This is a collection of messages compiled from those of CodeHead Quarters BBS, 1610 Vine St., Hollywood, CA 90028 (213) 461-2095 Topic: PC PURSUIT This file was complied on Sept. 27, 1990 Message : 4564 [Open] 9-18-90 2:01am The question was not whether you are a Bostonian, but whether you are a PC Pursuer! If the latter, then local calls within many parts of Boston are as cheap for you as calls to the houses across the street from you (within the 30- or 50-hour cap), and so local rates for Delphi would be important in that case. I've called some Boston BBSs just this way, at not a single cent's extra cost to me. I might have even joined Delphi back then if I'd known I could do it that way at that rate, tho of course then I'd be annoyed at the disappearance of that rate now... Message : 4618 [Open] 9-19-90 1:50am > The Boston 2400 access number for Delphi is (617) 576-2981. That exchange _is_ PC Pursuitable! Therefore _anyone in the country_ for whom Telenet is a local call who was already a PC Pursuit subscriber and not using anywhere near their 30-hour limit could've made good use of the "local" Delphi deal -- back when it existed (I believe you said it's gone now, right?)... Message : 4665 [Open] 9-20-90 1:34am > please post again the telephone number needed to join PC PURSUIT. > There have been many inquiries.. A file uploaded on same would be > even better! Arrgh! I replied with that info to Hank Lema, as message 4626, but somehow (I didn't intend it that way!) it's Private. Feel free to reword it (so it works standalone as opposed to a reply) and make it a file if you want. I don't have any _official_ text files on PC Pursuit, tho. There used to be a free PC Pursuit Info BBS you could call via an 800 number, but I haven't seen it mentioned for a couple years and don't know if it still exists. It was a hard-to-remember number compared to the voice number (1-800-TELENET). (BTW, one too many L's in "Tellenet" in message 4626!) Message : 4666 [Open] 9-20-90 1:43am Yes, I use PC Pursuit (the 30-hour "regular" plan). I'd say I use about 10 hours a month calling a (private) BBS in NYC (from where I can access a number of Fido echoes). That alone would cost me about $75 in long-distance at least (and only at _night_, as opposed to _evening_ rates). Currently that's only out-of-town BBS I call very _regularly_, but there are some BBSs in a couple other cities that I call once in a while. Since I have about 15 or more hours of PC Pursuit time a month left over after all the long-distance, I use the remainder of it calling here. It would be just a Zone 2 call for me, but that still would add up to a dozen bucks or so of zone charges for those 15 hours, so it's still worth it, although only because I have the spare PCP time left. There are some other BBSs around the country I've been meaning to check out, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I figure I could call several more regularly (since they'd be more specialized for me, this being my primary ST-specific BBS, and thus I'd not likely spend as much time on them as here) before running up against my 30-hour limit... Message : 4670 [Open] 9-20-90 6:32am So how is the speed of PC Pursuit these days. I remember in the beginning it was very slow. Has that changed? Maybe I should subscribe. Message : 4674 [Open] 9-20-90 7:08am I've made message 4626 (which contains PC Pursuit information) open to the public. Anyone interested can select [J]ump (to 4626) to read it. Unfortunately Michtron BBS doesn't allow even the sysops to edit an exist message so your misspelling remains intact. :^( Message : 4704 [Open] 9-20-90 10:28pm The deal Delphi seems to be incredible. Finally a national board that you can call without enormous phone bills. I've never used PC Pursuit or any of the other plans, so this is almost a godsend. I cant wait for it to go into effect. Now, we can actually totally use a board and get to know all of the different features without going broke. Message : 4710 [Open] 9-21-90 1:36am > how is the speed of PC Pursuit these days. I remember in > the beginning it was very slow. Has that changed? There's two kinds of speeds at issue: one-way (open-loop throughput) and two-way (full duplex response). In the beginning PC Pursuit didn't work at 2400 baud and now it does. So in that sense it's obviously faster. The network delays are not unique to PC Pursuit; they occur with _any_ packet switched network, and on PCP they're due to Telenet rather than the PCP service itself. (I get the same network delays connecting to PAN, for example.) Incidentally, you can get them on "voice" call connections too, _if_ you get routed by satellite (common on transatlantic calls these days, anyway)! If you have to see each character after you type it before you can type the next one, such network delays will, of course, slow you down a lot, and they haven't changed substantially over the years. If, however, you can "touch type" in a way that you can get used to having the display be a word or two behind, it only slows you down when you make an error (or think you may have made an error). (On BBSs where it's easy to edit a word within the message later it's easier to deal with than here!!) As far as file trasnfers are concerned, these network delays are death to 128-byte Xmodem (40ish% throughput), but 1K "Ymodem" deals with them pretty well (about 90% throughput), and if you can use windowed protocols you can shave off even that remaining 10% or so. (A similar situation occurs on CI$, where you also connect by a packet-switched network: You have to use CIS B protocols, which are windowed, to get any decent transfer speed; Xmodem crawls big-time here...) /g25 /c/trasnfers/transfers (IHTE!) Message : 4804 [Open] 9-22-90 11:45pm After the 30 hour limit, PC Pursuit gets expensive enough that it's not a major savings per hour over long distance any more. Until a year or two ago, there wasn't any limit, but there were tons of busies. A subgroup of people were using many hundreds of hours a month (staying connected to a city while idle, to avoid getting the same busies other people like them were responsible for!), while Telenet found the average user used under 30 hours a month. So they imposed the 30 hour cap, and sure enough the busies cleared up (_some_ of that may have been increased capacity, but it was too big a change -- from constant busies to hardly any busies -- to not be connected to the flushing of overusers). They made the announcement several months before the change and in response to some negative feedback, they added a so-called "family" plan which gives up to 50 hours for $50/month.