Cruzio Newsletter - Number 1, May 17,1995
Table of Contents
1. About this newsletter
2. System downtime -- Sunday mornings before 8am
3. World Wide Web services
4. Phone Line News
5. Scruznet Sites
--- PPP (graphical) users please read numbers 6 and 7 --------
6. Email changes for PPP users
7. Netscape Problems and Solutions
1. About this Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra email, but
we have had so many events and announcements recently that
we've decided to send out a newsletter periodically. Hope it's
helpful!
2. System downtime -- Sunday mornings before 8am
Our system needs routine maintenance work from time to time,
so we've instituted a program of going in every Sunday early
in the morning and resetting and rebooting equipment. You may
well be interrupted if you are on line at that time. If you
are a Sunday morning earlybird, you might like to know that
you are very rare -- it's the least busy time for our system
all week.
3. World Wide Web Services
Our World Wide Web site is growing daily, with local businesses
and organizations putting their information online in useful
and interesting ways. Web sites are rented to Cruzio users
at a rate of $30 per quarter (that's $10 per month) for 10
megabytes of space. There's a one-time-only setup fee of $20.
Businesses with pages on the Cruzio Web Site can be listed in
our business directory. Look up local businesses by going to
the Cruzio Home Page (http://www.cruzio.com) and looking
under "Business".
Don't forget that as a Cruzio user you also have free web space
to create a home page for yourself or your business. For
details, go to the Cruzio Home Page (http://www.cruzio.com)
and look under "Santa Cruz WWW White Pages", then "Cruzio".
Instructions are at the top of the page, and an index of Cruzio
personal home pages is below.
4. Phone Line News
Cruzio has been experiencing phenomenal growth in the last year,
which is wonderful -- but our phone lines strain to meet the
demand. Here's the scoop on phone lines, and phone numbers are
listed for your convenience below.
When you find that, on autodial, it takes more than 3 or 4 minutes
to get through to Cruzio, please let us know! We depend on user
feedback to determine when to put in new lines. You can reach us
by sending email to support@cruzio.com or leaving a phone message
at 423-1162.
Note that modems occasionally break down, or need resetting.
When the pool is busy, calls will tend to go to the open modem
-- and a broken modem is often the only open one. Try calling
at off-peak hours!
28.8 - These lines are very, very popular. We are expanding our
pool as fast as we can (the modems are expensive!) By next
year, we hope to have the majority of lines on Cruzio
working at 28.8 kbps. We have 15 lines now and 5 more
lines coming this week. Please excuse our busy signals
and try 14.4 when 28.8 won't go through, for the time
being! The situation should improve in the next few
months.
14.4 - We're adding another 10 lines here. If you've been frustrated
by busy signals, know that relief is at hand.
9600 - These modems aren't as popular as they used to be.
We check them frequently for problems, let us know if you
notice any.
2400 - Another group of modems that aren't very popular any more.
Again, we appreciate your information when you experience
a problem with these lines.
Numbers:
28.8: 459-6230
14.4: 459-6200 --- take note! 14.4 has changed
in the last 6 months.
9600: 423-1987
2400: 423-9995
A complete list of all phone numbers is always available
at the Cruzio Home Page:
http://www.cruzio.com/cruziolib/cruzio/numbers.html
5. Routes to Scruznet and other sites
The good news is that we fixed a routing problem that caused many
of our PPP users a lot of grief. The bad news is that our routing
to servers located on Scruznet subnets was interrupted and is still
being put back into place. If you are having problems reaching a
server that is running out of Scruznet, please email support@cruzio.com
or give us a call at 423-1162 and we will see that the problem is
solved immediately. We are looking for a longterm solution to this
but in the meantime we appreciate your help.
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From here on down applies to PPP (graphical) accounts only
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6. Email changes for PPP (graphical account) users
This is just to note that the changes we requested that
PPP users make in a previous email -- changing their "POP
Account" in Eudora to myname@mail.cruzio.com rather than
myname@cruzio.com -- should NOT be done to your return mail
address!
Your address should stay just as it always has been: in the
form name@cruzio.com. Sorry for any confusion on this issue.
7. Netscape Problems -- The Solutions
Netscape users, please be aware that Netscape can cause dramatic
interruptions to your system if you don't clear its cache. The
symptoms appear on both Windows and Mac machines, and Netscape
***does not have to be running*** when the problems appear.
Generally, what happens is that a program hangs, keyboard input
is not accepted, and you need to reboot. If the Netscape cache
isn't cleared, the problem will recur soon.
To clear the Netscape cache, open Netscape and go into
Options-> Preferences->Cache (slightly different names depending on
what version of Netscape you have; Netscape 1.1 users will see it
under Options->Preferences->Network...). At Cruzio, we are
experimenting with lowering the cache (both hard disk and memory)
to zero. We hope to avoid the problem this way.
For Windows users only: Netscape has some backend problems that
tend to show up when a change has been made in the configuration.
Cruzio just asked that users make some changes to their
configurations, so many Windows users are seeing Netscape
fail suddenly or sporadically. If this happens to you, please
email support@cruzio.com for a set of instructions.
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Thanks for reading the newsletter! Please remember to check out
cruzio.general and cruzio.help for items of general interest
to Cruzio users, and send mail to support@cruzio.com if you
have any suggestions or remarks.
