🚀 go-pugleaf

[ My PCOak grep got a hit on this; still no time for reading news in
general.  I dread to think how far behind I am now... ]

On Tuesday, in article
     <20071009.1956.71006059snz$@i-m-t.demon.co.uk>
     v$af$ppint@i-m-t.demon.co.uk ""ppint. at IMT"" wrote:

> 	- if i should need a new modem, i s'pose it'll be time to
> 	bite the bullet & move to broadband - is anyone actually
> 	using ka9q/pcoak/snews successfully with broadband out there
> 	in the big wide world?

Yes, albeit not with a pure DOS machine -- although doing it with a
DOS machine should be possible, given appropriate drivers for network
cards etc. so that you could talk to the ADSL router.  (I doubt you'd
have much luck talking to a USB "modem" from DOS, but frankly I
wouldn't dream of connecting a machine directly to the modern Internet
via such a device anyway: a router with NAT will give you a degree of
protection from the random nasties out there, more so if it's got a
proper firewall.  With USB all bets are off.)

I've got a Windows 95 box acting as a server, running a packet driver
version of GremNOS in a DOS box and the (Win95-only) free version of
Dan Lanciani's NDIS3PKT to give it access to the network card via the
Win95 networking system; it talks to the router via the LAN.  I then
use Windows networking to access the server's disk over the LAN from my
normal machine, to get at the mail and news spools for PCOak and
SNews.  It all works very nicely; mail and news are *so* much faster
over ADSL!  (Even at the rubbish sub-1MB speeds I can get here, miles
from the exchange.)

If you only have one machine, you could of course do the "normal" KA9Q
thing of firing it up only when you need it; mine runs permanently
because it's an SMTP server that needs to be constantly available, but
if you stick with Demon you won't be getting your mail via SMTP over
broadband anyway (unless you pay extra for one of the more
business-orientated flavours of their service).

If you want to use something more recent than Win95, you'd need to get
a newer (paid for) version of NDIS3PKT: it's not expensive, but
getting money to Dan in the USA involves either a cheque drawn on a
merkin bank or sending him paper dollars. 8-(  (I know someone who has
done the latter, and is happily running KA9Q under Win2k (which is
itself running under Linux -- don't ask! 8-).)

I've added POP3 collection to my version of GremNOS so I can collect
my Demon mail; I haven't actually used Demon since BT killed off Home
Highway back in February.

I'm happy to try and help if you decide to enter the broadband world.

> 	- now all i have to do is work out how to survive a year
> 	in which no first years'll've been able to see IMT for at
> 	least the first month of the academic year, even if they'd
> 	heard/seen notice of it; nor gain safe and unencumbered
> 	access to the shop, and they had noticed it in any case...

8-(  I've just looked at your web site to find out the story; you have
my sympathies.

BTW, do you know some of your images don't seem to exist?  (Three of
the link images are missing when viewed from here (war20, faq20,
links20), as are the livejournal pictures and the horizontal divider
bar.)

-- 
Simon Turner                                    DoD #0461
simon@twoplaces.co.uk
    Trust me -- I know what I'm doing!          -- Sledge Hammer