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          So you want to start a BBS?                                Page 1



          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
                             So You Want to Start a BBS?
                                           
                                   by Jerry Shifrin
                                           
                            SYSOP, East Coast Forth Board
                                           
                               703-442-8695, McLean, VA
                                           
                                           
                                     May 23, 1987


































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          1   Introduction
          
          I was asked about starting a BBS. Rather than give a short,
          private response, I thought I'd take the time to provide a more
          detailed description.
          
          First of all, it's almost impossible to overestimate the time
          needed to run a good BBS. A lot of time is spent on adminis-
          trative BS. Then there's the time you spend on managing files -
          which to keep, which to review/plug, which to trash. The largest
          chunk of time is spent on messages - answering questions (like
          this one), helping new callers, moderating threads and
          conferences, etc.
          
          In this paper I'll attempt to give you some idea of what you're
          letting yourself in for, but I'll probably overlook some of the
          areas which you'll need to know about. Don't worry, SYSOPs as a
          breed are very helpful and most will be happy to help you out
          with any other problems you run into. Feel free to ask your
          favorite SYSOP for help in any area.
          
          Since I use PCBoard (from Clark Development Company, Inc., P. O.
          Box 71365, Murray, Utah, 84107, 801-964-6692 (voice)), some of
          the following discussion is specific to that system, but most of
          the areas will be similar for whichever system you select.
































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          2   What's in it for me?
          
          The first question you should ask yourself is "why am I thinking
          about doing this?" Hopefully it's not to make money. You will
          surely end up paying more in terms of hardware, software,
          supplies, and telephone charges than you will ever take in from
          user donations. At best, you can hope to recover your operating
          expenses, but you should really write off your original outlay
          for equipment.
          
          Well, what else can you expect? Lots. If you provide a high-
          quality service and attract a good set of users, you will benefit
          from it in several ways:
          
            1. Software - good users will reciprocate for their
               download activities by uploading other software they've
               come across while cruising the boards. Of course,
               you'll get a lot of junk, but you'll also get a number
               of good packages you'll enjoy using.
            
            2. Information - BBS's have become the best place to share
               information about new hardware, software, vendors,
               books, etc. They are also the best place to get help
               with hardware or software problems. The spirit of
               sharing or, as the Capitol PC User's Group likes to
               describe it, "users helping users" is alive and
               thriving on the bulletin boards.
            
            3. Friends and business contacts - it's not unusual for
               casual conversations on bulletin boards to develop into
               friendships, business arrangements, and sometimes even
               marriages.
            
            4. Karma - call it what you like, but by offering a good
               bulletin board service, you're giving something back to
               the community which helped you along with free soft-
               ware, advice, etc. Without getting mystical about it, I
               firmly believe that there is a balance to the universe,
               or as the Beatles said, "the love you take is equal to
               the love you make." Or call it the Golden Rule.

















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          3   Hardware
          
          Well, let's go over some of this in a bit of detail. First of
          all, hardware. Naturally, you need at least a PC, monitor, hard
          disk, and modem. Don't assume you can just run the BBS when
          you're not using it - you really have to dedicate the hardware to
          the bulletin board, otherwise both you and your callers will get
          frustrated at the intermittent system availability. 
          
          You really need at least a 20 megabyte hard disk. Your BBS
          software, utilities, message files and logs will easily consume
          4-5 megs. You'll be surprised at how quickly the rest of it fills
          up with files for downloading. A larger disk minimizes the
          frequency of required maintenance cycles. (about $400 with
          controller card).
          
          I prefer a monochrome monitor. Since your system will mostly be
          showing text data, you'll find a monochrome monitor easier on
          your eyes as well as being less expensive (about $100-150).
          
          Of course, you need another PC for your own usage and for BBS
          maintenance. One alternative is to run on an AT class machine
          with two partitions (DoubleDOS, Taskview, or Desqview) and two
          monitors, but you should realize that having this type of
          complicated operating environment is much more fragile and will
          fail with certain ill-behaved software. 
          
          I find it helpful to have both computers connected to a single
          printer via a printer switch (about $30-40). This allows me to
          print out some of the longer messages and refer to this listing
          when composing a response on the other computer.
          
          Obviously you also need a second phone line. It's helpful to also
          have a second modem - this way you can test changes to the board
          (e.g. doors, new BBS releases, utilities) without having to wait
          for someone to call in and try things out.
          
          I would suggest that for the BBS, you get the best modem you can
          afford. Many of the inexpensive modems which promise Hayes
          compatibility, really are not fully compatible and may not
          operate correctly when used for a BBS. Additionally, the more
          expensive modems have better equalization circuitry which will
          give your callers cleaner connections. Also, consider getting at
          least a 2400 bps modem - your users with faster modems will
          appreciate the greater throughput. I really can't recommend that
          you shell out for a 9600 bps modem yet - there are just too many
          incompatibilities among the high-speed modem vendors.
          
          You should probably consider adding an EMS card eventually.
          Whether you use it as a RAM disk or disk cache, it will provide a
          dramatic increase in system performance and save wear and tear on
          your hard disk.
          




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          Oh yeah, you need disks -- lots of disks. You should have at
          least two sets of backup disks and alternate between them. Also,
          you'll want to periodically move some things offline: outdated or
          low-usage files, older messages, caller logs, etc. Naturally you
          could just trash this stuff, but I find it occasionally helpful
          to keep them available for reference.



















































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          So you want to start a BBS?                                Page 6



          4   Utility software
          
          While none of this is required, you'll find that having the right
          tools will ease your workload and improve your system
          performance. For most of these there are public domain or
          shareware alternatives. In general, I prefer the commercial
          packages - you will be using these a lot and for most of them
          will require reasonable support and updates.
          
            1. Backup utility - unless you can afford a tape drive
               ($500-1000), you really need a backup utility. I prefer
               Fastback (about $100). Another alternative is the DOS
               BACKUP program, but you'll find Fastback to be faster,
               more reliable, easier to use for both backup and
               restore, and able to put more data on a single floppy.
            
               Even if you can afford a tape drive, you might want to
               consider adding a second hard disk instead (about $300
               assuming you put both disks on a single controller) and
               use it strictly for backups. This is a lot faster, but
               not quite as reliable since a huge power surge could
               easily wipe out both disks (not to mention a fire).
            
            2. Cache utility - whether you have an EMS card or not, a
               cache utility will add a good deal to the performance
               of your system, especially with an EMS card. I use
               Vcache from Golden Bow Software (about $50). Other
               choices are Lightening and a few shareware offerings.
            
            3. Disk organizer - with all of the disk activity to
               message bases, system logs, files, etc., eventually
               your hard disks will become hopelessly fragmented,
               increasing your system overhead. A disk organizer will
               defragment your files, minimizing disk arm movement. I
               use Vopt from Golden Bow Software (about $50). Other
               choices are the shareware program DOG and a program
               from Softlogic (whose name escapes me at the moment).
            
            4. Disk Maintenance utility - considering that your system
               will be running night and day for months on end without
               interruption (hopefully), eventually you will have some
               disk problems. The right maintenance utility can some-
               times save you from having to do a full disk restore. I
               use PCTOOLS from Central Point Software (about $30),
               but a better choice might be the Mace Utilities (about
               $100). Another possibility is the Norton Utilities.
            
            5. Editors - I'm sure you have your own favorites here, so
               whatever I say will be ignored, but I would suggest
               that you need two different editors - a full-function
               wordprocessor for composing lengthy messages,
               bulletins, etc. and a quick little editor for making
               little fixes to directories, configuration files, etc.
               I use Framework II from Ashton-Tate (about $400) for



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               the large stuff and QEDIT, shareware from Sammy Mitchel
               ($35) for all the little things. The nice thing about
               QEDIT is that it's real fast and doesn't require any
               other files for its operation. Also you can configure
               it to be similar to whatever other editor you're
               comfortable with. Of course, there are hundreds of
               alternatives.
          
          I'd really suggest that you not stint on these tools. It's like
          working on a car -- the right tool can turn a difficult task into a
          real breeze, and the less time you spend on maintenance the better.
          You'll have plenty of other things which will consume your time.













































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          So you want to start a BBS?                                Page 8



          5   Selecting a BBS package
          
          OK, we have the hardware, the phone line, and the utilities. Next
          we need to choose some BBS software. Assuming you're running an
          IBM PC or clone you have three main choices along with a number
          of less common alternatives. 
          
          Tom Mack's RBBS-PC is the grandaddy of PC BBS's. It has numerous
          add-ons (utilities, doors), and may be the widest used (with
          PCBoard nipping at its heels). It's semi-public domain (free, no
          donation requested, but copyrighted). It suffers from the lack of
          control over its operation - most RBBS systems will differ in
          details of their operation and every caller has to learn each
          board's individual operation.
          
          FIDO is another widely used system and it features the ability to
          have national and international messages, conferences, and file
          transfer. Within each region there is a designated gateway node
          and all of the FIDO boards will contact their gateways in the
          middle of the night for message and file transfer. On the
          negative side, FIDO is slow and suffers from, I think, an awkward
          user interface. FIDO is also distributed as public domain (or
          share-ware, I forget).
          
          I use and (naturally) recommend PCBoard. It's considerably faster
          than the above two boards, features a simpler, single-level user
          interface. Also, to the best of my (limited) understanding it is
          much simpler to operate from the SYSOP's point of view than the
          other two. PCBoard is sold as a commercial product, costing
          between $100-200 depending on features (doors or networking
          support). For that price you also get some incredibly useful
          utilities and a year's maintenance via the authors' BBS ($50 for
          each following year). I can categorically state that the authors
          provide great support. My questions are answered quickly and my
          suggestions often show up as features in the next release. Also,
          Clark Development releases improved versions of PCBoard about
          every two or three months.
          
          I think it's somewhat like paying for the right tools. If PCBoard
          makes it easier to run your system, then the money you've paid
          will quickly be recovered in terms of your time-savings. Also,
          considering that this will account for 99% of your system usage,
          it's a small component of the total cost.
          
          All three of these packages have been around for a few years and
          show no signs of becoming unsupported orphans.
          
          Aside from these three there are several less-widely used
          alternatives - DBBS, Collie, Wildcat, and others, but I'm afraid
          I can't offer too much information on these (except that DBBS is
          real fast).
          





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          So you want to start a BBS?                                Page 9



          Since I really can't discuss the others, I'll assume you've
          chosen PCBoard, though most of what follows applies to every BBS
          - you have to deal with callers, files, and messages no matter
          what choice you've made.





















































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          So you want to start a BBS?                               Page 10



          6   Getting Started
          
          You'll probably find it fairly easy to do the initial BBS setup.
          PCBoard comes with a couple of hundred pages of documentation
          which explains how to set up your modem, file directories,
          conferences, etc. You should be able to get going by just taking
          most of the defaults, though as you become familiar with all of
          the features you'll eventually want to start customizing things.
          
          I'd suggest avoiding things like doors, graphic displays,
          conferences, networks, timed-events, and the like until you
          become fairly comfortable with the system's operational
          characteristics. Start out small with a few directories and
          bulletins until you know where you want to go.
          
          There are a number of files you'll have to create to get going:
          
            1. Welcome message - this is what your caller sees each
               time he or she calls your system (though it may be
               skipped). You should at least identify your system
               here. Some SYSOPs put incredible amounts of energy into
               designing flashy displays for these. I don't.
            
            2. New user message - a file which is displayed to every
               new caller the first time they logon. This should
               provide them with a brief list of rules and let them
               know where to go for more information.
            
            3. Level message - a unique file for each level of user
               you define for your system: unregistered, bad guy,
               registered, participating, contributing, visiting
               SYSOP, etc. You should let the user know where they are
               and what to do next (answer the questionnaire, upload
               files, etc.).
            
            4. News - this is where you may put any daily news
               announcements (system going down for maintenance,
               important events, etc.).
            
            5. Questionnaire - this file contains a list of questions
               which will be asked of your callers if they issue the
               [S]cript questionnaire command. Most SYSOPs use this
               for caller validation.
            
            6. Bulletins - Here's where you may put all the detail
               information you want to make available: rules, helpful
               hints, system statistics, honor role of users, etc.
               Feel free to use any of the ECFB bulletins (with proper
               accreditation) you think worthwhile.
          







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          Several of these are optional and there are a few additional files
          you may choose to provide: customized menus, additional
          questionnaires, goodbye message or questionnaire, additional
          versions of these files for each conference, graphics versions of
          these, etc.




















































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          7   File Directories
          
          Naturally, a fair amount of your caller activity will be
          uploading and downloading files (mostly downloading). You should
          organize your files in a way which makes sense for your user
          community: helpful files for novices, disk utilities,
          communications, etc. You will probably find it helpful to set up
          a separate directory for each category. There are a number of
          utilities around which will help with this. The best of these
          come with PCBoard: PCBFiler.
          
          PCBFiler allows you distribute your uploaded files into the
          proper directories, maintain file lists, edit file names, file
          descriptions, etc. This program is worth the price of PCBoard all
          by itself. If you set things up properly you will find your file
          maintenance reduced to just a few minutes each week.









































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          So you want to start a BBS?                               Page 13



          8   Decisions, Decisions
          
          You have a number of decisions to make on how you will run your
          board. I can't begin to touch the surface of all these, but will
          describe a few of them.
          
            1. Open or restricted access? - will you let anyone dial
               in and access all of your board's facilities (down-
               loads, messages, conferences, doors, etc.)? Or will you
               restrict access to those who have registered, answered
               a questionnaire, read your bulletins, mailed in a form,
               sent you a check, etc.? Many SYSOPs restrict downloads
               to those who have answered a questionnaire and been
               validated. A few go so far as to personally call each
               and every new user and chat with them before granting
               full access. I allow limited access until the caller
               completes a questionnaire. I apply a "sanity check" on
               their information (sometimes calling them if it looks
               suspicious) and then grant then full access.
            
            2. Free or pay? - will you accept, request, or demand
               payment for use of the board? There are pros and cons
               to each of these alternatives. If you accept payments
               at all, then you are committing yourself to keeping the
               board available and probably allowing your paying
               callers to tie up your board without any other parti-
               cipation. Is it worth the $20 or so to you to have a
               paying caller logon every few days and do nothing but
               download? If you demand payment then you may be exclud-
               ing people who could possibly enrich your board in
               other ways. On the other hand, if your board is totally
               free and open, then you may find yourself swamped with
               people who do nothing but download.
            
               I would suggest that, until your board is fairly well
               established, you not insist on payment. You may wish to
               provide incentives for people to contribute money to
               your boards operation - special conferences or download
               directories, extra time, first crack at new files, etc.
            
            3. Monitor downloads? - Many SYSOPs monitor upload to
               download ratios, at least for their non-paying callers.
               Typical is requiring at least one upload for each 10 or
               20 downloads. A few SYSOPs are tougher, demanding 1:3
               or 1:5 ratios. I guess the question is whether you're
               doing this in order to collect software or if you're
               trying to provide a public service. I'd suggest being
               fairly loose about this until you have established a
               good reputation for your board.
            
            4. Games and pictures? - If you allow games and graphic
               pictures (known as Readmacs, often R-rated) on your
               board, then you will certainly get your share of




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               immature callers of all ages. On the other hand, games
               are a important part of most people's computer usage.
               What to do? What to do? Beats me.
            
            5. 300 bps callers? - Many SYSOPs restrict 300 bps callers
               since they tend to be in the category of immature
               callers and they can't make as efficient use of your
               facilities as callers with faster modems. Again, by
               doing this you may deprive yourself of good, contribut-
               ing callers who happen to lack a faster modem. I allow
               300 bps callers on the ECFB, but restrict their down-
               loading activities to the wee hours of the morning.
            
            6. Operator page? - Do you want callers to be able to page
               you by sounding an alarm on the PC speaker? It's nice
               to be helpful to new callers, but I'm amazed at the
               number of people who feel free to page you in the
               middle of the night. If your PC will be located within
               hearing distance of your bedroom, I'd suggest you
               disallow the page bell, especially if you're married to
               someone like my wife, who's a light sleeper and doesn't
               like being awakened.
          
          Well there are hundreds of other decisions you'll have to make to
          set up your board, but this should give you some feel for the kind
          of stuff you're getting into.































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          9   Maintenance
          
          9.1  Daily
          
          You really need to check your board at least once a day. At first
          this might seem like fun, but after awhile it becomes a bit of a
          drag.
          
            1. Message check - you really MUST read (at least scan)
               every message on your board. Your standards are your
               own, of course, but I'd suggest making sure that no one
               is promoting software piracy, phone phreaking, or
               whatever else you consider offensive. Some SYSOPs
               disallow bad language; I don't feel strongly about
               that, but don't want to have anyone leave abusive
               messages on the board. 
            
            2. Registration - you should promptly register new
               callers, especially if you require that they complete a
               questionnaire to gain access to your board. It's
               discouraging for someone to make several long-distance
               calls before they're allowed to read messages or
               download files.
            
            3. File check - you should do at least a quick check of
               any uploaded files to ensure that people haven't
               uploaded commercial software. If possible, you should
               verify that the software isn't a "Trojan" or "worm". If
               you do this, try out new software on a system without
               hard disks (or one on which you can disable the hard
               disk). Also, there is some public domain software
               around which will attempt to discover or protect you
               from such software. Be especially careful with uploads
               from people you're not yet familiar with.
            
            4. Respond to questions - your callers will really
               appreciate it if you're consistent in replying to their
               questions within a day or so. You must be responsive if
               you want to attract a good set of callers.
            
            5. Defragment - I'd suggest that you run your defragmenter
               (disk optimizer, etc.) daily. It'll surely improve your
               overall system performance. I include Vopt as part of
               my AUTOEXEC.BAT.
            
            6. Reboot - PCs have gotten a lot more reliable in the
               last few years, but I'd still encourage you to reboot
               on a daily basis; this way you'll be starting out each
               day with a clean slate.
          
          






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          9.2  Weekly
          
          There are several maintenance activities which are needed every
          week or so.
          
            1. File maintenance - distribute your uploaded files into
               their proper directories. If you use PCBFiler, this
               will only take a few minutes. Take the time to verify
               that you aren't keeping several copies of the same
               program with different names, or that you don't have
               out-of-date versions of a package. If you let file
               maintenance drag on for a month or so, you will find
               yourself faced with an almost insurmountable task.
            
            2. Backups - it's a real drag, but you really should do
               full backups on a weekly basis. At the very least, you
               should back up your user directory and message bases.
            
            3. Message cleanup - if you have an active message base,
               you should probably go though it once a week, deleting
               older or irrelevant messages. I usually protect the
               non-general interest messages (thank-yous, etc.) so
               that they're only visible by the intended recipient.
               Your other callers will appreciate not having to sit
               through this stuff.
          
          
          9.3  Monthly
          
          You may need to do these things more or less frequently depending
          on your board's activity.
          
            1. User maintenance - eventually your user directory will
               have a large number of entries for people who haven't
               called in quite a while. They may have lost interest,
               moved, or died. It doesn't matter. People who haven't
               called in a while should be purged from your user
               directory. I give unvalidated users (those who never
               completed the questionnaire) 30 days, 90 days for
               validated users, and 6 months or longer for those at
               higher levels. PCBoard includes SYSOP commands to help
               you with this.
            
               Also, you will probably wish to sort your user
               directory so that your best callers are at the top of
               the file (this will slightly speed up their logons).
               PCBoard comes with another excellent utility, PCBEdit,
               which lets you sort and edit your user directory.
            
            2. Message base maintenance - you must periodically prune
               your message base of outdated or deleted messages.
               PCBoard has a maximum limit of 1000 messages per
               conference, but the larger the message base, the longer
               it will take your users to logon and switch confer-



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               ences. Fortunately there is a SYSOP command you can use
               to compress your message base. PCBoard will copy only
               the active messages to a new file and leave your old
               file available as a backup. I compress and save these
               backups on floppies.
            
            3. Caller log - PCBoard produces a log of all significant
               caller activity (logons, uploads, downloads, messages,
               doors, etc.). For an active board this can easily grow
               quite large. You should probably start a new log at
               least once a month. Also you may wish to run your log
               through one of the analysis utilities (see below) which
               will create a system usage file you may wish to post as
               a bulletin.
            
            4. Full backups - C'mon now - at least once a month! If
               you use Fastback it will only take a half-hour (and
               40-50 diskettes) for a 20 meg backup.
          
          
          9.4  More than monthly
          
          Here's a list of other things you'll want (or need) to do on a
          periodic basis:
          
            1. Hardware maintenance - especially if you're a smoker,
               I'd suggest you give your machine a good cleaning every
               so often. I dust or clean all the exposed surfaces.
               Also, I vacuum around the keyboard, vents, etc. Clean
               your monitor! Dusty or greasy monitors will make it
               hard to read.
            
            2. Software upgrades - you'll probably want to take
               advantage of the new features in upgrades to PCBoard
               and the various utilities. I'd suggest keeping copies
               of the previous versions until you've verified the
               correct operation of new releases in your environment.
            
            4. Bulletin maintenance - you probably need to go through
               your bulletins periodically and verify that they're
               still accurate for your system. Of course, you may need
               to do this more frequently if you maintain bulletins of
               current events, software or magazine reviews, etc.














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          10  Utilities
          
          There are a number of public-domain or shareware utilities around
          which will help you run a high-quality BBS operation. You can
          find these on most of the larger BBS's, especially those which
          have a SYSOP's conference. I couldn't hope to describe all of the
          available utilities (besides, it changes every week), but here's
          an idea of the type of stuff currently available.
          
            1. PCBFiler - this one comes with PCBoard and was
               described previously. It helps you do file and
               directory maintenance in a fraction of the time it
               would take you to do it manually. Essential!
            
            2. PCBEdit - also described previously, this is also
               distributed as part of PCBoard. It allows you to edit
               all of your user directory information. You may also
               use this to sort and print your user directory and
               adjust their access level based on upload/download
               ratios.
            
            3. QNE - a nice little utility from Scott Pazur (of the
               Fleamarket BBS which gives you a fast, simple way of
               updating your PCBoard news file.
            
            4. Arcvue, ARCDoor, PCBArc - doors which allow your users
               to inspect an archived file without having to first
               download them. I use Earl Beachler's Arcvue door since
               I support non-IBM PC callers and Arcvue allows them to
               extract files for subsequent download (in case their
               system doesn't support the ARC file format).
            
            5. CALLSTAT - analyzes your caller's log and generates a
               file of interesting caller statistics (files most
               frequently downloaded, number of callers in various
               categories, bulletin/conference/door usage, etc. There
               are several utilities which provide this capability.
               This is the one I use.
            
            6. PCBMSG, PCBMFIX - allows you to recover a damaged
               message base. PCBMFIX also allows you to edit portions
               of a message. Since I wrote PCBMSG I'm a bit partial to
               it.
            
            7. PCBMT - selectively copies portions of a message base
               (based on message number, subject, protection, etc.) to
               an ASCII text file. Includes a utility to summarize all
               of the message subjects. Written by, ahem, myself. I
               use it to create files out of some of the more
               interesting message threads.
            






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            8. File transfer doors - there are several utilities
               around which allow callers to transfer files using
               protocols not currently supported by PCBoard (e.g.
               Kermit, Zmodem, etc.).
          
          This doesn't begin to touch the surface. There are utilities around
          for viewing messages and callers logs, creating databases of your
          user's directory info, summarizing your questionnaires, doors for
          playing games, etc. It seems that many of the PCBoard SYSOPs are
          also programmers and it doesn't take much for them to generate new
          utilities based on real or perceived needs.














































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          So you want to start a BBS?                               Page 20



          11  Where to go from here
          
          If, after all this, you're still convinced you want to start a
          BBS, I'd suggest you first decide which BBS system you'd like to
          run. If you don't know, then dial into a number of your local
          boards and decide which of these is easiest for you, as a user,
          to navigate. Whichever is easiest to use will probably also be
          easiest to operate. Performance is also of crucial importance.
          It's no fun to pay long-distance charges to use a slow board. The
          meter keeps on running, whether or not you're doing anything
          useful.
          
          Once you've settled on a system, establish contact with one of
          the larger boards in your area of that system. If the board is
          public domain or shareware, you'll probably be able to download
          it from there. Make sure the SYSOP understands what you're doing
          so that he or she will be more forgiving of the large amount of
          downloading you're about to do. PCBoard has a demo version
          available if you wish to check it out before shelling out your
          money. You may find it helpful to experiment with that (but it's
          really not suitable for operating an actual BBS).
          
          Now it's up to you! Just remember that a BBS without callers
          isn't very worthwhile. Be nice to them -- you'll reap dividends
          in the long run. It's up to you to provide an interesting and
          entertaining forum for people to visit. The files and messages
          are for their benefit, not for yours. Also keep in mind that
          every BBS started somewhere -- you'll make mistakes, but if you
          work at it, you'll end up with an operation you can be proud of.
          
          Finally, keep in mind that there are hundreds (thousands?) of
          other SYSOPs who have already gone through the hassle you've set
          out to deal with. The vast majority of these people will be
          happy, even eager, to help you along. Feel free to ask them how
          they've dealt with the problem with which you're struggling.
          You'll be amazed at just how helpful we can be.





















                                    May 24, 1987



