Telecommunications Questions

[leed@sfsu.edu (DONALD CY LEE)]

HI!
	On saturday, I purchased a Supercomm card, a cable, and very old 
version of Talk is Cheap (ver .31.)  Later I bought a 2400 PC modem for 
$17 and have been using it for the past few days.  Before I ask my 
questions let me note some of the problems.  First, TIC doesn't support 
vt100, which means when I log in to my school account at San Francisco 
State, I can't use Pine or Tin.  Second I lose a lot characters when I do 
log in.  Finally I have a unenhanced IIe.

	NOW, the questions:  I wrote Don Elton asking a few questions and 
simply put, he said it would be the best thing for me to pickup the 
enhancement kit and he explained why when I wrote back.  Are there any 
other people with opinions on this?  If I had a choice, I'd rather not 
buy the enhancement kit (I'm a student, and money is hard to come by when 
you aren't working, I'd have to ask my parents.)  Are there any people 
using unenhanced IIe's with no problems?  The second questions is the 
tough one:  It depends if I get the enhancement kit or not, but here it 
goes:  What software should I use?  If I do get the enhancement kit, I 
would assume the obvious answer: Proterm (another $60-80.....). but what 
I am looking for is whether or not I get the kit is either a older 
commericial program that supports vt100 emulation or a public domain, 
freeware, or shareware program that does.  Does anyone know of one that fits this 
description?   I have seen a used copy of Apple Access II, does anyone 
know if that can work.  I know where I can pick it up, so that's not a 
problem.

	Being online on my IIe is great, but using rn and mailx is not 
quite the same as using Pine and Tin.  Basically, I'm looking for the 
cheapest possbile alternative, but if I am forced to I guess I could 
spring for the enhancement kit and Proterm and not worry about any 
problems when they show up.

	Thanks for any comments or any suggestions that you might have.  
If anyone had anything to say, could you do me a favor and post it and 
send it to my address.  SInce I can read it at home now, I will probably 
check in later, but the problem is since I can't use Pine, I use mailx, 
and when I use mailx to read, it automatically moves the read messages 
over to another folder and I haven't figured out how to read it, so I 
can't refer to it again when I go to school for example and use Pine.  
Since I don't understand rn that well either, I'll say newsreading until 
I can get to school, so if you don't mind posting and sending a message, 
it would be great.  Thanks!

-Don