ok, thanks. i got distracted by the "fake" timestamp link and missed
the info on manipulating /timestamp to my desires.

my "good enough - for now" answer was to put:
timestamp -f $chr(91) $+ $gmt(HH) $+ :nn]
in an "on TEXT" event after examining the suggestions.

(ps: on the topic of suggestions, why doesn't this BBS autowrap/autobreak
message lines when browsing? never used a horiz scrollbar so much before)
:P