Copyright 1993-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes All rights reserved. This article may be duplicated or redistributed provided no alterations of any kind are made to this file. This edition of DCL Dialogue is sponsored by Networking Dynamics, developers and marketers of productivity software for OpenVMS systems. Contact our website www.networkingdynamics.com to download free demos of our software and see how you will save time, money and raise productivity! Be sure to mention DCL Dialogue! DCL DIALOGUE Originally published August, 1993 Getting Connected By Kevin G. Barkes One thing that constantly amazes me is the number of people who write for paper or magnetic media copies of stuff because they don't have any telecommunication capabilities on their systems. Wake up, people. Internet access is becoming as crucial to businesses and persons working in high-tech fields these days as fax technology. An estimated 25 million people communicate daily via the more than one million systems connected to the Internet and its gateways to other public and commercial electronic mail services, such as FidoNet, CompuServe and MCIMail. If a person is connected to just about any "semi-legitimate" network, the odds are pretty good you can reach him or her through the Internet. A year ago, 90% of the electronic mail I received was from CompuServe or other commercial networks. Now the figures have flipped: only 1/10 of my e-mail travels over commercial services. It's the rare message that doesn't have an Internet return address. Plain vanilla e-mail isn't the only thing that makes Internet access useful. USENET News, a sort of internationally distributed bulletin board system, has news groups covering virtually every human interest. About 40 megabytes of news traverses the network each day; that's the equivalent to 20,000 typed pages. The problem is deciding what _not_ to read; just about every imaginable topic is covered, from OpenVMS to molecular biology to Indian classical music. News can be the most amazing time sinkhole you can imagine, or a superb tool for gathering information and getting quick answers to your questions. Internet also features ftp (file transfer protocol), which allows you access to literally gigabytes of free software, research material and other resources maintained on systems around the world. There's a price to be paid for all this marvelous connectivity. Establishing a dedicated Internet link can cost several thousand dollars a month. (Low-cost or free links through schools or other businesses, while available, can be unreliable and a pain to manage.) The software is downright user-hostile. Many large companies have people who do nothing but handle the care and feeding of their Internet link and support services. A lot of sites refuse to connect directly to the Internet because of security concerns. But not everyone can afford the luxury of a "firewall" system to isolate their main computer from the network. Of course, there are other less complicated and less expensive ways to plug into the Internet. Commercial services are promoting their Internet connectivity. You can send and receive Internet mail on CompuServe, MCIMail, GEnie and America Online, for example. But newsgroup and ftp access is limited, if not totally unavailable. Delphi and BIX, other online vendors, offer direct access to the Internet at relatively low hourly rates. But getting connected is only half the problem. Once you have an Internet link, how do you use it? The network's UNIX ancestry is readily apparent; the user interface is pretty much opaque. One service provider has developed an almost painless Internet interface. Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSI) of Reston, VA offers PSILink, a unique service that greatly reduces the cost and usability problems associated with Internet access. PSILink's major component is an offline reader that runs on MS-DOS PCs. It's similar in concept to the TAPCIS program used on CompuServe. Once installed, the program calls a local access number which connects to PSI's host systems, quickly "dumps" your mail and newsgroups to your PC, and then disconnects. You read your messages and compose your new mail offline at your leisure. The next time you call, PSILink uploads your outgoing mail before downloading your next batch of messages. Everything is menu-driven, making the whole process painless. PSILink comes in two flavors: "Lite" service, which provides unlimited electronic messaging for a flat fee, and "Basic" service, which adds anonymous ftp and USENET newsgroup access. Costs range from about $20 a month for low-speed "Lite" access to $40 a month for 9600 bps "Basic" service. You're allowed 50 megabytes of USENET and ftp a month; there's a $1/megabyte surcharge above 50MB. PSI provides a number of other services (including a nifty package to connect your LAN to the Internet over low-cost dial-up lines) and has 24-hour free technical support. You can reach them at 703-620-6651. If you want to quickly "get up to speed" on the Internet, there are two books that are mandatory reading: The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog By Ed Krol (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.) (707) 829-0515 nuts@ora.com and Zen and the Art of the Internet By Brendan P. Kehoe (Prentice Hall) As Ann Landers would say, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. If you're not connected to the Internet, you're at a decided competitive disadvantage. ---------------- GOODBYE FIDONET, HELLO INTERNET By the time this column appears in print, FidoNet node 1:129/38 will be no more. After seven years on FidoNet, I'm moving my SYS$OUTPUT bulletin board system (BBS) over to the Internet. The reason for the move is simple: Internet better serves the needs of my OpenVMS callers than FidoNet. I could have maintained my FidoNet address and accessed the Internet through one of the various "gateway" systems that exist, but I don't have the time for the additional maintenance requirements. I'm opting for a simple dial-up link through PSI. Once the software is configured with the help of PSI support, the BBS can go totally on autopilot. ----------------------- READER INPUT We received a lot of comments about our LaserJet and PostScript printer observations (DCL Dialogue, May 1993). Many helpful suggestions about suppressing the extra blank page on LaserJet print jobs were received. This note from John C. Lundy of Dallas Semiconductor in Dallas, TX is typical: "...I'm in total agreement about DEC's ignorance of HP LaserJet printers. Over the last three to four years we have had an ongoing battle trying to fight both VMS and OpenVMS to get our HPLJ's to work correctly. "We also had the blank page problem with our LJ's but about six months ago we found an answer. We were so frustrated with trashing pages that I decided to read the documentation. And there it was, a previously unseen qualifier to the /SEPARATE switch for the INITIALIZE /QUEUE command. Try using /SEPARATE=(NOTRAIL). You can add any existing qualifiers inside the parenthesis as needed (be sure and separate with commas). "And there you have it. I hope this will help others out there feeling alone or overpowered by the "HP doesn't exist" syndrome of DEC." Thank for the tip. Still, I'd love to see a $ SET TERMINAL/DEVICE=LJ command. On a different matter, John added: "...concerning being able to CTRL-Y out of TERMLOCK.COM while being SET HOSTed to another node. If LAT is supported by both nodes use the SET HOST /LAT command instead. Everything works as planned." Griping was not limited to printer connectivity issues. Thomas R. Carl added his own pet peeve: "Of all the quirks in VAX hardware and software, to me the one that is the biggest idiocy is the power adapter on the DECserver 90Ls... If you don't plug the 90L's into a DEChub, there's this monstrosity of a power adapter with the three-pronged plug built into it. So, you're lucky if you can even get one of them plugged into a 6-outlet power strip, let alone two of them. If you've never seen these things, you can't imagine how stupid they are. They're about 6"h x 3"w x 2"d! Is there a built-in UPS in these things? Judging by the weight, I think they're 98% air on the inside. Why did they do this?" I know what you mean. I have about a dozen 6-outlet power strips with only two power adapters plugged into them. There's a company that offers power strips with extra spacing between the plugs and with the plugs oriented so adapters don't cover up the other outlets. Problem is, they want $50 or so for one unit. For $50 I can buy eight regular power strips. The company that comes up with a reasonably-priced unit will make a mint, and deservedly so. Finally, thanks to Ingemar Hansson of SattControl AB, Sweden and Arthur Donkers, Le Reseau networksystems, Delft, The Netherlands for the command file contributions. Maybe we can squeeze them in a future column. I wanted to review Argent Software's nifty DCLFAST utility this month, especially since it enabled me to reduce the execution time of my LOGIN.COM file by over 30% with a simple one-line change in the procedure. Space is short, though, and we need more time to properly review the product. Check here next month for a complete overview. ********************** Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant who finds reality frequently runs a poor second to cyberspace. He lurks on comp.os.vms and can be reached at kgbarkes@gmail.com.