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From: rpw3@redwood.UUCP (Rob Warnock)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Stargate Deployment: possibilities
Message-ID: <186@redwood.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 22:38:45 EST
Article-I.D.: redwood.186
Posted: Wed Mar  6 22:38:45 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 08:29:43 EST
References: <598@ncoast.UUCP> <164@redwood.UUCP> <622@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: [Consultant], Foster City, CA
Lines: 52

+-+-+--<598@ncoast.UUCP>:
| | | Hamnet sounds like a good idea; someone should try it out. Can you imagine
| | | a tiny inews program for a Commodore 64 with an RTTY interface?  :-}
| | +--<164@redwood.UUCP>:
| | Modern hams are using TAPR boards (Tucson Amateur Packet Radio), with far
| | more advanced techniques than RTTY, which was typically 75 baud. TAPR runs
| | at 1200 baud (with experimental units already working at 9600),...
| +----<622@ncoast.UUCP>:
| Uh huh.  And show me a TAPR board for a C-64.  I'm talking about netnews for
| all (but they *can't* post!  :-); if I had meant restriction to Xerox 820's, I
| would never have dragged the Commodore 64 into the discussion...
| Brandon Allbery, decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!bsa, ncoast!bsa@case.csnet (etc.)
+---------------

Sorry, I misunderstood your point. I was talking about RTTY vs. AX.25
(there are other digipeater sources besides TAPR). One can connect a TAPR
board to a C-64, I think, if a C-64 can run at 1200 baud. The TAPR-computer
link is just RS-232, as I understand.

But I see now you're talking about the news software itself on very small
machines ("inews", etc.).  As far as running the netnews software, the disk
space problem is likely to be the killer (do you have multi-megabytes of
disk on your C-64?). I would suggest making a shared "neighborhood" system
have all the disk on it, and using the radio links for terminal service to
READ the news on the server, NOT for news transfer per se.  (The radio is
just a "dial-up" modem, in this case.) The neighborhood system might be
run by voluntary contributions from its subscribers, the way public T.V.
is funded. (Note that pay-for-play would necessitate using other radio
channels than the ham bands. I don't know what FCC allocations would be
suitable for commercial packet nets, but someone should look into it.)

Additionally, the "nsc!dist-news" mailing list ("dist-news" or "lan-news"?)
have been having discussions on how to structure reader/server software of
this type in a local network environment (whether to cache articles in the
reader, etc.).  In that context, the radio link can be treated as an LAN.
Unfortunately for your question, they are all assuming the "reader" nodes
are fairly large workstation systems.

The "stargate" experiment ALSO requires significant storage at receiving
nodes, since articles are not requested but simply "fly by". (Maybe the
"neighborhood" system above could be a "stargate" receiver.)

Perhaps we can separate the discussion into segments on "transmission"
(or "distribution"), "storage", and "processing" (or reading).


Rob Warnock
Systems Architecture Consultant

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