From: nospam.mark.lewis@p73.f12.n3634.z1.fidonet.org   
      
    On 2022 Feb 28 13:23:52, you wrote to me:   
      
    ml>> one's hub/feed can be anywhere... it is not required to feed from any   
    ml>> system in one's net... never was, either... much to the anguish of   
    ml>> many *Cs/*ECs back in the day... Planet Connect proved that ;)   
      
    gr> Hah!  I totally forgot about Planet Connect until you mentioned it.   
      
   many have forgotten about it...   
      
    gr> I used to want one of those connections so badly! :)   
      
   i thought about it at one point but never jumped...   
      
    gr> Did it actually work well?   
      
   from what i saw of it, yes... they exported to an address that everyone had to   
   use and the stream was quite continuous at the time... as the files arrived,   
   your system just tossed them as normal... traffic back to PC went by standard   
   landline, as i recall... you could tell when your system's posts made it out   
   because they would come back to you via the satellite feed...   
      
   my only real experience with it was when helping another operator with their   
   WWIV setup trying to toss it all back then... at that time, the FTN<->WWIV   
   tossing was a two pass thing... the first pass with a FTN tosser to MSG format   
   followed by the WWIV tosser going from MSG to WWIV's internal format... i was   
   called in to assess why the MSG files were not being tossed into WWIV... in   
   this case, it was because the WWIV MSG tosser was being too strict and looking   
   for terminating null characters that didn't exist... so i whipped up a quick   
   tool that appended the needed null characters to all MSG files between the FTN   
   tosser's run and the WWIV tosser's run... that fixed the problem of inbound...   
      
   outbound worked the opposite way... WWIV to MSG and then FTN tosser to package   
   from there to linked systems... my tool was not needed at this stage since the   
   FTN tosser wasn't as strict...   
      
   it all worked well enough for the time period... i don't recall what happened   
   with that system, though... it just wasn't there one day... i suspect the   
   operator and his family moved as i've never heard from them since and the few   
   times i was in the area and thought to stop by their place, there was no   
   vehicles in the yard so i just kept going...   
      
   )\/(ark   
      
   "The soul of a small kitten in the body of a mighty dragon. Look on my majesty,   
   ye mighty, and despair! Or bring me catnip. Your choice. Oooh, a shiny thing!"   
   ... Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side and don't be stingy, baby.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)