From: dawson@willard.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: anal modem or waffle fault?  story at eleven.
Date: 7 Oct 92 23:55:37 GMT
Organization: Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814

morpheus@entropy.mcds.com (morpheus) writes:

> dawson@willard.UUCP writes:
> 
> > Waffle and all other BBS programs should be robust enough to recover from
> > dropped carrier.  Sure, my modem recovers, but Waffle does not always do
> > so.  To say that I should rely upon my users to turn off their call-waiting
> > is a cop-out.  If Waffle cannot handle these situations reliably, then
> > there is a problem with Waffle.  Does anyone disagree with this?  Why?
> 
> It works fine for me.  Remote hangs up, waffle resets.  Well, actually waffle
> exits and Binkleyterm reloads.  Maybe that has something to do with it.

Something to do with what?  Your system's reliability?

> I think it's your modem.

On what justification?

My point, stated as generically as possible, was that it doesn't matter
whether Waffle "works fine for you", nor whether "it's my modem."  My point
was that I've got a few documented cases of improper reset.  Ok, now what?

Perhaps the fault is due to my modem.  Perhaps it's not.  Neither of us has
enough OBJECTIVELY measured data to make a determination.  There are ways
of debugging, analyzing, and otherwise reliably fixing these sorts of problems.
Making wild guesses as to whose hardware might be at fault is not one of
those methods.  ASKING the net, as I did, as to whether there has been any
experience with behaviour like that I noted, will help to statistically
make a case for the overall reliability of the software, but how validly?
There are inumerable uncontrollable factors from site to site.  Maybe it
is a hardware problem I've been witnessing, but just maybe it is really
due to a flaky serial board, buggy BIOS, or otherwise...

Don't get me wrong.  I do value your comments, especially in that you have
not had any problems of this sort.  I'm just hoping like hell to avoid
laying out largish sums of dinero on the odd guess that I might have
a buggy modem..  is that all so unreasonable?

> 
>                         --  morpheus@entropy.mcds.com --
>                Don't open your eyes, you won't like what you see.
>                    The blind have been blessed with security.

----------------------------------------

Alert!  If you don't like posts from myself, or have weak moral fiber,
stomachs, or otherwise, you might want to hit 'N' now.  On the off-chance
that any of you do read this, I'd be more than happy to continue the
discussion offline...  I only pray I don't offend any delicate persons.



...and, no, morpheus@entropy.mcds.com (morpheus), none of this is directed
   at you personally...



Once again, for those who may have missed it, I've made many statements
that were preceeded by the grand word IF.  I've not claimed that Waffle
is at FAULT, nor have I BLAMED Waffle (nor have I made personal attacks on
Tom Dell, and I've done my best to avoid doing so to those of you whom have
called my comments "absurd").

I suppose that I should have learned long ago not to proffer such
philosophical questions as the one quoted above, because most readers do
not credit me with the intelligence I mistakenly attempt to use.  Suppose
each of you were to answer the question:

    "If Waffle cannot handle these situations reliably, then there is
     a problem with Waffle.  Does anyone disagree with this?  Why?"

     (a)  "No, there is not a problem with Waffle in this SUPPOSED case,
           as it is not Waffle's duty to reset the modem/serial line."
     (b)  "Yes, there is a problem with Waffle in this SUPPOSED case,
           as it is Waffle's duty to reset the modem/serial line."

OK.  Now that each of you have formed an answer in your minds....

Let me suppose that you chose answer (a).  Just how did you collectively
come to the decision that there does not possibly exist, under certain
situations that you might not have personally have witnessed, just such
as the one as I've attempted to describe to the net?

If you chose answer (b), the question remains, though it's a bit easier.
In that case, you must have yourself have seen just such behaviour.  This
has been corroborated by more than one person, so there is some validity
to this line of thought.  On the other hand, maybe you've seen something
that you thought was like what I'd described, but was in actuality caused
by something quite different, like improper parity settings, or other
modem misconfiguration.

Has any of this philosophical cross-talk gotten us anywhere?  To me it
says, "There is no definitive way to determine that someone might not have
a valid whatever to say about a given problem merely from his comments on
this network."  It says the same, to me, about problems of this sort; that
until someone, preferably more than one, person attacks the "problem,"
real or imagined, with some hardware analysis and real engineering, there
will remain lingering doubts in some few of us as to whether the "problem"
has indeed been put to rest.  (You know, put a line monitor on a system,
grab a handful of modems, and test out this call-waiting monster.  Of
course, this would require some travel, as it would necessitate the testing
of call-waiting as implemented by more than a single switch manufacturer.
Just because a system handles call-waiting in your neck of the woods does
not guarantee that it will be equally robust in another region, where the
phone circuitry might be, and often is, quite different than your own.)

(How would I know anything about phone switching equipment, or about proof,
verification, and validation of software?  Hmmm...  Maybe you'd care to
explore that one a bit further before continuing to flame me so soundly...)

----------------------------------------

Once again, for those who may have missed it, I did not start this discussion
with this issue as my subject matter.  My chosen subject matter was the
issue of "SiN" and what might cause an unobserved (by me) user session to
result in such a logoff in around TWO MINUTES of online time.  Everything
said thereafter regarding WHY that might have happened were speculations
on my part, based on behaviour that I've witnessed in running an online
Waffle BBS for over a year, experience that includes three different modems.

I've said, many times now, that my problems were documented, observed by
multiple persons, and have been known to occur with more than a single modem,
each of which is made by different manufacturers.

It strikes me as more than a bit incredible that so many persons, of
unknown (to me) levels of experience and education, make such an effort
to say one of:

   (a)  "I've not seen these problems, so you must be full of balogna."
   (b)  "I've not seen these problems, so there's no way that Waffle can
         in any way have any bugs of this nature."
   (c)  "I think your comments are absurd, so shut up."
   (d)  "Why don't you take your 'shouting match' to email."


Here is my most BASIC logic, which I freely apply as the situation demands:
Given two options,

    (1) Question my $1000 modem, which is designed, implemented and
        supported by an entire team of professional, educated engineers,
or
    (2) Question my $30 software, which is designed and implemented by
        someone of unknown (to me, other than through his efforts on this
        same software) abilities, and supported by persons of equally
        unknown lineage on some very intangible network,

I'm much more likely likely to choose item (2).  However, if reason and
goodwilled discussion (not the sort that say "you're full of it, asshole")
offer plausible alternatives based on real, honest logic, I'll be the first
to own up to any mistakes I may have made in my own GUESSING, reasoning, or
otherwise.

As you may have noticed, I have freely admitted to discovering problems with
my current modem.  If those were indeed the source of the problems that I've
been having recently, they will soon be corrected, as I'm in the process of
replacing the modem with yet another, this time with a SupraFAXModem.  While
it is considerably less expensive than the Telebit T2500 I now have, I have
heard good things about Supra, and we (my users, UUCP feeds and myself), can
only hope for the best...  You can bet real money I'll have something to
say if I detect even the slightest recurrence of this problem, under the
fourth modem in just over a year.

There, I've said it.  It's the last time I'll say it, for a while.
Have at it, as you think best.


-- 
dawson@willard.UUCP (Willard Dawson)
Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814