Subj : beyond March 19 2038
To   : Alan Ianson
From : August Abolins
Date : Tue Feb 11 2020 19:50:21

On 11/02/2020 8:16 a.m., Alan Ianson : August Abolins wrote:

According to the TZUTC, you wrote that just after 5am! You certainly
start your day very early. I have a couple of house-broken cats that
wake me up between 3a and 5a to be let out, each at their own time!  But
I promptly settle back to sleep.


 AI>When I first joined Fidonet in 1995 those diff's were essential.
 AI>The compressed nodelists were 1.5MB and I really didn't want to
 AI>transfer that on the 2400 baud modem I had at the time..

I used a 2400 baud that came with my computer only briefly. But, by the
time I joined Fidonet with my own bbs I had a 14.4 kbit/s internal
modem. The increase in speed seemed amazing at the time.

I really enjoyed utilizing simultaneous upload/download. Was that with
Ymodem/G...?  I don't quite remember.  It was cool to "chat" with
another sysop during the upload/download session too.

1.5MB seems rather large for a text-based nodelist. Were you relying on
one of the non-zip archives?  But the math seems right:

Today, approx 1000 nodes = 50K
Peak, approx 40000 nodes = 2000K or 2meg


 AI>Can OXP not skip processing the diff and just compile a new
 AI>nodelist?

Processing the diff is actually preferred.

As I wrote in my original message, OXP does not seem to be designed to
offer automatic full nodelist detection upon arrival.  But that's ok.
The diff processing works and is pretty magical - now that I've learned
that there are different versions of the "same" nodelist and nodediffs
depending on the Zone you pull them from.  I had no idea.


 AA>>Y2K-broken programs have probably left the FTN scene gracefully.

 AI>I hope so.. but we do have pktdate should the need arise..

That reminds me, I recently discovered a date problem when I used
Tommi's BBS (ie logged in manually) to send a netmail few weeks ago. His
Concord BBS software produced a future date of 2056.  LOL

  Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2056 21:45:16 GMT
  Message-ID: <5473$netmail@JamNNTPd>
  References: <5470$netmail@JamNNTPd>
  X-JAM-From: August Abolins <2:221/360>
  X-JAM-To: Martin Foster <2:310/31.3>
  X-JAM-MSGID: 2:221/360 1ced0c7d
  X-JAM-REPLYID: 2:310/31.3 f99352d3
  X-JAM-PID: Concord 0.01 Beta-30d OS/2  ser#cc38c58d


I should drop by and see if he had a chance to hack netmails with pktdate.


 AA>>..will many 32-bit
 AA>>programs that rely on dates (like this OXP) expire on March 19
 AA>>2038 03:14:07 UTC?

 AI>I don't think they'll expire but the dates they display might be
 AI>wonky.

It's really fun to hack a fix and witness the magic. But it's more fun
when things run right the first time.


 AI>I think the OpenXP developers are still developing, or at
 AI>least maintaining OXP so I think OXP users will be OK. I'm not so
 AI>sure about some other software.

I never really thought that I would warm up to OXP, it being a dos/texty
interface requiring mostly keyboard action.  But its message search
capabilities are very good, among other things.


 AI>There were 2020 problems in Mystic that were quickly fixed. These
 AI>sorts of niggles can show up unexpectedly.

Lots of fun to be had!


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