Some questions, some answers and deflating some exaggerations: Q. My BBS is too small for Usenet. Isn't it really something only the "mega-boards" can afford to handle? A. Not at all. Usenet has few "rules". Take as few or as many newsgroups as you and your "feedsite" agree upon. You DON'T need 6000 phone lines and 88 terrabytes of disk space. Q. I heard that you need a 1 GB drive to handle all of the stuff in Usenet. Is that true? A. NO! This is one of the big misconceptions. Earlier this year, I monitored the Usenet usage of one of the major Usenet sites, cs.utexas.edu at the University of Texas. This system carries virtually all Usenet groups and many from Altnet as well. Over a three week period, the daily load of news ran from 20 to 35 megabytes. Now, that truly is a lot of mail, but three factors need to be considered. First, you can keep a full week of news on a 200 MB disk drive. These days, a 200MB drive is pretty cheap. Second, while Usenet has many interesting newsgroups, a significant portion of Usenet is probably not the sort of thing to hold most peoples interest. I doubt that many BBSs will carry comp.sys.sequent or soc.culture.bangladesh. You need to examine your feedsites "active file" for those newsgroups you want and those you DON'T want. A listing of newsgroups is included in this .ZIP file. (It is *NOT* complete, these lists are *NEVER* complete given the number of changes and modifications that occur every month!). Third, you have to keep in mind some of the differences between a BBS and a Usenet site. A BBS has messages and files. Messages are to be read, files are to be downloaded. Usenet sites are different. Messages are all they have. If they want to "upload" a file, they use 7 bit encoding (Usenet doesn't handle 8-bit characters in news or mail) to turn a .ZIP, a .GIF or other file into a text file. It's then sent out in 50K segments to the network as news articles. Guess what the newsgroup has the heaviest volume? Right, alt.sex.pictures. In other words, a collection of X-Rated .GIFs. If you don't take these high-volume newsgroups your disk space requirement goes way down. Q. Don't I need a Telebit Trailblazer to connect to Usenet? A. A Telebit helps, but it's not a necessity. During the development phase, I took about 50 newsgroups from two local systems. I connected at 2400 bps to Trailblazer sites. I guess I averaged about 30 minutes per day per system in connect time. Not too bad. Additionally, with the advent of V.32 & V.32bis, more and more Usenet sites and BBS will be able to talk to each other at high speed. In fact, if you look around, you can even find sites that have HSTs. Q. Where do I get a "feed"? A. Well, there's good news and bad news there. First, there is no application to join Usenet. Get someone to feed you and your in. Behave yourself and you stay in. No one looks over your shoulder to see if your system meets some arbitrary measure of "quality". In most cities, you can probably make arrangements with a university, an individual or a private company for your news feed. For a list of potentail Usenet sites on a state by state basis, check out the "UUCP Maps" directory in the uuPCB support conference on Ed Hopper's BBS. (Note: not all of the Map sites carry Usenet, but many do.) If all else fails, you can buy feeds from various sites around the country. There are commercial services such as UUNET and PSI which will sell you a feed. While this can get expensive, buying a feed is rarely necessary. >>>If you have a hard time finding a feed, we'll help you<<< Q. Isn't it very difficult for BBS callers to participate in Usenet newsgroups? A. Some of the earlier attempts at Usenet for PC Board required all sorts of special handling. You have to put "UN:" in the subject line, address messages to "USENET GATEWAY", etc. in order for users to post public messages in Usenet newsgroups. That's not the case with uuPCB. If it is a non-moderated newsgroup, your users just enter the messages as usual. The only thing they *HAVE* to do is set ECHO=Y when the message is entered. If the newsgroup is moderated (i.e., all messages are reviewed by a moderator before they are made public), you, the sysop set up the PC Board conference for "All messages private". uuPCB will extract these messages and send them to the newsgroup moderator automatically. The user really doesn't know the difference. Q. So how "beta test" is this software? A. uuPCB works! Don't worry about that. I'm still tinkering with it and I add features regularly. I want sysops input. I *DON'T* know everything and your input is welcome! Q. Yeah, but I run a Novell Network. Can you handle that? A. Yes, we run on Novell and Lantastic networks (and others), Desqview systems, etc. Q. So what sort of support do I get? A. There is, of course, a support conference on Ed Hopper's BBS (713-997-7575). Additionally, I'll maintain an electronic mailing list of uuPCB sysops. You can reach me via email and I'll be in touch with you. I'll also be willing to talk you through setup and other problems by phone. Two conditions, however: 1. You call me or accept a collect call. 2. Please, when you call, give me the opportunity to schedule some time to work with you. I may not be able to deal with your problem immediately. I will work with you for a mutually desireable time. Also, keep in mind that I sleep at night like most people. No calls after 10PM CST, please. Q. Can I buy by credit card? A. YES! We now honor almost all credit cards (sorry, no American Express). Call and order on line!