True Stories Of FidoNet

--- Following message extracted from 374SYSOP @ 1:18/14 ---
By Christopher Baker on Sun Aug 31 18:38:05 1997

From: Walt Young
To: All
Date: 28 Aug 97 04:25:08
Subj: FINALLY!!!

I am finally back on the Pentium running "full bore". I was lucky I still had the old 486 (8 ram, 340 HD), to at least keep the mail and messages flowing during this time. So no loss of mail or files anyway. Boy that used to be my "top of the line" system. Now it is slower than molasses compared to the big one. But then I guess it didn't bother my Commodore people too much since they have 2 mhz machines and 1200/2400 baud modems. (G)

Can't believe the problems I've run into in the past 4 weeks. What started out to be a "simple" HD and Modem upgrade turned into the biggest pile of crap. The first thing that happened is I lost the Motherboard and a power supply. Since I had blown all my savings on the HD and Modem, I had nothing to buy replacement parts with. Flat broke.

Well someone squealed on me, and mentioned it on the BBS. Next thing I know, I have donations coming in like crazy. I received donations from a Computer Club and a number of individuals, two of whom donated $100 each, and a bunch of smaller ones....which all added up to approx $550. Needless to say I was back in business!!!

WHO SAID BBS'S ARE DEAD AND NOT APPRECIATED???

NOT THIS ONE!!!!

I have maintained for a long time, that the problem with most people in 'puters these days is that they have progressed so far and have totally forgotten the "little people", the ones just starting out, the ones with small machines, like 286s, XTs, Commodore, CoCo, and don't take the time to help them learn so they can progress too. Well I never forgot what it was like to be a "newbee" and stumbling all over some sysops BBS, trying to figure out what to do while being totally intimidated by the whirring screens and myriad of confusing commands, don't know how to post a message (although we browbeat people to post), don't know how to download even a simple file. I felt if you "take care of your Customers" then at some point your Customers "will take care of you"!

Well, with the exception of 2 people...all those that donated all have small machines of one type or another, and all were older than the "Yuppy Generation". All those with higher powered fancy machines, totally ignored the situation....not even a "gosh I'm sorry to hear that"...not a dime. I think I've learned something in all this....I was right!!!

Back to the 'puter, mostly it was hardware not wanting to play together, then software didn't want to play with hardware, then hardware would retaliate against the Software, then some bat files played their 'game'...and on and on and on.

The biggest problem was when people would download QWK packets via SFQuick program (SFQ), they would pack, and DSZ would download the packet, but when DSZ was to exit and go back to SFQ, it would lock the system and give me an error screen, telling me that DSZ is being used by another Application. Well hell, there was NO other application running. I deleted them all just to be sure. There were some installs in the past where i did not have that problem, yet if I install direct from the Installation program of OS2...It would cause SFQ/DSZ to do the lockup.

I bet I installed, uninstalled, destalled, astalled, etc., a dozen times trying to find it. I was bound and determined. Well I still don't know what "causes" the problem, but I found a "CURE" for it anyway. One lousy line in the Config Sys "AUTOFAIL=YES". Not sure how it got into some configs in the past and not in others, but as long as that line is there SFQ/DSZ work perfectly fine. Took me 2 weeks to find it.

The other major problem was my Mouse and my Sound Card both wanted to "own" Irq 5. The mouse was a serial, so had to use extra serial card, and put mouse on com3, irq5 since both modems had 3 and 4. Well neither the soundcard nor mouse would budge, even trying to "fool" them with config sys entries. So finally went down and bought a PS/2 bus mouse and that solved that problem. Now they are both "happy".

Then Tues morn I wake up with the flu or some terrible man-eating disease, and was miserable for 2 days. Trying to install stuff for final run thru, since i finally got all the 'bugs' worked out. But just does not work when you feel like you are a limp dishrag. So quit for the night. This morn I started in again and it all came together, got everything installed by 3 pm, and machine purred like a kitten. So decided not to wait a min longer. Shut down the 486, put the two HDs in the Pentium and then copied the BBS over to the Pentium Drives. Took about 45 mins, and we were up and running.

So far...so good!! I hope it's another lifetime before I have to go through this again!!!.

But now we are up with the "big boys and girls" (or catching up, anyway). We still have Pentium 75, but added up to 64 ram, have a 4 gig and the old 850 for close to 5 gigs total space. Now have a 33.6 on the Mail Node, and moved the Supra 28.8 to the BBS replacing the 14.4, which is now in the backup 486. After all the above problems figured I earned some "luxuries" so bought a new video and sound card. Great...video card has all kinds of stuff my monitor (el cheapo bottom of line) won't see. Well one of these days I hope to get a 17" or 20" monitor so I can better read what's on the screen. Or maybe Santa will bring me one!! (hee hee).

Now I need to work on the File Areas and Conf Areas, both in bad need of revamping. Now that I have the space, I hope to get a better selection of files from the Filebone, at least in some selected areas.

Well now that I've done my "bragging" and got it out of my system (although I think the donation part was justified, the rest...blah), it's back to the "hole" and "normal (whatever that is) operation".

I've scanned the echo, albeit quickly, but think I have the "Headlines"...Larry resigns due to work commitments, Tim is now NEC, Genie is Temp NC pending Election in which so far she's the only one in nomination. Whoo Whooo Whooooo I hear the train a-comin, comin round the bend....hee hee. An Echo list was past out to be reviewed and revised. Think that is most of it. Now I'll try to get to the details in next day or two to get caught up.

Now I hope that I can be a better "asset" to the Net as a whole, as well as to my Super Customers!

Walt

Origin: Space Coast REACT, Melbourne FL <407> 255-9069 (1:374/710)

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