Pointing off Ten Minute Limit



This document describes how to become a point off the Ten Minute Limit,
Fidonet 3:711/934, phone (02)436-1785, or International + 61 2 436 1785.


Due to the fact that I hate doing administration work, and some people are
asking for point numbers and then I don't hear from them again, I've decided
to implement this procedure for becoming a point.


First of all you need to have FREQ capability.  You can get this capability
by downloading "DEVIL*.*" and "TELIX*.*" from area 1 of my BBS.  FREQ means 
"File Request".  It is a way of getting files from a BBS without having to
log on.

Then you need to set up as a point.  To do this you should FREQ
"FIDOTUTE.*" from my BBS, and follow the instructions there.

Then you need to set yourself up as point number 3:711/934.32000, and send
a PRIVATE netmail message to Paul Edwards at 3:711/934, and send it directly
to me via your point setup.  The private netmail message should contain
the following information (including the +'s), except with your details there.
You should do a cut and paste.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NAME: John User
SUBURB: Bondi Junction
STATE: NSW
PHONE: + 61 2 555 4444
PASSWORD: freddy
CONTACT: 3:711/934
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NAME is your name.  SUBURB is your suburb if you live in a capital city, or
the town name if you live in a town.  STATE is the state that you live in.
PHONE is your phone number, in international format.  For those of you who
are not familiar with the international phone number format, here is a
description.

Normally written + 61 2 555 4444, the "+" symbolizes that it is in
international format.  The "61" is the country code.  61 is Australia's
country code.  The "2" is the STD area code in Australia, minus the leading
0.  The rest is your local number.

I am planning on automating this process of registration, so make sure you
fill it in properly.  If there is a problem with your registration, I need
a contact address.  E.g. if you regularly call Paragon, which is Fidonet
address 3:712/502 (phone + 61 2 597 7477), then you could put that address
there, and netmail will be sent to you.  That is what you must specify for
CONTACT.  If you want to dial my BBS to get a reply, you can specify my
address as the contact address.  

The PASSWORD field contains the password you want to use to access my BBS
as a point.  Please make it lowercase alpha characters, to a maximum of 8.

When you actually send the mail packet to me, try to have a close look
at how many bytes are actually sent.  If you only send me 60 bytes, it
means that you've screwed something up, because all that above information
is more than 60 bytes long!!!


If your application has been successful, I will have added your name to
the list of all points on my system.  If you FREQ "tmlpoint.*", you will
get this list of points.  If your name is on it, it means you have been
successfully set up.  Please allow 1-2 weeks for you to be set up as a 
point.  Although I quite often set it up within hours of receiving
the application, so you might want to try more regularly.  You can
tell from the list what your point number is, e.g. you might by point
13, and thus your point address is 3:711/934.13.  You should then change 
your address and password in your point setup, and try calling me again.  
Your point setup should be complete by this stage.  You can hook yourself 
in and out of echos as specified in the AREAFIX.* document, also available 
for FREQ from here.  Some echos you may be interested in tagging are 
"LOCSYSOP" (messages to Sysop), and "LOCUSER" (messages between users).  
There is no requirement to pick up either.  Please allow 24 hours for 
AREAFIX to respond to any of your requests.  I will sometimes
automatically hook you into some echos when I set up your userid, and
it is up to you to unhook yourself.

There are some special points you should know about echomail.
First of all, whoever starts up an echo is the moderator.  And
because it is the moderator's echo, they can say who can and
who can't post messages in the echo, and in fact they can get
the entire feed cut, so that I can no longer receive the echo.
What this basically means is that the moderator of an echo has
absolute authority over it, and if the moderator says that you
are not allowed to post in an echo, then you must stop.  If the
moderator tells me to stop you posting in an echo, then I will
in turn tell you to stop posting in that echo, but it is too
much hassle to set things up my end to stop you doing so.
Therefore, I will just tell you to stop posting, and if you 
persist in posting there I will disconnect you completely from
my system.  I personally couldn't give a rats arse what you post
in whatever echos, but when the moderator says something, it
must be done, otherwise the moderator will stop all mail going
to my system, and then EVERYONE gets affected, which isn't going
to help either of us.  You can get a list of most of the echos
available in Zone 3 (Oceania/Pacific/Australasia) by FREQing
"Z3EL*.*" from me.  This lists the name of the moderator of all
the echos, and any rules for joining the echo.  Any echos that
are listed as "Ozlink" you should be able to get from me, 
because I feed directly off an Ozlink site.

In whatever procedure you end up using to get mail from me, please
set up your system so that the *VERY FIRST* thing it does after
getting mail from me, is save a copy into some temporary directory.
That way if anything goes wrong, and something stuffs up your mail,
you can reprocess it yourself, instead of asking me to resend mail.
Generally I cannot resend mail because I don't keep the echos on the
BBS, they are all passthrough.  And the stuff that I read myself is
just for personal amusement, just like ANY OTHER user, so e.g. you
can ask another user of the BBS to send you messages you have lost,
just as easily as asking me.  Anyway, if you just ensure that you
ALWAYS make a copy of your inbound mail, it will never be an issue.
In the same way in that if I lose mail that I picked up from my boss
(Dave Hatch), that's just my bad luck, I lose the mail (which is why
the VERY FIRST thing that I do is to copy my inbound mail into a
"save" directory).


There are a few file areas available for FREQs.  Most of them are
maintained by me or David Begley.  If you wish to maintain a lot of
files for some special purpose, I can set up a special area for you.
However, only send files if you actually want to specifically make
them available to the general public for some reason, as I do not
personally have a desire to fill my hard disk as quickly as 
possible (as so many other sysops seem so keen to do).  If I want
millions of files I will just by a CDROM for $15.  However, feel
free to upload stuff if you feel that it is providing a service to
someone.

There is one special file area called "Special Requests", with a
TIC area name of "SPECIALR".  For general files you want to make
available to the general public (ie not just some crap for one
person), you need to submit it use the TIC mechanism.  To do this
you either need to get hold of the appropriate technology (Yatic
or similar), or you can do it by hand by creating a file as
described below...

You need to create a file called TICxxxxx.TIC, where xxxxx is
your point number, e.g. for point 13 it is TIC00013.TIC.  In
that file you need to put the following information:

Area SPECIALR
Origin 3:711/934.13
From 3:711/934.13
File BORING.ZIP
Desc An incredibly boring file 
Pw XXXXXXXX

Changing the "Origin" and "From" fields to your address, the "File"
to the name of your file, "Desc" to the description, and "Pw" to
your password (the same password you use to call me).  You then
send this TIC file, along with the file you're trying to put in
there, and then it will immediately be made available for FREQ.  It
will appear in my files list the next day.  You just FREQ the file
as normal, just using the filename.  


One other thing you need to know is how to send a file to another
user on this board.  You can do this without having to get me
involved, because I have allowed you to send files via my system.
The FTS spec (the one that governs the format of the .PKT files
that you send me) has a method to allow you to send files.  What
you need to do is send netmail to whoever you want the file to go
to, and in the "subject" field, you must enter the name of the file
you are sending.  If you use "proper" software, you can do all of
this through the message editor.  If you are using some braindead
concoction of software, you will need to do it manually.  The manual
process involves making the subject equal to the filename, and then
in the outgoing packet you need to find the beginning of the message
(it is marked by two bytes, x'02' and x'00'), and the first message
should come immediately after the packet header, which is 58 bytes
long.  The x'02' is position 0 in the message, and you need to go to 
position x'0a', which is the low-order byte of the attribute.  You
then need to set bit 4 of this byte on, ie OR it with 0x10.  The
value that is there already is *probably* 0x01 which means "private"
is the only attribute set.  So you will end up changing this to 0x11.
So you end up sending me this message with the file-attach bit set,
and you must also send me the file at the same time, and it will be
forwarded to the other user (so long as they are a point off my
system), and then it will delete the file from my system.  Which
makes it nice and clean from my point of view.  STOP PRESS - file
routing to other points is not available until further notice, due
to limitations of my current software; what you can do instead is
use the TIC mechanism to send something to Special Requests, then
when the person has it, send another version of the file which is
0 bytes in length, and my system will automatically delete it.

Of course, if you are sending a file to *me* personally (ie not
a file to be made available on the BBS), then of course I am happy
to process it manually, because I have to anyway.

One more thing is when you decide you no longer want to point.
Please save me from having to find out several months after you've
left that I've got 40 megabytes of mail waiting for you.  All you
need to do is deselect the echos you were collecting (by writing
to "Areafix") and then keep polling for one or two days longer
(until you get a message back from areafix to say that all the
areas have been deselected).  That way I don't need to do anything.  
If you decide in a few months time that you want to start getting 
mail again, that's fine, I am unlikely to have deleted your userid, 
so just speak with areafix and get the echos back.  A number of 
people have decided not to be points any longer and then come back, 
so please remember your password for when you change your mind!  :-)

Also, because I have STD callers who are trying to get mail before
the STD rates are jacked up, please don't poll for mail between
7am to 8am AEST, unless you only get about 1 minute's worth of
mail.  Most other times are fine, but 3.30am, 5.50am and 9pm
are other times to avoid if you can (just for 10 minutes while
I poll for mail).

Thanks for your cooperation in keeping the system automated, so
that running a BBS is NO skin off my nose.  Paul.

P.S. There is another file, tmlpol.txt, which has some policies
of TML, if the above doesn't answer your questions.