response 101 of 124:

Feb 20 05:42 UTC 1995

   I dunno Marc: when I've given my email address out for various
things, time and time again I've gotten a "oh?  Grex?" type of query
from people.  It had me pretty surprised at first.  Grex is known for
being "odd" on the net--we're going against the grain in a number of
ways now, and we've survived.  Now, I'm not saying that we're known
like netcom is, but an awful lot of people seem to recognize
cyberspace.org.

response 103 of 124:

Feb 20 10:30 UTC 1995

(Re 101, I've seen more people who recognize "cyberspace.com" myself, or
 Cleveland's Freenet; I don't see where I would have heard of Grex if
 I hadn't been at the famous 1991 meeting.)

response 105 of 124:

Feb 20 15:21 UTC 1995

I  think that everyone should have access to usenet and the abaility to post

response 107 of 124:

Feb 21 05:37 UTC 1995

        Okay, now that I understand your position, tsty.. I agree.
I see no need for USENet, and I do not wish for login to be any
longer than this evening.. <10 minutes to go from connection to the picospan
prompt!!>. And this atrocious speed was without USENet bogging down the
works! You say we're known for going against the grain on the net?
Then let's go a little further, and *not* have USENet! You keep saying
you want to reach out to the local community, but I see USENet as
taking people's time away from doing what I'm doing right now! Using
PicoSpan, to express one's self LOCALLY, i.e., here!

response 109 of 124:

Feb 27 22:59 UTC 1995

  I just talked to PageSat, and they faxed 15 pages of info and
articles.  It's $695 for a 2 foot dish, $895 for a 3 foot dish
(recommended for the east coast, and chosen by some others to improve
bad-weather reception).  It includes your choice of a wall mount, pole
mount, or non-penetrating roof mount.
 
  The ongoing service fee is $30/month, but you have to pay the first
year up front ($360).
 
  They'll also deliver your e-mail for a $30 one-time fee, but our
current feed seems reliable, and reliability is much more important
for mail than for news.  A Fidonet feed is also available free through
1/96.
 
  They claim to deliver 180MB/day of usenet news, and depending on
the section of ad copy, carry every newsgroup they can get, every
"U.S. newsgroup heirarchy", or "virtually every newgroup".  They
currently receive over 20 NNTP feeds, some of which are major backbone
feeds such as DEC-WRL and CERFnet, which they say provides a fast
up-to-date feed that will "get you that item someone posted for sale
faster than virtually any other means."  (Hey, like a used terminal
server! :)
 
  They sell a DOS package for $75, but provide Unix source free, which
runs on SunOS, Linux, and BSDI, among many others.
 
  Technically, their dish sends the signal via coax to a modem-like
box, which demodulates the data while converting it from sync to
async.  It then goes into the host via a user-supplied RS232 cable as
GZIP compressed batches.
 
  Since this is their info packet, they don't include much about the
drawbacks, like how much news we're likely to lose due to weather.
However, one of the articles, after a mostly glowing review, did have
a negative section:
 
  "Pagesat is not without critics.  Ironically, the most visible
  criticism is in a netnews group called biz.page.sat, where customer
  reports vary.  One user claimed that aiming the dish was so
  difficult that he paid a satellite TV installer to do it for him.
  (Brennan, however, says that it took him five minutes to aim his.)
  Others have reported delays in transmission which could have been
  caused at Pagesat or elsewhere.  A number of early users have
  upgraded to a larger dish for more signal fade margin.
 
  Our experience with the system has been good, but your mileage may
  vary.  An unobstructed view of the satellite is required, and the
  'offset feed' dish makes it appear to be looking higher in the sky
  than it is, so that hills or trees may be more significant obstacles
  than they appear to be. Software may not do what exactly you need or
  fit your operating environment without some work...check before you
  buy."
 
  One potential problem is that the dungeon is in a pretty
tree-intensive area, as I recall.  (A disadvantage of living in the
Tree City!)
 
  By the way, another idea, purely as fantasy, is their satellite
uplink, available for $3000/month.  Yeah it's expensive, but imagine
it: Grex, the first Michigan BBS to not pay a nickle to Ameritech!!!

response 111 of 124:

Feb 28 07:04 UTC 1995

  Sounds like you need their decoder, and are better off with their
dish.  It might be worth looking for a used one in the newsgroup they
mention, but they changed dishes to a better one not too long ago, so
I doubt we'd find a good used one.
 
  "PageSat ships the system complete with a PCSAT100 Data Terminal, a
.63 meter or 1 meter parabolic dish with a high stability LNB, and
software."
 
  "Hardware consists of a parabolic Ku-band antenna system which
includes <smudge> high stability low noise block converter (LNB).  A
high quality piece of RG59 coax is included and brought indoors to the
PCSAT 100 Wireless Usenet Data Terminal.  Antenna alignment is easily
completed via a 1Khz reference beacon tone that PageSat continually
broadcasts."
 
  "Q: Can I use an existing satellite system, and just buy the modem?
Existing satellite receivers are not stable enough to receive the
signal, and the LNB's frequency may not be stable enough.  Also, if
you move the dish to watch another satellite you will lose your feed.
You may use an existing Ku-Band antenna but it is recommended that you
use a PageSat supplied LNB."
 
  "Q: What satellite is the carrier?  GE Americom's K-2."

response 113 of 124:

Feb 28 15:52 UTC 1995

   Clouds won't affect Ku band transmissions that much.  Not more than
10 - 20 dB, which I'm sure they are calculating.
   Glad to see they're including so much information.  I'm not sure
yet, but their system is probably cheaper.  Using a LNB means that
the little box at the focus point of the dish not only receives the
microwaves, but downconverts it to some much lower frequency, which
is then decoded.  This might be a worthwhile thing for us to do.

response 115 of 124:

Mar 2 06:06 UTC 1995

Probably a future Usenet machine.  A couple other kinks to a dish is how
the dungeon-lord would react to it, and possibly city ordinances about
parabolic rooftop decor.

response 117 of 124:

Mar 23 06:14 UTC 1995

It was discussed in the budget planning item, and was prioritized behind 
some other tasks and expenditures.  In other words, it's on the back burner.
(Still simmering though :-).

response 119 of 124:

Apr 14 13:02 UTC 1995

quit`
`

response 121 of 124:

May 18 16:21 UTC 1995

well, re the adult newsgroup, the cleveland freenet handles that pretty
well, they allow people to access them, but ask them to send in a copy of
their drivers license and signed form saying they're over 18 and are
requesting permission.  Then if any legal problems come up, well they were
a victim of fraud and not liable.  Also, that way people who are 'scared'
of seeing stuff they don't want to see don't have to, everyones happy.
     I think that the PC box for usenet would probably be the easiest,
less expensive to maintain, and hell, since most of us HAVE PC's, you
might get people willing to donate one temporarilly or permanently for
those charity things on taxes to help out if you have problems.
     Sidez, I notice some really huge places, like the freenets use em,
and also, a lot of the local, one line bbs's get on these echo things
cheaply with fidonet to post messages, worst comes to worst you could
probably find a way to rig one of those setups up.  Only problem is its
kind of slow.
     In addition, you might be  able to shuffle other things over to it,
if you ran linux for instance, you might be able to have it using its
CPU for games, irc clients, etc, and freeing up more cycles for grex here.

response 123 of 124:

May 31 13:16 UTC 1995

Thanks Jared!