FIDO's Nuggets

The CBM and CBM-128 FIDONet echoes. The place where Commodore users unite. Let's see what things they discussed over the past month or two:

UNZIP 2 or not UNZIP 2?

For a while now, Commodore users have been able to uncompress archives created with the popular PKZIP 1.01 compression program by PKWare or one of its clones. Well, PKWare upped the ante and upgraded the PKZIP product to version 2, and that left a bunch of Commodore users compressed! The easy solution is to ask all archive creators to not use version 2 of the ZIP product, but that presents a problem. Most of the FIDONet crowd reads their mail offline via popular programs like QWKIE 3.1 on the 64 or QWKRR128 4.3 on the 128. The programs work by retrieving a COMPRESSED packet of news and mail from a BBS. Well, it turns out that BBS systems have migrated over to the new version of ZIP, and some refuse to offer ZIP version 1 as an optional compression method for retrieval packets. So, the FIDONet crowd, including David Schmoll and others, have been working on or searching for a way to bring PKZIP 2 functionality to the 64. Some thought it was a done deal when a FIDONetter contacted Info-Zip, the authors of a free clone of PKZIP 2 by the same name. They were told the source code was available. The catch, it is written in C, and so far, no compilation on the 64 or 128 has been successful.

QWKIE v3.1 FREE!

Many C64 users have delighted over the use of QWKIE v3.1 to read offline news and mail. However, many had been unable to register the product. The mystery was solved as of late when a letter by the author was read that stated that he was ceasing support for the product and had placed it into the public domain. As well, interested programmers could contact him about source code. So, QWKIE FREE, a patched version of the program that is marked as registered, was uploaded to the many CBM BBS systems for users to enjoy.

That Darn Internet!

As of late, many FIDONet regulars have been disappointed in the traffic flow on the CBM echoes. They blame the growing popularity of the Internet as one reason the amount of messages has dwindled. Almost immediately, reasons why FIDONet is still useful started popping up in the echoes. Many claim that the Internet and FIDONet are complementary for the Commodore user, and that both resources are needed. Others, however, stressed that FIDONet is still the most useful. While C=Hacking isn't going to cast a vote here, we do hope that interest in the echoes stays high, as some only have access to FIDONet, and Commodore support should be on every network.

Let's Randomize

Some soul on the echo was looking for a way to generate a random number from 2 to 350. Well, always eager to help, many FIDONetters came to the rescue, with varying degrees of complexity.

The first post, by Ken Waugh, included the text from one of Rick Kepharts WWW Site pages that explained, in two BASIC lines or less, how to create a set of 255 nonrepeating random numbers.

Then, ever the guru, George Hug, of 2400 bps on a 64 fame, described a method to find random numbers based on "linear maximal length shift registers", complete with 3 part article on the method. Wow! needless to say, the method looks promising, but was probably more than what the original author was looking for. Nonetheless, the treatise looks worthy of inclusion in an upcoming C=Hacking issue.

Catch the Wave!

By now, most know that Maurice Randall, the author of GeoFAX, has been working on a GEOS telecommunications program that will operate at the 14,400 bps or better mark. It's been discussed in both USENET and FIDONet before, but Gaelyne Moranec reopened the discussion with a statement that World Wide Web page viewing support might possibly be incoporated and under test. Mr. Randall was hoping to add such support at some time, but it was unclear when. It looks like sooner rather than later.

Who's First?

Rod Gasson posed an interesting question on FIDONet a while back. He asked which CPU was in control of the 128 when it is first powered up. The obvious answer of "the 8502" was given many times over, but Rod finally noted that it is, in fact, the Z-80 in the system that gains control of the system first. Herman Yan supplied the relevant page from the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide that explains the reasons. If you want to know more, check out page 576 in the manual.

Desterm Confusion

Many in the 128 arena use a telecommunications program called Desterm, by Matt Desmond. At present, there are two versions of the shareware application out, 2.00 that works on all drives except the RAMLink, and 2.01 that works with RAMLink, but has bugs not present in 2.00. So, which to use? That questions gets asked in verious forms in the echoes repeatedly. That, coupled with the inability to find Mr. Desmond for a while, the supposed hand-over of the code to Steve Cuthbert, and the recent emergence of Matt (See NewsNuggets) added to the confusion. The current thinking is that Matt will be working on a new release of Desterm that will include CTS/RTS support (the present version only supports XON/XOFF flow control) and some bug fixes. Somehow, the rumor that Matt will add Z-modem capabilities keeps pooping up, but Matt has denied any such work. He merely doesn't see a need, since add in modules can be created to do this.

So, that gives you a glimpse into the world of FIDO, the wonder dog of networks. C=Hacking laments that their own FIDO feed has been experiencing problems as of late, so we too may have missed some juicy tidbits. We'll catch them later on, though.

Here, boy...

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