SMTP mailjam!?

["Mike Bilow, mikebw@ids.jvnc.net" <mikebw@IDS.JVNC.NET>]

>!)  Several local users of gerards distribution .exe (1.8b) have
>    had problems with severe "terminal mailjam".
>
>I relay some of this feed to local amprnet users.. when i
>returned from a brief trip to the great white north i had
>56 queued messages that caused gri-NOS to lockup the first
>time the SMTP timer kicked. I finally had to nuke the
>entire queue to get the pipes unclogged!

How did you get 56 messages "queued"?  If you were receiving mail
while you were gone, that would have simply been stuck onto your
mail file, and would not be queued.  Are you a mail server?

>Is there a tweak of the parms that would stop this from
>happening... or is this a "feature"?

Sure.  Set "smtp maxclients" to about 10 or less.  That ought
to stop NOS from crashing.

>!!) There also seems to be at times a tremendous delay with
>    loss of kbd control (and sometimes screen) when NOS is
>    doing a domain lookup... this seems to last anywhere
>    from a minute to infinity with no rhyme or reason.

The length of time probably depends upon the position of the record
in the DOMAIN.TXT file.  You might try setting "domain cache size"
higher; it defaults to 20, and I use 60.

>                                                        It
>    really puts ripples in my WA when I have to
>    three-finger-salute the machine to regain composure...
>    (BTW -- this is mess-windows independent... (for a
>    change!!!) but appears less likely to occur if i rip
>    all LIMS/HIMEM garbage out of config.sys...)

What NOS really wants to see is a disk cache.  You can use the old
SMARTDRV.SYS if you load either HIMEM.SYS or QEMM386.SYS.  If you
have lockups with HIMEM.SYS v2.77 (included with MS-DOS 5.0), you
can try changing the timing of the A20 switch as described in the
DOS manual by using a number 1-16 as an argument on the HIMEM.SYS
invocation line in CONFIG.SYS.

-- Mike

e environment varies wildly, and are an
absolute pain in the  butt for simplex burst mode.  But PSK is excellent
on full duplex satellite links.
  Packet radio is NOT a weak signal DX mode.  Solid reliable links are the
goal, and you'll find that the 9600 baud FM/FSK system provides this.
  It seems to have become a de-facto standard world wide.  Outside of the
USA 9600 fast networks are commonplace.  And the Oscar-14 satellite runs
telemetry and PACSAT mailbox software at 9600 baud and is staggering to
behold.
  I've personally shifted about 1300 PCB cards; Pac-Comm about as many
again (NB-96); Kantronics use it in their "Data Engine", and Tasco
Tereleader of Japan (the world's largest TNC manufacturer) make a
beautiful SMD version that is selling several hundred a MONTH.
  There are about five 9600 baud modems per 1000 hams in Europe (10 in
Belgium) and elsewhere, compared with 0.05 modems/kham in the USA.   Come
on you guys!
  There are some pretty impressive LANs about.  For example in Tokyo (JA1)
there's one with some 60+ users and several BBSs, as well as a similar one
in JA9.  Indeed the popular Japanese magazine "HAM JOURNAL" devotes half
the 1990 June issue to describing it, and its integration with many
different TNCs and radios.
  The modem is widely used on the German backbone network (almost all on
432 MHz and 1296 MHz); theirs is probably the slickest in the world.
  Most folk are so busy getting on with the engineering that they don't get
time to sing about it from the rooftops.  Which means among other things
that they forget to send ME details of how to modify the innards of
radios.  More likely though, they find that glueing a wire onto a varactor
and discriminator IC is pretty tame stuff.
  I have a list of radios that are known to be in use.  It seems to cover
everything that has ever been made, as well as some I've never heard of.
I got it from a Japanese BBS, where there are literally hundreds of
bulletins addressed to "PKT96".

Yaesu FT: 212 221 230 280 290 480 708 711 712 720 726 736 780 790 2700
3700 3900

Icom
IC: 3G 25 38 120 228 271 275 290 338 371 375 471 475 1200 1271 2500 2600

Trio
 TR: 50 851 7500 7700 8300 8400 9000 9500
 TM: 211 212 221 231 401 421 431 521 531 701 721
 TS: 700 770         TW:4000

Standard etc
C58 C140 C5000 C7800 C8900  ALR709  ALR72

 As you can see, 9600 is pretty well established world wide.  There are
several reasons for this.
 *  It works.
 *  It's available.
 *  But most important, it's supported.

  That is to say, people get answers when they ask questions.  Today.   And
I mean really important.  Remember Software 2000?  Don't beleive the
stories that TheNet didn't kill off NetRom.  Poor support did.
  Mike - does this help you to make up your mind?  You can phone on
 +44 954 210388 (0900 utc - 2200 utc) or Fax on +44 954 211256 (24 hrs).

  73 de James G3RUH @ GB7DDX 1991 Apr 02 - repeated 1991 May 02

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