On a similar note, I wind up making posts like that because I get tired of all the anti-Windows FUD!! and I'm not a M$ fan nor do I follow any OS religion; I use what's stable and will ditch it in a heartbeat if it has chronic issues.
Your description of all the stuff one has to do to optimize linux for everyday use isn't so "easy" either (in my experience, Windows is far less work), but thanks for the tips and links; saved for reference.
I did observe that if the HD has no cache of its own, linux's disk access (at least as of disties from a couple years ago) was dead-slow right from the start. Wound up putting a newer HD in the linux test box just to get away from that. Same setup otherwise, so it wasn't only the DMA being off-by-default thing (tho that likely didn't help).
I've messed with a number of linux disties over the past 7 years, and the only one I've really liked is Mandrake (with KDE). I've tried Ubuntu, and it works okay as far as it goes, but I don't like Gnome (too Mac-like for me) and I got tired of hitting dead ends.
I recognise that linux was designed as a server and developer OS, which is all great and wonderful for those uses, but the groupthink here on/. is that it's also the perfect desktop. Since I keep hoping to find a true alternative to Windows for my SOHO clients (and Macs are *not* an option for most of them), it's extremely frustrating.
An example of the frustration... last week at our local linux UG, we were playing with Ubuntu 6 on a middle-aged Gateway (ie. whatever disty and hardware were handy). Resolution proved stuck at 640x480 and could not be changed... apparently there's no driver for this common-as-dirt Intel onboard video chip that's 4 or 5 years old. WTF??!
The Mac G4 with OS9.2 followed me home from the dump, I didn't buy it:) I absolutely detest the nasty overpriced things from top to bottom -- everything I've ever disliked about *any* hardware or OS, all in one handy package!! About all I can say for it is that in very limited use, it hasn't crashed on me, tho a great many things Just Don't Work. One of these days I'll have to find my OS X disk and set up a dual boot (on brief exposure, I liked naked BSD), but... I've always hated the Mac interface and its whole way of doing things. I want to deal with data from the application POV, not from the document POV; and when the OS hides stuff from me, I get cranky. I think it's normal to wander thru the OS files with a hex viewer.:)
I don't much problem learning new things, nor with using multiple very-unlike desktops (hell, I still use DOS), but I no longer have the patience to slog thru complex configuration stuff. If something makes me RTFM just to get going, it's already used up ALL my patience.
The complete series (17 eps, incl. some never aired) was at Sam's Club for $17 a while back. At that price, I bought it even tho I didn't find the series all that wonderful (decent as a serial, but as straight SF it's too campy for my taste).
While back a friend with chronic depression calls me raving about how good he'd been feeling all week. Seems he'd gotten worn out the week before and had therefore gone to bed at a decent hour, and got up by 10am (four hours before his usual). D'oh....
Interesting about use of coma for healing sleep. [pro dog trainer hat] You can see how sleep is *required* in puppies too -- during rapid-growth phases, they sleep 20 to 22 hours a day, and will often fall asleep in the middle of doing something. They're also adept at sleeping whenever there's nothing better to do. I've seen freak pups that sleep far less than normal, but they're VERY rare.
You can actually kill a dog by totally preventing it from sleeping for several days.
Quick test for obstructed breathing: Jerk your chin up and out. If that makes you take a deep breath, you're not getting enough air (awake or asleep), whether due to posture, soft palate intrusion, or whatever.
Actually, DOS (M$ or otherwise) doesn't use the "first" hole; it uses the first hole that the *entire* file will fit in, =provided= such a hole is available. You can see this most easily by copying/moving/defragging files on a floppy (which is naturally cramped for free space). WinNT* is somewhat worse about fragmenting than is DOS.
Also, now I see one cause of linux's bloody slow disk access, compared to other OSs. In my forays into linuxland, I've learned the hard way that it needs a very fast HD to compensate. (I have Win**, linux, and Mac systems here. Makes it easy to compare.)
Ya know, I'd truly love to find a linux I could be happy with (especially since from what I see so far, Vista ain't living at my house), but so far it hasn't happened, and "your OS is a luser so you are too" type comments don't exactly encourage folks to switch.
I've noticed that there is a direct correlation between [sliding scale of bipolar/OCD/panic disorder all the way out to schizophrenia] and a tendency to stay up all night. Up-all-night sleep-late patterns, and psych issues, tend to reinforce one another.
But normalizing the sleep cycle can mitigate the depression aspects. Go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up with the sun, and you'll feel better and be more productive over the long haul -- even if you have some other problem. And try to get three full sleep cycles (about 8 hours for most folk). You can scrape by on two, but it wears on you over time.
From TFA: "The thrushes also mixed up their shut-eye sessions with two other forms of sleep. In one, called unilateral eye closure, or UEC, the birds rested one eye and one half of their brains while their other eye and brain hemisphere remained open and active, keeping them semi-alert to danger."
I learned to do this back when I was doing a lot of long-distance driving. I discovered that if I closed ONE eye, it evidently let half of my brain "take a nap". After half an hour or so, I'd be as refreshed as if I'd taken a real nap.
Some years ago I read that downtime can cost a business as much as $8 MILLION per MINUTE in lost revenue. I'm sure the figure is higher now, but maybe that'll put it in perspective. It's not even remotely akin to the bush-league loss of productivity that an individual user experiences.
And that's one reason I don't update my WinBoxen. At all. They're protected by firewalls and safer apps (no IE, no Outlook) and my own common sense; I don't need to worry about EOL or lack of support or updates. I'm not going to have some patch come down the pipe and hose a system that's been stable for years and has nothing WRONG with it.
But the major reasons for a system running slower and slower aren't patches, but Norton apps, and sheer neglect -- mainly never defragging it. You change the oil in your car regularly, right? Why shouldn't a computer likewise need at least occasional maintenance?!
My various Windows installs are from 4 to 11 years old, none have ever been reinstalled (nor compromised), all still run like new, and they crash seldom to never.
I've suspected that for some time -- OEM machines, in my observation, are designed to fail (primarily from cumulative heat damage to HD and CPU, and motherboard damage from marginal-capacity PSUs). If they make it easier to buy a whole new monkey than to replace one component, the OEMs get to sell a complete new machine, and M$ gets to sell one more copy of Windows. Everybody happy!!
I believe M$'s flat stock price in recent years is a direct reflection of WinXP (and Office) being both DRM'd and sold at double the price we were accustomed to paying for Windows.
Speaking as a M$ shareholder, I therefore consider XP's DRM/activation crap detrimental to my investment, and an irresponsible behaviour on the part of M$.
Yep... when I moved, one of my HDs headcrashed, and thereafter had the creeping crud. It was still under warranty, but it wasn't losing data (just had a growing area of locked-out sectors) so didn't seem worth the bother... I nursed the thing along for a couple years, finally had to retire it at age 5 (about when one might expect EOL anyway). -- Besides, W.D. has been good to me, so no need to screw them, and maybe not have that good RMA service when I need it for a genuinely defective drive.
So that ballparks at what, about 98% still working at 5 years old? That would be consistent with my experience -- HDs that survive their first month usually run reliably for 5+ years.
I'll second mp3phish. I see a lot of HDs of random age and usage history, and Western Digital are by far the most reliable (and the only ones I've bought for the past 12 years). Seagate next best, tho theirs tend to run slower/hotter than comparable WD models. Maxtors are the worst, and are most likely to simply die without warning (whereas WD will usually make odd noises or give other clues of impending death). Samsung, IBM, and the other minor consumer brands also seem to have a high failure rate.
If a WD or Seagate HD survives its first month, it will run reliably for at least 5 years. Conversely, Maxtors often fail shortly after one year.
And now, beware of rebadged Maxtors masquerading as Seagates, at least until the old Maxtor stock runs out. Seagate did rebadge Conner's shitty HDs when they bought Conner, but didn't alter their firmware, so they could still be ID'd.
If you buy enough HDs, you WILL see failures in every brand, it's just the nature of the beast. I've had no trouble with WD warranties -- they cross-ship and only once have I received a refurb (and it's still perfect 4.5 years later).
As to spates of HD failures that you sometimes hear about, they're often not the HDs at all, but rather something else that mimics HD failure. Some that I've heard about or experienced: bad RAID controllers (some will fail by writing garbage to the HDs); data wrapping bug on FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB; bogus power supplies.
Actually, the biggest factors in HD lifespan aren't number of hours in service -- rather, what takes the life out of them are a hot environment, being powered on and off multiple times a day, and being hooked to bad power supplies. Being thumped around is also a factor, especially if a desktop machine is moved while it's powered on.
But given a stable environment, most decent HDs will run perfectly for a bit over 5 years, and often longer.
Frex, in my 3 everyday-use machines that always run 24/7, their four current HDs have a combined in-use age of over 25 YEARS (two are over 8 years old). This isn't at all unusual... at least for Western Digital. Your brands may vary.:)
I still have a few working HDs of the 40mb era, tho I can't imagine any earthly use for them:)
Make sure the total of INTAKE fans is always equal or greater than the number of fans blowing out; that keeps the air pressure higher inside the case, and prevents cat hair from drifting inside. Also keeps out most other dust and lint.
I have cats and live in the desert, so I get my full share of both cat hair and dust. Even so, my machines set up this way stay almost white-glove clean inside.
When Seagate bought Conner, they rebadged the remaining Conner drives and sold 'em under the Seagate label -- but they didn't flash the firmware, so they still betrayed themselves as crappy Conners.
I have salvaged HDs of every which brand, but due to experience with longevity and warranty, I only *buy* Western Digital. I have about a dozen in use at the moment (the oldest in everyday use has been running 24/7 for over 8 years now).
W.D. does the same cross-shipment as you describe with Maxtor -- they send you a new drive, you have 30 days to copy over your data and return the dead drive in the Handy Shipping Container that the replacement came in. In practice, the 30 days is usually more like 45-60 days (there's a "use by" date on the RMA slip that's generally the end of the month following the current month), and some replacements are refurbs. The last such refurb I got has been running 24/7 for 4.5 years now and is still 100% perfect, so I can't complain.
One distinct advantage of W.D. is that they don't just die without warning -- at the very least they'll produce strange noises. And sick WDs can usually be nursed along for a LONG time before they die for good.
Yep, BBSs lost a lot of people during the big rush to the Internet, but what of us stayed... well, we're staying, so long as there's a BBS to be found anywhere.
I agree that BBSs will never again be a *popular* route for secure email, but for the paranoid (or if such paranoia becomes too well-earned) the dialup BBS is a fundamentally more secure solution. You only need to trust your sysop and that the BBS's phone line isn't tapped; you don't need to trust every server along the way, your ISP, and everyone in your ISP's NOC or support areas. And if you're your own sysop, well, you DO trust yourself, don't you?:)
I never saw a WWIV board that did offline messaging, even on boards that did nothing BUT messages -- maybe the needful bits were less than obvious to the average sysop, or had fallen out of circulation by 1993, or..??
Renegade/Telegard had its issues WRT messages, too... as I recall, it was not only linear, but the online read/reply door only worked on a FIFO basis, so you wound up reading 'em date-backwards.
Most of the BBSs I called used Wildcat or PCBoard. I own several versions of Wildcat myself, tho got 'em for free (always a good price:) My buddy's little dialup BBS (still alive) runs Wildcat.
Published source might have been where I saw the Ethereal Realms name, yeah... sounds right to me!
Yeah, it can happen -- there've been a few Usenet groups that came close. And I suspect the process of getting a messaging/doorgame/etc. BBS "right" in itself tends to create a "local flavour" -- regardless of how it's accessed.
BBSs that offer telnet access have actually been growing in membership over the past few years, per what numbers I've seen. So they're clearly filling a need.
But the dialup BBS may come back to life as a secure email route -- as a method where you are NOT sending packets through a gov't interception point at your local ISP.
Well, yeah. If it weren't retro, it wouldn't be a BBS.:)
Yep, BlueWave is still DOS-based (and was abandoned eons ago); I use one of the late versions that uses the DOS4GW extender. It does need a Y2K fix wrapped around it, tho, or it mangles messages.
A LOT of BBS-related software, most of which had been abandoned by then, died of Y2K disease (taking plenty of BBSs with it), mainly for 2-digit date, but some for other rollovers... BWave actually threw up in late 1999 because of some rollover issue, I forget the details by now. Wildcat still works (and is still updated); IIRC, PCBoard doesn't.
Well, I don't telnet into Techware to be retro; I do so to keep in touch with the same people I've been BBSing with (via various echomail networks) for the past 12 years. Probably because it's been the same core community for so long, it doesn't matter to us whether it's telnet or dialup -- the atmosphere (and even the interface) are the same. I still log into Wildcat, upload/download my QWK/REP packets, and read/reply in BlueWave, same as I did 12 years ago. Only the route my electrons take has changed.
Slashdot Mirror
On a similar note, I wind up making posts like that because I get tired of all the anti-Windows FUD!! and I'm not a M$ fan nor do I follow any OS religion; I use what's stable and will ditch it in a heartbeat if it has chronic issues.
/. is that it's also the perfect desktop. Since I keep hoping to find a true alternative to Windows for my SOHO clients (and Macs are *not* an option for most of them), it's extremely frustrating.
:) I absolutely detest the nasty overpriced things from top to bottom -- everything I've ever disliked about *any* hardware or OS, all in one handy package!! About all I can say for it is that in very limited use, it hasn't crashed on me, tho a great many things Just Don't Work. One of these days I'll have to find my OS X disk and set up a dual boot (on brief exposure, I liked naked BSD), but... I've always hated the Mac interface and its whole way of doing things. I want to deal with data from the application POV, not from the document POV; and when the OS hides stuff from me, I get cranky. I think it's normal to wander thru the OS files with a hex viewer. :)
Your description of all the stuff one has to do to optimize linux for everyday use isn't so "easy" either (in my experience, Windows is far less work), but thanks for the tips and links; saved for reference.
I did observe that if the HD has no cache of its own, linux's disk access (at least as of disties from a couple years ago) was dead-slow right from the start. Wound up putting a newer HD in the linux test box just to get away from that. Same setup otherwise, so it wasn't only the DMA being off-by-default thing (tho that likely didn't help).
I've messed with a number of linux disties over the past 7 years, and the only one I've really liked is Mandrake (with KDE). I've tried Ubuntu, and it works okay as far as it goes, but I don't like Gnome (too Mac-like for me) and I got tired of hitting dead ends.
I recognise that linux was designed as a server and developer OS, which is all great and wonderful for those uses, but the groupthink here on
An example of the frustration... last week at our local linux UG, we were playing with Ubuntu 6 on a middle-aged Gateway (ie. whatever disty and hardware were handy). Resolution proved stuck at 640x480 and could not be changed... apparently there's no driver for this common-as-dirt Intel onboard video chip that's 4 or 5 years old. WTF??!
The Mac G4 with OS9.2 followed me home from the dump, I didn't buy it
I don't much problem learning new things, nor with using multiple very-unlike desktops (hell, I still use DOS), but I no longer have the patience to slog thru complex configuration stuff. If something makes me RTFM just to get going, it's already used up ALL my patience.
The complete series (17 eps, incl. some never aired) was at Sam's Club for $17 a while back. At that price, I bought it even tho I didn't find the series all that wonderful (decent as a serial, but as straight SF it's too campy for my taste).
Have you got the 64bit link handy? thanks!
:(
(Now to find someone with the conneciton to fetch 'em for me... no broadband here
Quoth the poster:
:)
linux 2.6: 3,315,274 lines of code, 0.138 / 1000 lines of code.
kde: 4,518,450 lines of code, 0.012 bugs / 1000 lines of code.
So far so good! But for contrast, I'll add this stat from TFChart:
Gnome: 31,596 lines of code, 1.931 bugs / 1000 lines of code.
Eeeep!!
(No wonder I prefer KDE
While back a friend with chronic depression calls me raving about how good he'd been feeling all week. Seems he'd gotten worn out the week before and had therefore gone to bed at a decent hour, and got up by 10am (four hours before his usual). D'oh....
Interesting about use of coma for healing sleep.
[pro dog trainer hat] You can see how sleep is *required* in puppies too -- during rapid-growth phases, they sleep 20 to 22 hours a day, and will often fall asleep in the middle of doing something. They're also adept at sleeping whenever there's nothing better to do. I've seen freak pups that sleep far less than normal, but they're VERY rare.
You can actually kill a dog by totally preventing it from sleeping for several days.
Quick test for obstructed breathing: Jerk your chin up and out. If that makes you take a deep breath, you're not getting enough air (awake or asleep), whether due to posture, soft palate intrusion, or whatever.
[reads links... very interesting]
Actually, DOS (M$ or otherwise) doesn't use the "first" hole; it uses the first hole that the *entire* file will fit in, =provided= such a hole is available. You can see this most easily by copying/moving/defragging files on a floppy (which is naturally cramped for free space). WinNT* is somewhat worse about fragmenting than is DOS.
Also, now I see one cause of linux's bloody slow disk access, compared to other OSs. In my forays into linuxland, I've learned the hard way that it needs a very fast HD to compensate. (I have Win**, linux, and Mac systems here. Makes it easy to compare.)
Ya know, I'd truly love to find a linux I could be happy with (especially since from what I see so far, Vista ain't living at my house), but so far it hasn't happened, and "your OS is a luser so you are too" type comments don't exactly encourage folks to switch.
I've noticed that there is a direct correlation between [sliding scale of bipolar/OCD/panic disorder all the way out to schizophrenia] and a tendency to stay up all night. Up-all-night sleep-late patterns, and psych issues, tend to reinforce one another.
But normalizing the sleep cycle can mitigate the depression aspects. Go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up with the sun, and you'll feel better and be more productive over the long haul -- even if you have some other problem. And try to get three full sleep cycles (about 8 hours for most folk). You can scrape by on two, but it wears on you over time.
From TFA: "The thrushes also mixed up their shut-eye sessions with two other forms of sleep. In one, called unilateral eye closure, or UEC, the
:)
birds rested one eye and one half of their brains while their other eye and brain hemisphere remained open and active, keeping them semi-alert to danger."
I learned to do this back when I was doing a lot of long-distance driving. I discovered that if I closed ONE eye, it evidently let half of my brain "take a nap". After half an hour or so, I'd be as refreshed as if I'd taken a real nap.
Scares the shit out of your passengers, tho
Some years ago I read that downtime can cost a business as much as $8 MILLION per MINUTE in lost revenue. I'm sure the figure is higher now, but maybe that'll put it in perspective. It's not even remotely akin to the bush-league loss of productivity that an individual user experiences.
And that's one reason I don't update my WinBoxen. At all. They're protected by firewalls and safer apps (no IE, no Outlook) and my own common sense; I don't need to worry about EOL or lack of support or updates. I'm not going to have some patch come down the pipe and hose a system that's been stable for years and has nothing WRONG with it.
But the major reasons for a system running slower and slower aren't patches, but Norton apps, and sheer neglect -- mainly never defragging it. You change the oil in your car regularly, right? Why shouldn't a computer likewise need at least occasional maintenance?!
My various Windows installs are from 4 to 11 years old, none have ever been reinstalled (nor compromised), all still run like new, and they crash seldom to never.
I've suspected that for some time -- OEM machines, in my observation, are designed to fail (primarily from cumulative heat damage to HD and CPU, and motherboard damage from marginal-capacity PSUs). If they make it easier to buy a whole new monkey than to replace one component, the OEMs get to sell a complete new machine, and M$ gets to sell one more copy of Windows. Everybody happy!!
Except, of course, the consumer or business....
I believe M$'s flat stock price in recent years is a direct reflection of WinXP (and Office) being both DRM'd and sold at double the price we were accustomed to paying for Windows.
Speaking as a M$ shareholder, I therefore consider XP's DRM/activation crap detrimental to my investment, and an irresponsible behaviour on the part of M$.
Yep... when I moved, one of my HDs headcrashed, and thereafter had the creeping crud. It was still under warranty, but it wasn't losing data (just had a growing area of locked-out sectors) so didn't seem worth the bother... I nursed the thing along for a couple years, finally had to retire it at age 5 (about when one might expect EOL anyway). -- Besides, W.D. has been good to me, so no need to screw them, and maybe not have that good RMA service when I need it for a genuinely defective drive.
So that ballparks at what, about 98% still working at 5 years old? That would be consistent with my experience -- HDs that survive their first month usually run reliably for 5+ years.
I'll second mp3phish. I see a lot of HDs of random age and usage history, and Western Digital are by far the most reliable (and the only ones I've bought for the past 12 years). Seagate next best, tho theirs tend to run slower/hotter than comparable WD models. Maxtors are the worst, and are most likely to simply die without warning (whereas WD will usually make odd noises or give other clues of impending death). Samsung, IBM, and the other minor consumer brands also seem to have a high failure rate.
If a WD or Seagate HD survives its first month, it will run reliably for at least 5 years. Conversely, Maxtors often fail shortly after one year.
And now, beware of rebadged Maxtors masquerading as Seagates, at least until the old Maxtor stock runs out. Seagate did rebadge Conner's shitty HDs when they bought Conner, but didn't alter their firmware, so they could still be ID'd.
If you buy enough HDs, you WILL see failures in every brand, it's just the nature of the beast. I've had no trouble with WD warranties -- they cross-ship and only once have I received a refurb (and it's still perfect 4.5 years later).
As to spates of HD failures that you sometimes hear about, they're often not the HDs at all, but rather something else that mimics HD failure. Some that I've heard about or experienced: bad RAID controllers (some will fail by writing garbage to the HDs); data wrapping bug on FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB; bogus power supplies.
Actually, the biggest factors in HD lifespan aren't number of hours in service -- rather, what takes the life out of them are a hot environment, being powered on and off multiple times a day, and being hooked to bad power supplies. Being thumped around is also a factor, especially if a desktop machine is moved while it's powered on.
:)
:)
But given a stable environment, most decent HDs will run perfectly for a bit over 5 years, and often longer.
Frex, in my 3 everyday-use machines that always run 24/7, their four current HDs have a combined in-use age of over 25 YEARS (two are over 8 years old). This isn't at all unusual... at least for Western Digital. Your brands may vary.
I still have a few working HDs of the 40mb era, tho I can't imagine any earthly use for them
Make sure the total of INTAKE fans is always equal or greater than the number of fans blowing out; that keeps the air pressure higher inside the case, and prevents cat hair from drifting inside. Also keeps out most other dust and lint.
I have cats and live in the desert, so I get my full share of both cat hair and dust. Even so, my machines set up this way stay almost white-glove clean inside.
When Seagate bought Conner, they rebadged the remaining Conner drives and sold 'em under the Seagate label -- but they didn't flash the firmware, so they still betrayed themselves as crappy Conners.
You've Been Warned...
I have salvaged HDs of every which brand, but due to experience with longevity and warranty, I only *buy* Western Digital. I have about a dozen in use at the moment (the oldest in everyday use has been running 24/7 for over 8 years now).
W.D. does the same cross-shipment as you describe with Maxtor -- they send you a new drive, you have 30 days to copy over your data and return the dead drive in the Handy Shipping Container that the replacement came in. In practice, the 30 days is usually more like 45-60 days (there's a "use by" date on the RMA slip that's generally the end of the month following the current month), and some replacements are refurbs. The last such refurb I got has been running 24/7 for 4.5 years now and is still 100% perfect, so I can't complain.
One distinct advantage of W.D. is that they don't just die without warning -- at the very least they'll produce strange noises. And sick WDs can usually be nursed along for a LONG time before they die for good.
Yep, BBSs lost a lot of people during the big rush to the Internet, but what of us stayed ... well, we're staying, so long as there's a BBS to be found anywhere.
:)
I agree that BBSs will never again be a *popular* route for secure email, but for the paranoid (or if such paranoia becomes too well-earned) the dialup BBS is a fundamentally more secure solution. You only need to trust your sysop and that the BBS's phone line isn't tapped; you don't need to trust every server along the way, your ISP, and everyone in your ISP's NOC or support areas. And if you're your own sysop, well, you DO trust yourself, don't you?
I never saw a WWIV board that did offline messaging, even on boards that did nothing BUT messages -- maybe the needful bits were less than obvious to the average sysop, or had fallen out of circulation by 1993, or..??
:) My buddy's little dialup BBS (still alive) runs Wildcat.
Renegade/Telegard had its issues WRT messages, too... as I recall, it was not only linear, but the online read/reply door only worked on a FIFO basis, so you wound up reading 'em date-backwards.
Most of the BBSs I called used Wildcat or PCBoard. I own several versions of Wildcat myself, tho got 'em for free (always a good price
Published source might have been where I saw the Ethereal Realms name, yeah... sounds right to me!
Yeah, it can happen -- there've been a few Usenet groups that came close. And I suspect the process of getting a messaging/doorgame/etc. BBS "right" in itself tends to create a "local flavour" -- regardless of how it's accessed.
BBSs that offer telnet access have actually been growing in membership over the past few years, per what numbers I've seen. So they're clearly filling a need.
But the dialup BBS may come back to life as a secure email route -- as a method where you are NOT sending packets through a gov't interception point at your local ISP.
Well, yeah. If it weren't retro, it wouldn't be a BBS. :)
Yep, BlueWave is still DOS-based (and was abandoned eons ago); I use one of the late versions that uses the DOS4GW extender. It does need a Y2K fix wrapped around it, tho, or it mangles messages.
A LOT of BBS-related software, most of which had been abandoned by then, died of Y2K disease (taking plenty of BBSs with it), mainly for 2-digit date, but some for other rollovers... BWave actually threw up in late 1999 because of some rollover issue, I forget the details by now. Wildcat still works (and is still updated); IIRC, PCBoard doesn't.
Welcome, and good luck!
Well, I don't telnet into Techware to be retro; I do so to keep in touch with the same people I've been BBSing with (via various echomail networks) for the past 12 years. Probably because it's been the same core community for so long, it doesn't matter to us whether it's telnet or dialup -- the atmosphere (and even the interface) are the same. I still log into Wildcat, upload/download my QWK/REP packets, and read/reply in BlueWave, same as I did 12 years ago. Only the route my electrons take has changed.