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|D ^0Diskussion |D ^1On The Editor's Desk |Dͺ ^0Diskussion |D
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^Cby
^CDaniel Tobias

   Here's where I fill you in about what's up in the computer field.

   I just got back from the annual convention of FidoNet BBS sysops.  This year 
it was held in Cincinnati, or rather, in a part of Northern Kentucky that's 
right across the river from Cincinnati and is hence considered part of its 
metropolitan area.  (The hotel where the FidoCon was held, the Drawbridge Inn, 
is an interesting landmark in itself; it's actually got an operating brewery, 
for which the owner had to get a special exemption from the state legislature 
due to the liquor laws prohibiting the manufacture and serving of beer on the 
same premises.  However, all of this has nothing to do with PC's, so I won't 
digress any further about it.)

   Anyway, despite popular conception, "FidoNet" is NOT one of those nets at the 
end of a long pole that is used by dogcatchers to corrall stray pooches, but is 
rather a group of computer bulletin board systems which are capable of 
automatically calling one another to exchange electronic mail and files.  It was 
founded in 1984 by Tom Jennings, who wrote the Fido BBS program after which the 
network was named.  (Jennings still owns trademark rights to the names Fido and 
FidoNet, though he no longer participates in the management of the network; the 
name has been licensed by him to the International FidoNet Association [IFNA].)

   Presently, though the Fido BBS program is still on the market, the majority 
of FidoNet sysops are running a variety of other programs that are compatible 
with FidoNet mail protocols, such as Opus, which is distributed free.  Mailer 
programs like SEAdog, BinkleyTerm, D'Bridge, and FrontDoor allow you to set up 
your PC to interchange E-mail even if you don't run a full-fledged BBS, and they 
can also be used as front-ends for BBS systems that don't support netmail by 
themselves.  (Some of these programs are commercial, while others have been 
released into free distribution.)  Full BBS's on the network are known as 
"nodes," and have their phone numbers published in a "nodelist."  Private 
systems can hook into the network as a "point" that exchanges mail via a 
publicly-listed node.  (Many corporations and other institutions have internal 
"point networks", either self-contained or linked by one public node to the 
outside FidoNet.  Even individual users have taken to setting up points on their 
own systems to communicate with their favorite BBS without having to log in by 
hand.)  Most FidoNet-compatible mailers are for the IBM PC and compatibles, but 
one is also available for the Macintosh, and Amiga and UNIX mailers are also 
under development.  (One scheduled speaker was to lecture about a "GS Point"; 
for the Apple IIgs?  I don't know, since he cancelled and the speech was never 
given.)

   Nodes are grouped on a larger scale into "nets," "regions," and "zones," 
encompassing progressively larger areas.  Zone 1 presently encompasses all of 
North America, while Europe and Africa are in Zone 2 and Australia is in Zone 3. 
Zone 7 has just been granted to AlterNet, a separate group of sysops who have
disagreements with the way FidoNet is being run and decided to start their own 
network; some feuding between the two went on for a while, but they are now at 
peace and have established this zone connection to make E-mail between them a 
simple, standardized matter.  Other splinter nets may be handled in this manner 
also, leading to a diverse group of networks that share common interconnections.

   For more information about FidoNet, you can call our own BBS, node 1:380/2, 
at (318) 222-3503.  Or, write the International FidoNet Association at PO Box 
41143, St. Louis, MO 63141.


   While at the FidoCon, I received a review copy of a book that is must reading 
for anyone involved in BBSing these days.  It's entitled ^1SYSLAW: The Sysop's
^1Legal Manual^0, and it is self-published by the authors, Jonathan D. Wallace, 
Esq. and Rees W. Morrison, Esq., two attorneys involved in computer 
communications.  The explosion of litigation that has infested this country in 
general has not spared the computer community, and there are lots of legal 
liability questions (both civil and criminal) involving the sysops and users of 
bulletin board systems.  This book gives a clear description, in layman's terms, 
of the legal principles involved and the steps that should be taken by sysops to 
protect themselves.  (Available from LLM Press, 150 Broadway Suite 607, New 
York, NY 10038, (212) 766-3785.) 


   System Enhancement Associates (21 New Street, Wayne, NJ 07470), who created 
the popular "ARC" utility for file compression and archiving (and who just 
settled a lawsuit against PKWare for distributing a similar archiver which, in 
SEA's opinion, infringed ARC's copyright), has just released ^1AXE^0, a program 
to "chop your programs down to size."  It does this by compressing .COM and .EXE 
files using an algorithm similar to ARC.  However, while ARCed files need to be 
decompressed using the ARC program before you can run them, AXEd files remain 
self-running, since AXE places the code to decompress them into the start of the 
file.  Hence, the programs take up less space on your disk, but can still be run 
like usual.  The target markets include anyone with limited disk space (hard or 
floppy) into which many executable programs must fit.  Obviously, we fall into 
this category ourselves, since we try to get as many programs as we can into 
each issue of BIG BLUE DISK.  So, to test the program, we tried it on a recent 
BIG BLUE DISK issue (#23).

   AXE worked properly for all .COM and .EXE files on that issue, except for 
PASRUN.COM and PSMED.EXE, which were too small to allow sufficient space savings 
to make up for the added decompression code.  (AXE will automatically leave such 
files alone.)  All ran with no problem, though there is a slight perceptible 
difference in their initial running: the program loads first, then there's a 
slight pause while it decompresses the code before it actually starts running.  
The whole load and decompress time is about the same as the time it takes to 
load the original versions of the programs, but the pause with the disk light 
off could confuse some users into thinking their system has hung.

   The total savings were 29 kilobytes on disk 1, and 14K on disk 2.  This 
reclaimed 43K of disk space that could have been used to fit an additional 
program, so there is a clear benefit in using AXE.  We'll keep it in mind in 
getting us out of future disk-space squeezes, though we're not sure if we wish 
to use it for all BIG BLUE DISK programs routinely, due to the unsettling pause 
on initial running.  Some programs compress better than others: WESTERN.EXE 
regained the most space, going from 65,576 bytes to 46,015.  In contrast, 
SOFTWARE.COM only went from 64,181 down to 55,658.  The former was compiled 
under Microsoft QuickBASIC while the latter was Turbo Pascal, so apparently 
Turbo produces more compact code to begin with.

   You might think of buying the program yourself if you want to get all your 
favorite games (for example) on one floppy, or if you're running out of hard 
disk space due to all the programs you've installed.  (Note: never use AXE on 
your only copy of any programs, since there are some cases, like programs using 
overlays, that may not work.  Keep masters and/or backups safely on separate 
floppies, and run AXE only on your working copy.)                     


   Speaking of copying floppies, Central Point Software (9700 S.W. Capitol 
Highway, Portland, OR 97219; (503) 244-5782); the makers of PC Tools, an 
excellent utility package) has a hardware board that's of use in this area.  
Their Copy II PC Option Board has always been a useful tool for copying copy-
protected software.  (This has been decried by many other software publishers as 
promoting piracy, but in fact it has a perfectly legitimate use in making 
backups for your own use; if you spent tens or hundreds of dollars on a program, 
you don't want to have to depend on a single copy which could "crash" and leave 
you out in the cold for the days or weeks it takes to get a replacement.)  
Nowadays, copy protection is fortunately going out of style, but the new Deluxe 
Option Board has a function that can justify its purchase to many people.  Now, 
in addition to handling copy-protected disk duplication, the Copy II PC Deluxe 
Option Board can copy to or from Macintosh disks, using your PC's own 3.5" 
drive.  This lets you quickly and easily move data between the PC/MS-DOS and Mac 
environments.  The Deluxe Option Board can act on Mac disks using commands that 
are very similar to their IBM counterparts: MCOPY, MTYPE, MFORMAT, MDIR, etc.  
Directories of Mac disks are shown in an MS-DOS-ish format, so IBM-oriented 
people should have no problem dealing with them. 

   This is handy if you've got to transfer files between the two formats often, 
like when you word-process documents on an IBM that must be pasted up onto a 
desktop publishing document on a Mac.  Over here, we do lots of file transfers, 
since we've got diskmagazines for Apple, Mac, Commodore, and IBM machines.  
(What I don't understand is why the Option Board won't work with Apple II disks, 
since the Apple has a similar underlying format to the Mac, and in fact, there 
are Mac programs available to read Apple disks with no hardware modifications.)

   The Deluxe Option Board was easy to install, though it took up a slot of my 
PC, requiring me to remove one of my other peripherals.  (Clones with more slots 
shouldn't have this problem as often.)  It must be connected as an intermediary 
between your 3.5" disk drive and its controller, since it takes over control of 
the drive for doing Mac disks.  All necessary cables are included.

   I had one problem: the original board was apparently defective, and caused 
frequent disk I/O errors on the 3.5" drive whether using Mac or IBM disks.  I 
sent it back for a replacement, and the new one didn't have that problem.  I 
still occasionally have the problem of a file seeming to transfer to the Mac 
disk OK, but being unreadable by Mac applications; I don't know whether that's 
the Option Board's fault or just a bad disk.  Central Point suggested that I 
remove all memory-resident (TSR) programs, and set DOS's VERIFY ON; when I did 
this, subsequent files transferred OK.  However, the problem was sporadic enough 
so I can't be absolutely sure what conditions triggered or eliminated it.

   At any rate, I find the Deluxe Option Board to be a very useful piece of 
hardware for Mac/IBM file transfers, and it's still in use here for that 
purpose.


   While on the subject of file transfers, I should also talk about the whole 
slew of laptop/desktop file transfer kits now on the market.  Since most desktop 
PC's still use 5 1/4" disks, while laptops usually use 3 1/2" drives, there can 
be a problem getting files from one to the other.  Transfer kits solve this 
problem by letting you hook the two computers together temporarily for direct 
data transfer.  For instance, Rapid Relay, from SMA (3325 Executive Drive, 
Raleigh, NC 27609) contains a serial cable with multiple ends to fit either the 
9-pin or 25-pin connectors standard on PC's, and a menu-driven program to get 
files from one end to the other.  It's a pretty well-done package for those who 
need it, though I still prefer myself having both a 5 1/4" and a 3 1/2" drive in 
the same machine, allowing direct disk-to-disk copies without any messy cables 
to plug in.  For those without this capability, packages like Rapid Relay fill a 
need.  (Us hackers could save money by scrounging up an RS-232 cable, 
configuring a telecommunications program, and spending a couple of hours 
twiddling with the settings to get the thing to actually work; for novice users, 
a pre-packaged, ready-to-go setup like Rapid Relay should be worth its cost.)
