartman built a driver around the GENERIC interface to solve some particular SEAdog problem; Vince Perriello took this further and under the extensive prodding of Ken Kaplan (global FidoNet facilitator supreme deluxe) generated a DEC Rainbow driver and then SEAdog ran on that now-historic hardware. Some guy no one ever heard of named Wynn Wagner was trying to get a commercial serial driver package to work for his Opus, without much success. Bob Hartman suggested that with a few changes, it could use the drivers already coded for SEAdog (and my implication, Fido). And, quote, "...Vince called Wynn to discuss porting Opus to the DEC Rainbow, Wynn called Bob, Bob called Vince, and the FOSSIL driver came into existence". ("FOSSIL" stands for: Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer.) Rick Moore, Solar Wind Computing, authored FSC-0015, the FidoNet FOSSIL standard. In 1987 I finally renamed my FIDO_GEN to FIDO_FSL, dumped my GENERIC drivers in favor of the FOSSIL system. (It took me that long simply because I'm lazy.) In 1992, I upgraded my own drivers. No longer will I have to link up separate FOSSIL and IBM versions; each program will automatically use a FOSSIL driver if present, or fall back to the integral driver. It's amazing how long it takes to get around to these things! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- by Mike Butler Sysop of Manhattan Skyline, Sileby, UK (2:250/416, 2:250/417) A day in the life of an overworked UK sysop - or - How to survive a business, BBS and family without cracking up I live on the outskirts of a small village called Sileby in the middle of the UK. For those of you who know the UK, it's between Leicester and Nottingham. Nice views over open fields at the front and a long garden with a railway line at the bottom at the back. I always wanted a train set! The day starts at around 7:00am. Well, to be exact it started five minutes earlier when my son woke up, closely followed by my wife. The first thing I know about it is someone is pulling my hair. My son has decided to practice mountain climbing. Guess who is honorary mountain for today. Got it in one - me! One thing I should mention here is that my son developed cerebral palsey after being born 13 weeks early and is disabled. The first and last time my wife has ever been anything but late :-). I hope she never sees this...... FidoNews 9-05 Page 5 3 Feb 1992 After about ten minutes the word 'breakfast' starts to waft around the bedroom. Not in the 'would you like breakfast' style. More like the 'breakfast would be a good idea if you want to live till lunch' style. Off I go downstairs, trying to avoid the assorted toy cars and squeaky dog toys we have littered around the place. I didn't mention the dog did I? Snuzzle is a mixture of several dogs. Unfortunately none of them had a brain. At least, she never inherited one. She is eight years old now but no-one has told her. She still thinks she is a pup. She sleeps on the end of the bed. Unless she thinks no-one is watching when she sneaks up and lies between us. Anyway, back to the morning..... I've made it to the kitchen. Fill the kettle completely full and put it on to boil. Get some milk and stick it in the microwave to warm for the kid's cereal. I now have around five minutes to dive into the office and check to see what the night has delived to the BBS. Not a lot really. No new netmail, a few files from my file host and a whole bunch of echomail. Wildmail is still tossing it into Wildcat. I really must buy a decent machine. The mail BBS runs on an original IBM AT which is slow at best. When tossing mail it is ssssslllloooowwww! Looking out of the window doesn't reveal a lot. It's still dark. The kettle turns off. Back to the kitchen, get the milk out of the microwave. Make a mental note to wipe up the bit that overflowed. Back upstairs with breakfast. No paper yet. The newsagent said the boy had not turned up. I asked when they would get a reliable one. Silence at the other end of the phone. No sense of humour some people. I crawl back into bed and power down for ten minutes while Sandra stuffs Lee full of breakfast. I get rudely awakened by a plastic Bart Simpson landing on my head. This does not bode well for the day ahead. Sandra carts Lee off into his bedroom to get him dressed. I wake up and get dressed - not necessarily in that order. I get downstairs first and make the coffee. I may wake up yet..... Outside has emerged from under the darkness. It's very frosty. The trees and lawn are white. The wife's car is iced up. Mine is in the garage . The trees near the house are full of birds looking at an empty bird table. I stock it up with bread and get back inside where it's warm. At about 8:15 Lee gets picked up by the school bus. He goes to a special school about 15 miles away for four days a week. Once he is five he'll go full time. He is four in a couple of weeks - Feb 5th. The mail arrives shortly afterwards. The mail is pushed through the letterbox. Folded. Including a couple of diskettes. Great! 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