knudsen@ihwpt.ATT.COM (mike knudsen) (03/18/88)
First let me take some of the blame for the C printf() battles.
I cross-posted the original anti-scanf() (NOT anti-printf())
article to comp.lang.c. I forgot that most folks there have
bathrooms bigger than our homes (multi-meg 68020 or VAX U**X
boxes). Fortunately several folks, including some on
"their" territory, have reminded everyone that "our" 6809 culture
emphasizes code SIZE over all else.
Mike King asked about the big commercial BBSes.
I used to use Compuserve and now use Delphi, mostly because
the Rainbow mag pushed Delphi so hard (I still wish they had stayed
with CIS, but...).
Of course the bad news is that Delphi and CIS cost real money,
charging by connect time. The good news is that there are many
more kindred souls on thier Coco and OS9 groups,
and orders of magnitude more message traffic (about 20-30 messages
PER DAY just on Delphi's OS9 subgroup!).
Also response time is MUCH faster -- I can post a question at 9 PM
and answers are coming in before 11 PM.
Often you can get into "real time" keyboard conversations
with just the right people (in my case, Chris Burke of PC
hard disk fame, and Ken Scales who extended the Disto 80-column card
drivers for the PBJ/FHL screen codes).
I also swap messages with Kevin Darling, Steve Bjork (among other
things a Tandy rep!), Tony DiStefano of DISTO, Marty Goodman...
Anyone on Delphi can do this.
Over on CIS you get Pete Lyall and other OS9 gurus.
Compare that with the 2-4 day delays on Netnews or Eric T's
Coco mail list. Also there are lots of files to download,
including binaries to XModem. There used to be sources here on
Netnews, but nothing lately.
The big BBSes cost money, but you only pay for what you use.
Delphi costs more than CIS at 300 Baud but is cheaper at 1200.
Anyway, Coconuts should get on CIS or Delphi occasionally just
to stop feeling like an invisible minority.
--
Mike J Knudsen ...ihnp4!ihwpt!knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T)
Delphi: RAGTIMER CIS: <memory failure, too many digits>
"Just say NO to MS-DOS!" "OS/2 == 1/2 of an OS"