uucp and other unix stuff on a pc

[Isaac Rabinovitch]

In <1990Sep2.093805.13164 at NCoast.ORG> ac119 at cleveland.freenet.edu writes:


>Ad for Coherent mentioned that its users will be able to access news and files
>via UUCP.  This is a product I definitely want to learn more about.
>-- 
>NEIL PARKS

I've had a similar thought.  I have access to a pretty good "public
access" Unix system, so I should be satisfied, but doing my
interaction over a 200 cps modem connection (typically several seconds
to redraw the screen) and interacting with zillion-moded Unix software
gets old.  And eventually I'll probably have to start paying for
the phone-line-time I'm using.  So being able to do my news and mail
interaction on my PC makes sense.

But I don't think Coherent is the way to go for this.  It and similar
alternatives (some other form of Unix for the PC; news/mail software
that runs under MS-DOS; buying an orphaned Unix micro, which might
actually be the cheapest way to go!) all amount to the same thing:
starting your own network node.  That means administrative headaches,
but worst of all it means "downloading" every message/posting that I
*might* want to see.  What I want is to preview/select messages on a
host system, and download only the ones that interest me.

As I see it, the big problem is that Unix software is still living in
1978, when almost everybody used a terminal, a special-purpose machine
with little smarts beyond cursor addressing and efficient screen
updating.  Now, we're all using full fledged computer systems that
generally have hard disks and a ton of RAM.  But what do we do when we
want to talk to Unix (or BBS, or most dialup) systems?  We run an
emulator that does little more than make that fancy 1990 computer
pretend it's a 1978 terminal.  Oh, we've got file transfers and
keyboard macros, but those are minor features tacked onto that old
Jimmy-Carter-era technology.

Why should a Unix system assume my system can only do one thing at a
time?  Right now, I read news by browsing a list of messages, *one*
screen at a time, picking the ones I want to see, whereupon the
newsreader (nn in my case) sends them two me, *one* screen at a time.
What the host system should do is send my sytem at *computer* speeds,
not human speeds.  While I'm reading the information in one screen,
the two systems, instead of twiddling their thumbs, are "pipelining"
the other information I'll probably want to see.

This requires:  clever new transmission protocols; clever new
application design; multitasking -- but all of it's *quite* feasible
if anybody's got the skill (no problem there) and imagination
(well...)

Hey, you Windows and Desqview types?  You listening?  If netnews and
mail don't interest you, think about how must "faster" Prodigy would
be if screens were pipelined, instead of waiting for a specific
command and 4 seconds of downloading...
-- 

ergo at netcom.uucp			Isaac Rabinovitch
atina!pyramid!apple!netcom!ergo		Silicon Valley, CA
uunet!mimsy!ames!claris!netcom!ergo

Disclaimer:  I am what I am, and that's all what I am!