Free bulletin board at Poly tech

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 26

Free bulletin board at Poly tech

Christchurch microcomputer users have a new free bulletin board, Polyvox, run by . the Christchurch Polytechnic. (For those brand new to computing, bulletin boards are a telecommunications equivalent to a wall bulletin. Using a modem, which converts digital signals from the computer into The wave signals of a telephone, the user communicates with a host computer, reading and leaving messages.) Polyvox is the pet of Mr Phil Thompson, a motormechanics tutor at the polytech, helped by Mr Dereham McAven, manager of the Polytech’s computer resources centre.

Hosted on an XT clone, Polyvox has one phone line, 791-917, and can communicate at 300/300 baud and, for those who have a lot to say, 1200/ 1200 baud. It is open after-hours: on week days from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.; and at week-ends from 1 p.m. on Saturday to 7 a.m. on Monday. To gain access a password must be obtained from Mr Thompson. This will allow law and order to be maintained on the board. The bulletin board will cater for the following machines: MS-DOS users, Commodore, New DOS (TRS-80 family), Apple, and BBC. It will swap ASCII files, and the Poly-

technic will add communications protocols for other machines as the demand arises.

On the board will be full information about Polytechnic courses and timetables, and there will be a daily quotation pulled at random from a selection of 3000 compiled by Mr Thompson. But, as with all boards, the success will lie in the participation for the users. But the biggest attraction eventually will be the provision of public domain software. This is software on which copyright has been waived, and includes thousands of programs, especially for MS-DOS (IBM PC and' clones) machines. The quality of the software is variable, but includes many extremely good programs. Mr McAven said the Polytechnic would gain experience in telecommunications technology, and this might be of use in the development of distance learning. The host computer is part of a set used for instruction during Polytechnic hours. It is equipped with a Bernoulli box, something like a combination between floppy and hard disks; It contains high-volume, replaceable storage units.