Re: NTLK Some Newbie Questions

From: Brian McEwen (brian@bmcewen.cvm.okstate.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 19 2000 - 22:35:04 EST


>1)it seems to me to be a little troublesome to be shifting the internet pkgs
>back and forth...You might want to consider getting hold of the Newton
>Modem..dog slow, but it will do the job.

One thing to note though- some ISPs have a cutoff for how slow you can go
and still have PPP. 14.4 is about as slow as I'd count on having PPP
access available, without checking first. The newton modems, if you mean
the cigarette pack ones, only came in 2400 baud data/9600 fax (at least,
I've never heard of a faster one).

That said, if you have access to a unix account, you can fire up gofetch
(shell)
and use gofetch to login to your shell account, at which point the app will
telnet into your SMTP server and manually grab your messages- this will
work at 2400 baud for certain, although slowly. So the cigarette pack
modems would work for that.

>> 2. I'm looking at Simple Mail and NewtScape as the best combination for 'net
>> work. Any comments?

Great apps, but you'll need PPP for each. A cheap and small footprint
external modem is the 14.4 USR sportster, and with a $3-$6 cable to go from
Apple serial to RS232 works just fine. You can find these around for well
under $20, usually. The cigarette pack 2400 baud modems go for about the
same price, although some online places list them for double that (!).
Steve Weyer was mentioning recently that Newtscape downloads the HTML data
first, then parses it- so you will be lots happier with a faster modem- I'd
suggest small external 14.4 or 28.8. I fiddled with Newtscape (only during
the demo period! :) at 14.4 but 28.8 would be my minimum if I were really
trying to "use" it. Just about anything Hayes compatible will do, and
RS232 external modems are easy to find used (& cheap). Swapping NIE, mail
app, browser from card to internal store just doesn't prove workable in the
long term, in my experience. I've been there and done that.

Brian

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