=================================================================
GUEST EDITORIAL =================================================================
Looking Forward - FidoNet thoughts after 35 years away
Steve Weinert <mail address withheld -- contact the editor>
(old node numbers were 1:154/110 and 1:154/154, have not
been assigned a new one yet)
It was roughly thirty-five years ago that my last serious FidoNet BBS
shut down. Experimenting for about 5-7 years on two continents I very
much enjoyed the experience, and recently wanted to revisit FidoNet
doing a Raspberry Pi based project with an adult son.
Some things are pretty much as they were when my then Opus-CBCS BBS
running on a Columbia MPC-1600 portable computer I had used for
graduate school overseas and repurposed was shut down. New names,
different nodes in the nodelist, the usual changes in software, but
things "looked" pretty much the same.
A few things moved onwards including the prevalence of internet-based connectivity. A few sad things like early leaders who perished,
withdrew and some growing pains that never really settled down.
But the largest change I have found is there is enough decades of
history, enough abandonware depositories, layers of once useful guides
and now videos which cover parts in varying generational laggardness,
broken links and information still out there that should have been
depreciated or at least marked as "for historical reference only" that
it is genuinely more difficult to set up your system now than it was
back in 1986. In my first setup I printed the various documents out
(which mostly did not format onto the European A4 paper without some
help) and followed what were fairly straight forward steps.
Our more current attempt has been a big-time sink. I started with a
program for the Raspberry Pi that has a nice Wiki and lots of Videos.
Both information channels are incomplete and, in many cases, somewhat
out of date despite being less than 3-4 years old. A big kudo to the
gent who filmed the videos, and he has personally taken time to
encouragingly respond to my earliest test messages.
I tried two other relatively recent packages, finding them also easy
installs a bit shallow on documentation and step-by-step information,
before the SSD enclosure hooked to the Raspberry Pi flaked out.
Quickly repeated the installs on a spare Win10 box.
Through this all the incomplete and largely online only documentation,
layers of detritus of obsolete programs/information, abandonware,
focus on archaic operating systems, and my personal block against "all
go slow" video instructions left me feeling like a "technological archaeologist" rather than a one-board computer hobbyist.
Printed manuals let me write my notes as I go along and put post-its
on pages where I need to return. Despite putting an iMac next to the
project computer to read online manuals/wikis and watch videos, I
still had my pad of paper to write notes. Either on paper or on
screen I read much faster than the pace that can be used to
effectively pass on information via video or podcast.
Videos are nice when they are up to date, and if you stop them every
time you are focused on actually completing the steps. They also must
have a corresponding manual to help you sort out anything that didn't
go right.
Now what is cool is there are operating packages available and if you
wade through it enough information to get you up and going! Do no
despair needed, just a bit of organizing. Well organized makes a lot
of sense in a world where most people really don't know what is going
on in their computer, where apps/programs are automatically installed,
and configurations done via software wizards.
Bear with me as I offer an analogy - think teaching others cooking a
bowl of Pho. Now a well-organized recipe lists your ingredients,
often includes the time and equipment, and basically spells out your prerequisites. Then it breaks the major components into step-by-step sequences, eventually bring it all together.
In our Pho example you need your ingredients, make the soup broth,
prepare the garnishes, use prepared noodles and hot sauces, and put it together. (If you want a full example check out
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/228443/authentic-pho/ )
Now in our FidoNet world we give the "cook" half of the recipe, point
them at resources on how to grow rice and make rice noodles, specify a
hot sauce that hasn't been available since the 1990s, use differing
names for the same thing, and just for good measure include some other
ramen based recipe fragments just because they are interesting. We
also tell them to go basically a different store in a different town
for every ingredient.
Now our likely "cook" is not only thoroughly lost, but as they have
had only two previous Pho experiences, first buying a bowl ready to
serve at a restaurant and the second microwaving a store-bought Pho
kit that total cooking skills is measuring out the 1-1/4 cups of water
and emptying the little packets - and major cook skills required here
- microwaving it the requisite amount of time.
Likewise, on the FidoNet and BBS experience. In a world where so much
is made simple is there much chance that a new candidate "Joe Sysop"
is going to get past the misdirection, incompleteness and then do so
with no concept of where the parts all fit together?
Now here is the good part - if we collectively put things into the
FidoNet equal to cooking recipes we could expect mode node
participation.
- I do well when presented with a grand overview, followed with
successive levels of detail.
- I also do well when I can print out the documentation or at least
follow comprehensive checklists. Actually, more than anything else
let me have a good manual with how-to details and you can let me just
go at it.
- I'm all for videos if they present in an explanation of the "why",
showing an "example", and then designed to be paused while you do the
tasks, and offer some suggestions when something doesn't work out
right.
- I am all for historic stuff at all levels, but it needs to be
curated in a way to make the current obvious. Links need to work at
the minimum. And if it is history you need to put it on a timeline.
If my thoughts make some sense, it is my hope is that a couple
collaborators might invite me to help do some current and contemporary
"how to guides" as a new starting point.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
--- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
* Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)