ORACOMM-Plus(tm) Multiuser BBS
System Operator's Manual
This is a partial SYSOP manual with sections omitted or
abbreviated to fit on to one shareware disk. A complete sysop
manual is provided with the registered shareware disk.
The 2-disk registered shareware version is a 2-line/3-user
Starter version which allows 3 users online simultaneously
without additional multitasking software. (The unregistered
shareware is a 1-line/1-user [single user] version.) The
shareware registration fee is only $59 and comes with the
complete sysop manual on disk, the 2-line/3-user version of the
software, BBUTIL and COMPACT utilites, and access to the sysop
support SIG on Oracomm Central BBS with access to additional
utilities for downloading.
For shareware registration, contact: Surf Computer Services,
71-540 Gardess Rd., Rancho Mirage, CA 92270.
Voice: (619) 346-9430 or BBS: (619) 346-1608
The Registered Shareware uses COM1 and COM2. 10 subboards,
1 up/download directory per board, no message or user account
limits, 9000 character messages with comments, up/download
database, xmodem protocol, public and private chat, matching
questionnaire on each board. Manual on disk.
The Commercial version includes all the features of the
Registered Shareware version plus 99 subboards, 35 up/download
directories per board, Networking (net mail, echo boards,
interbbs chat), General Purpose Database, Outside Features, Text
Branching, Subscriber capability, Extended Features, Ymodem-Batch
protocol (Zmodem coming in '91), Vdisk support, and much more.
Printed and bound manual.
Release 5.00
December 27, 1990
Copyright Notice
Copyright 1990 by Surf Computer Services Incorporated.
All rights reserved.
Special Grant of use - Electronic Information Systems, and
Bulletin Board Systems are granted the right to make available
this manual for review of Oracomm software. No modification to
this document is permitted electronically.
Trademarks
Oracomm, Oracomm-Plus, OraLink, OraNet, OraQuilt and Personal
Oracomm are registered trademarks of Surf Computer Services,
Incorporated.
Disclaimer
The information in this manual could include inaccuracies or
typographical errors. Surf Computer Services, Incorporated makes
no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of
this document and specifically disclaims any implied warranties
of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.
Further, Surf Computer Services, Incorporated reserves the right
to make changes from time to time without obligation of Surf
Computer Services, Incorporated to notify any person or
organization of such changes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Oracomm is written in Microsoft C version 5.1. It includes
Greenleaf's Comm(tm) and Function(tm) libraries, Cytek's Multi-
Windows(tm) and Multi-C(tm) libraries, and The Tool Maker's Heap
Expander(tm) libraries. File management is done with FairCom's
C-Tree(tm). All Chargecard(tm) is the trademark of All
Computers, Inc. QEMM(tm) is the trademark of Quarterdeck Office
Systems. Software or products mentioned in this manual may be
trademarked by their respective companies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK START UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
STARTING ORACOMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
SETTING THE "COMM" PORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
SYSOP INSTALLATION / CUSTOMIZATION -- I COMMAND . . . . . . . 10
HOW TO ADD, CHANGE, OR DELETE BOARDS . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM PARAMETERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
HOW TO CHANGE UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD DIRECTORIES . . . . . . . . . . 29
CHANGING PATH DEFINITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
CHANGING SUBDIRECTORIES PER BOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
HOW TO DEFINE TELEPHONE LINES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
HOW TO MODIFY THE MODEM CONTROL COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . 36
ANSI GRAPHICS -- GENERAL INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
HOW TO DEFINE ANSI GRAPHICS FOR SPECIFIC PLACES . . . . . . . 41
HOW TO CHANGE THE COLORS FOR EACH BOARD . . . . . . . . . . . 42
EXTENDED FEATURES -- X COMMAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
HOW TO ADD, CHANGE, DELETE SYSTEM PASSWORDS . . . . . . . . . 43
HOW TO CHANGE EXTENDED SYSTEM PARAMETERS . . . . . . . . . . 44
HOW TO CHANGE SUBSCRIBER PARAMETERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
ADDITIONAL SYSOP PASSWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
TIME PER ACCESS LEVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM COUNTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
OUTSIDE FEATURES ("DOORS") . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
TEXT-BRANCHING FEATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
CUSTOMIZING MENUS, HELP FILES, AND PROMPTS . . . . . . . . . 51
SPECIAL MESSAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
BULLETINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
RESERVED WORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
ONLINE WEATHER STATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
ONLINE DATABASES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
HOW TO INSTALL THE ORACOMM GENERAL PURPOSE DATABASE . . . . . 64
ASSISTANT SYSOP CAPABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
SPECIAL CONTROL KEYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
SPECIAL SYSOP SUBCOMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
ADDITIONAL SYSOP COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
BRITISH AND EUROPEAN CONSIDERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
LINE USAGE STATISTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
THE + COMMAND -- SYSTEM MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
HOW TO WRITE A MATCH QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
HOW TO WRITE A COMBINED QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
NETWORKING -- GENERAL INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
NETWORKING -- NETWORK ECHO CONFERENCE (NEC) . . . . . . . . . 84
NETWORKING -- ORALINK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
SENDING FILES OVER THE NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
NETWORKING -- OTHER NETWORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
REBUILD - FILE REBUILD UTILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
BBUTIL -- MISCELLANEOUS UTILITY FUNCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . 89
COMMON QUESTIONS WHICH NEW SYSOPS ASK . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
ORACOMM ERRORS AND MESSAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
SUMMARY OF USER COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
QUICK START UP
For those who cannot wait to read the manual before running
Oracomm, this is all you have to do to get "online".
1) Check file CONFIG.SYS in your root directory and be sure
it includes the following parameters. Reboot if changed.
FILES = 99
BUFFERS = 30
2) Copy both diskettes to the hard disk directory BBS.
C:>COPY A:*.* C:
One disk contains STARTUP.EXE and the other contains
ORAnnn.EXE. STARTUP.EXE is a self-extracting file of the
initial files, utilities, and user manual. ORAnnn.EXE is a
self-extracting file of the actual BBS program for node number
nnn. (nnn is your node number. The disk will contain only one
file such as ORA123.EXE so you would enter ORA123)
3) To extract the initial data files and utilities, enter
C:>STARTUP
C:>ORAnnn
4) To run the bulletin board, enter
C:>BBS NOMODEM
Oracomm will NOT answer the telephone yet. You must first define
the communications ports (with the IL command) and modem commands
(unless your modems are 300/1200), but you can use the bulletin
board locally and begin customizing it.
The program will load and display the "Control Window". Now
enter A to start all the lines. Press F1 to look at the window
of the first (or only) line. Press control-K to log on locally.
The system operator account has already been setup: use account
SYSOP with password TEST.
To shut the system down, first log off the system if you are
logged on. Press [HOME] to return to the control window. Press
N to shut down and Y to confirm that you are shutting down.
You must define the ports before Oracomm will answer the phone.
When you log on as SYSOP, use the IL command to define the
communication port(s). Read the section entitled "Starting
Oracomm" for specific details. When you are ready to customize
the bbs to your own needs, read the remainder of the manual and
particularly the section on the installation command, I.
1
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
To run Oracomm(tm) with up to 9 telephone lines, you will need
the following minimum hardware/software:
An IBM-PC or compatible microcomputer
8088 will handle up to 3 users satisfactorily
80286 suggested for 4 to 10 users for proper performance
MS-DOS / PC-DOS version 3.0 or later
640K of memory, 1 megabyte for improved performance
A hard disk of any size. Oracomm uses about 1 meg.
One floppy disk
Hayes-compatible modem (300/1200/2400/9600)
The 16 telephone line version requires an 80286 cpu and 1
megabyte of memory. The 32 telephone line version requires
an 80386 cpu, QEMM, and at least 2 megabytes of memory.
Modem I/O is interrupt driven to avoid losing characters.
Therefore, it is recommended that you do not run any other
memory resident or interrupt driven programs (such as
Sidekick, Double-DOS, Desqview, or Lightning) while Oracomm
is running. Extended, but NOT exPanded, memory can be used.
Since ExPanded is not used, no LIM drivers are needed in
CONFIG.SYS so they sould NOT be used.
2
STARTING ORACOMM
Be sure your CONFIG.SYS file in the root directory contains
the following parameters.
FILES=36 (or more. Must be at least the number of
users + 26)
BUFFERS=20 (at least 20, up to the number of files)
These parameters are absolutely critical. The bbs will not
run with the default parameters. Consult your MS-DOS/PC-DOS
manual for more information about CONFIG.SYS. If you get the
error "Cannot open printer/log because 4", it means that you
did not set the FILES=35. (To allow DOS to access more than
20 files, download the public domain programs in file
FILES20.ARC from Oracomm#1 or any other BBS and install it
according to the documentation within FILES20. If you are
running DOS 3.3 or later, you will not need this program
since Oracomm will do this function itself.) Be sure to
reboot your computer after changing CONFIG.SYS for the
changes to be effective.
Create a directory (in MS-DOS) by entering:
C>MKDIR BBS
Make directory BBS your current active directory:
C>CHDIR BBS
Copy both diskettes to that directory:
C>COPY A:*.* C:
Before you run Oracomm for the first time, you need to
extract the initial data files and utilities. This is done
by running the self-extracting program, STARTUP.
C>STARTUP
If you have already installed your BBS using a demonstration
copy of the system, then STARTUP will give you the message
"File already exists, overwrite (Y/N)". Answer N to avoid
having the new initialized files overwrite the files that you
have already customized.
To extract the bbs program itself, enter:
C>ORAnnn
(nnn is your system node number. Each system must be unique
for networking to function properly. The original
distribution disk that you received contained one file called
ORAnnn where nnn was a number such as ORA123. 123 would be
your node number.) If you already have a demonstration
version of the program, ORAnnn will give you the message
"BBS.EXE already exists, overwrite (Y/N)", answer Y to
install the production version with modem logic over the
demonstration version of the program.
3
DOS 3.0 has a limitation that it can only open 20 files at
one time. Considering the number of data files, log files,
and possible download files that can be open at any one time,
there will be more than 20 files open. When Oracomm first
initializes, it will check your version of DOS and provide
for more files if you are running DOS 3.3 or later. You will
still need to have the FILES=35 parameter in CONFIG.SYS,
however. It will check how many files it can open for
downloading and display a warning message if it cannot open
as many download files as you can have users online. If you
get the message "Only 4 users will be able to download
simultaneously", you should get a copy of a public domain
file called FILES20.ARC. This contains documentation and
necessary programs (FILES3X.COM) to allow DOS to open more
than 20 files, and you will not get this warning. If you are
using DOS 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2, you must run FILES3X.COM prior to
running BBS, BBUTILDB, or BBUTIL every time. DOS 3.3 and
later has additional logic to allow Oracomm to overcome this
limitation itself without using FILES3X.
To Run Oracomm, simply enter
C>BBS
Oracomm comes in several multiuser configurations. The
2-line/3-user version uses your standard COM1 and COM2 to
allow you to run two telephone lines plus a local sysop line
with a minimum of hardware. The 9-line/10-user version
requires the Digiboard to provide an additional 8 serial
ports -- your normal COM1, COM2 through COM9 on the
Digiboard, plus a local sysop line to allow 10 users to
access the system simultaneously. It is recommended that you
have an AT, AT-clone, or turbo-PC if you are running the 10
user system.
Do not run Oracomm with Double-Dos, DesqView, Task View,
Sidekick, Lightning, or any other multitasker, keyboard
enhancer, or memory resident programs.
When you start Oracomm for the first time, you may not have
all the COM ports defined for your particular installation.
For that reason, start the system without any modems,
configure your COM ports, then restart it. To start the
system without any modems, simply use the parameter NOMODEM:
C>BBS NOMODEM
4
There are several parameters which can be used when starting
Oracomm:
ALL Allows you to start all lines right away. This
is useful if you are starting from a batch file.
CHAT Starts the system in "SYSOP available for chat"
mode. See the C command on the control window
below.
DOWNhhmm This parameter will automatically shut Oracomm
down at the time specified by hhmm. The purpose
of this is to start Oracomm from a batch file
which can automatically do a backup or other
function when Oracomm terminates, then restart
it later.
NOMODEM Allows starting the system without sending modem
commands. This allows you to change the modem
commands or port definitions.
PC If you are using a 4.7mhz computer and the
system seems to stop other uses when one user is
reading a message, use this option to force the
system to give more time to other users. On a
fast AT, the system will fill the user's buffer
and go on to the next user automatically. On a
slow system, the user's buffer may never get
full if the modem is sending out the characters
quickly.
5
When Oracomm starts, you will be presented with the following
"Control Window".
---------- Oracomm-Plus Control Window Node ORAn --------------------
Calls 3; Time 867; Callers 3; Nuser 0; Vis 0; Msgs 0; Uplds 0;
Messages: 22; Accounts: 7; Char/sec: 123; Task/sec 1523
SYSOP CHAT
LINE ACCOUNT BOARD CMND NAME LOCATION LOGON FLAGS ACC-LVL
1 Line stopped or not started
2 Line stopped or not started
3 Line stopped or not started
Function keys F1 through F3 show windows into that line.
A - Start ALL lines B - Broadcast message to all users
S - Start 1 line only L - Shut down w/no ans upon logoff
X - Stop and busy out 1 line only N - Shut down system w/no answer immed
D - Disconnect user on 1 line Q - Shut down system w/busy immed
U - Line usage statistics C - SYSOP available to chat
What next?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first line describes which release of the software you
are using and your node number. The next two lines tell you
statistics about system usage:
"Calls" is the total number of calls that the system received
today. "Time" is the total minutes that the system was being
used by users. Since there are 1440 minutes in the day, the
3-user system shown above could be used 3 * 1440 or 4320
minutes total. The number of calls that the sysop logs on
and the amount of time that the sysop is logged on is NOT
included in these figures. "Callers" is the number of
DIFFERENT users who have called today. This may differ from
"Calls" if the same user has called in more than once in that
day. "Nuser" is the number of new users who have set up
accounts. "Vis" is the number of users logging on with the
"visitor" feature. "Msgs" is the number of new messages
entered, and "Uplds" is the number of new files uploaded.
On the second line, "Messages" is the total number of
messages in the message file including help messages etc.
"Accounts" is the total number of accounts in the user file
including system operator accounts.
Oracomm has a built in performance monitor. It is constantly
accumulating statistics about the number of characters being
received and transmitted plus the number of times it switches
between each user or task. Every ten seconds, it updates the
6
characters per second and tasks per second with an average
number of characters and tasks during the prior 10-second
interval. The "Char/sec" is the number of characters
received and transmitted to the modems. When no one is
online, this will be zero. If three users are having
messages transmitted at 1200 baud, this will be approximately
360 (1200 baud / 10 * 3 users).
On a multiuser system, the computer is processing information
from one user, then going on to the next one. This happens
so quickly that it appears to be processing all users
simultaneously. If Oracomm is waiting for input from a user,
it goes on to process information for the next user until a
character comes in. If Oracomm is transmitting data to a
user such as sending a message, it fills up the buffer and
goes on to the next user while the buffer is being
transmitted. The switch from one user to another is known as
switching "tasks". The number of times this is done per
second is the called the "tasks/sec". If no one is online
and Oracomm is waiting for a caller, the number of tasks/sec
will be very low since it is always waiting and not task
switching. If one user is online but waiting for input, the
number of tasks/sec will be the highest. How high or how
many tasks/second it can do depends on the speed of the cpu
and the number of users. If one user is doing some
processing which takes a lot of time, he may momentarily be
using all the cpu power so that the number of tasks per
second would be low also. Every ten seconds the number of
tasks per second is computed.
The next part of the control window shows each line, who IS
on, who WAS on, or the system status. When a user is online,
the control window shows what his account, what board he is
on, what command he is performing if any, part of his name
and location, when he logged on, the flags set in his
account, and his access level. If a user calls the sysop
with the /SYSOP command in chat, his line will display in
reverse video until he logs off or the sysop goes into sysop
chat with him. If a modem is not started, the line will be
in high intensity. If a modem error occurs, the line will
blink in high intensity.
Following that you will see a menu of functions that can be
performed:
A - Start all phone lines. This is also performed by
entering ALL as a parameter when the system is started.
B - Broadcast message to all users. This allows you to send
a message to all users similar to the CA ALL command in
chat. It is useful to announce that the system will be
shut down for backup or other reasons that the sysop
wants to broadcast to those users who are online. After
7
entering B, it will prompt you for the message to
broadcast.
C - Sysop available to chat. When a user calls the system
operator to chat with either the C or /SYSOP command,
the system will inform the user that the "SYSOP is not
available to chat at this time" unless C was entered
previously to tell the system that the sysop is
available. The C command here toggles "sysop available"
mode. The third line of the control window will display
"SYSOP CHAT" if sysop available mode is active. If the
sysop is available, then when he logs on (unless he logs
on with /invisi option) he will be visible to other
users. If this option is OFF, he will default to
INVISIBLE when he logs on.
D - Disconnect user on 1 line. This is a quick way to
terminate a user for any reason.
E - Emergency, another earthquake! Forget about the modems
and logging off users, close the files and shut down
right now! (Unlisted option)
G - Shut down the lines like the L command as users log off,
but take the phone off hook rather than just not
answering. (not listed on menu)
L - Shut down those lines that are not already in use. It
will not terminate a user, but will shut the line down
as soon as the user logs off. Pressing any key will
cancel the shut down so that you can use B to broadcast
another message to users still online if necessary. When
all users have logged off the system will shut down with
no answer, not off hook.
N - Shut down system w/no answer. This will shut the bbs
down and log off any user who is still online. If a user
calls in after the system is shut down, the phone will
ring with no answer.
O - Shut down one line only with no answer. This is used to
prevent the modem from responding while you use that
telephone line for another purpose. (not listed on menu)
Q - Shut down system w/busy. This will shut the bbs down
just like the N command. But if a user calls in after
the system is shut down, the phone will still be off
hook and the user will get a busy signal.
R - Repaint the control window. (Unlisted option)
S - Start one line only. Use this if you only want to start
a particular line.
U - Display line usage statistics. See "Additional SYSOP
Commands" for a detailed description.
X - Stop and busy out 1 line only. Use this if you need to
disable 1 specific line for some reason. It will prompt
you for the line number to stop.
To monitor a specific user, press the function key to display
the window for that user. F1 shows line 1, F2 shows line 2,
etc. To show two or more lines at one time, press Fn to show
8
line n, then Alt-Fy to ADD the window in line y to the one(s)
already displaying. All 10 lines can be displayed at one
time. To return to the control window, press "home". If the
system operator wants to log on, press the function key for
the line that he wants to log on to (usually the last line
without a modem), then press control-K to actually log on
just as a user would by way of the modem. The feature to add
windows, alt-fn, is not included in the 17-user version due
to memory requirements.
The sysop can look into any line remotely. Use the Y command
to display the control window remotely, then press F and the
line number that you want to view. Pressing control-K will
return the sysop to his own window.
SETTING THE "COMM" PORTS
The communication ports are defined in the IL command. This
command is discussed in more detail under the section
entitled "HOW TO DEFINE TELEPHONE LINES". The discussion
here is to set up your hardware even before you tell the
software where the ports are connected.
If you are running a single user system, there are only two
communication or "com" ports available: COM1 or COM2. These
can be either internal modems, or external modems connected
to serial ports on an internal serial I/O card within your
computer.
If you are running a 2-phone line/3-user system, your two
phone lines are connected to COM1 and COM2, plus you have a
local line for the system operator on COMN.
Oracomm will send out a modem command sequence such as
"AT...S0=1" and must get back a 0 return code from your
modem. If it does not, it will make five attempts and then
shut down. If it does not get a 0 return code, the initial
baud rate may be wrong, there may be a command in the string
that your modem does not recognize, the modem may be on the
wrong port, or your modem may be defective. (It is possible
for your modem to dial out using Qmodem, for example, and
still not be able to answer incoming calls.) When you log on
locally and the phone goes off hook, it is normal to hear a
dial tone or phone-off-hook message thru the speaker. The
phone-off-hook message will stop after about one minute.
If you are running a single user or 2-line/3-user system, you
need not read the remainder of this section. Running more
than 2 telephone lines requires the use of the Digicom PC/8
or Stargate serial boards.
9
If you are running more than 2 telephone lines, a multiport
board is required to allow 8 to 32 ports to run on two
interrupts. Be sure that the multiport board type as defined
in the XP command is set for the type of multiport board
being used. Oracomm works with "dumb" multiport boards such
as the Digiboard PC/8s or DigiChannel PC/X, not "intelligent"
boards. "Intelligent" multiport boards contain their own cpu
and memory. Digiboard PC/8i, PC/8e, DigiChannel PC/Xi, or
PC/Xe are "intelligent" boards and will NOT work with
Oracomm. Do not install any multiport board drivers in
CONFIG.SYS. All the necessary multiport drivers are
contained within Oracomm.
THE SYSOP INSTALLATION / CUSTOMIZATION -- I COMMAND
After starting Oracomm, enter control-K to do a session
locally. Log on with the system operator account SYSOP (the
default password when the disk was shipped is TEST). Now
enter command I to change the installation parameters and
customize the bbs.
After entering I, you will see the system installation menu:
Installation/Customization Menu
B - Add, Change, Delete BOARDS
P - Installation Parameters
F - Define Path-ID for up/downloading
D - Define Directories per subboard
L - Change multi-user phone LINES
M - Change MODEM commands
G - Ansi Graphics for specific areas
A - Ansi Graphics for each subboard
Q - Finished
This menu will allow you to change all essential features of
Oracomm. The first change you will want make is to define
the boards. Each board has its own name, purpose, and rules.
Enter B on the system installation menu and you will be shown
a table of all the boards currently defined. Note that you
can go to a submenu by entering the menu selection along with
the command, ie, enter IB from the main command prompt will
take you to the board installation menu.
10
HOW TO ADD, CHANGE, OR DELETE BOARDS
Selection B on the installation menu allows you to add or
delete boards, or change the parameters associated with each
board.
The list of all boards currently defined to the system is
displayed first. The maximum number of boards the system can
handle is 99. The boards are sorted by the sequence number
so that you can determine the order in which boards will
appear to the user. Only the boards that the user can access
will be displayed.
NOTE: You cannot delete a board if there are any active
messages on that board in the message file. When changing
the data for an existing board, pressing carriage return
without entering any data will retain the old value. No
editing of the data is done here, so enter the parameters
carefully or the results to the user may be unpredictable.
Valid responses are noted in parenthesis and current values
are shown in brackets.
Entering B on the system installation menu will cause the
following board table to be displayed:
Board Definitions
SEQ ABR NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN SIG SF HLD R/O ANN SMY A/L PRG E-AL M-AL W-AL D-L
10 PSL Personal Mail N N N N N M 0 30 5 5 5 5
20 SYS System Operator's Y N Y N N L 0 45 5 5 5 5
35 TCH Technical Info N A Y N N L 0 25 5 5 5 5
45 NET Network Source N S N N N N 0 30 5 5 5 5
60 DST Network Destination N D N N N L 600 14 5 5 5 5
90 UTL Help files N N N Y N N 0 0 5 5 5 5
A-add, C-change, D-delete, Q-quit: A
Enter A to add a new board, C to change the information on an
existing board, D to delete a board, or Q to quit this
selection when you are finished changing the boards. If you
had entered A to add a board, you would be prompted for the
following information:
Board abbrev: thy
Enter a 3 character abbreviation for the board. The
abbreviation is shown under ABR in the table.
11
Board name []: Techy
Enter the name of the board, twenty (20) characters in
upper/lower case. You do not need to add the word "board"
since that word will be added in the prompt. If this was a
"change" instead of an "add", the current board name would
appear in the brackets ([]). The board name will appear in
the table underneath the row of N's (for Name).
Is this board a SIG (Y/N) [N] : N
You may want to limit the access of a board to only specific
users or users in a Special Interest Group (SIG). If a board
is marked as a SIG, you will have to put the 3-letter
abbreviation of the board into the user's SIG list for any
user to be able to access this board. If you want this board
to be a SIG, enter Y to the question, otherwise enter N.
12
Special Features (A,M,T,C,*,S,D,O,N) [N] : N
Each board may have a locator or match questionnaire
associated with it, or it may be used as a source or
destination for networked messages. Enter one of the codes
A, M, T, S, D, O, or N where each code means the following:
- A means there is a multiple choice questionnaire matching
accounts or users such as would be used in a dating
service
- M means there is a multiple choice questionnaire matching
a message such as would be used in a real estate
locating service.
- T means there is a match questionnaire for accounts but
the questionnaire is a TEXT or ESSAY question-type. No
matching is actually done, but the user fills in the
blanks and other users can read the responses with the
MA command on that board.
- C means there is a COMBINED multiple choice/essay
questionnaire matching users.
- - (DASH) means take the questionnaire from the next
accessible (default) board.
- * means that board will take the questionnaire from
another board. This is called REDIRECTION. You will
be prompted for the sequence number of the board which
it will take the questionnaire. Be sure it is NOT
another redirected board. The board it is redirected
to must be an A, M, C, or T type board.
- S means this board is the Source for messages being sent
over the network.
- D means this board is the Destination for messages
received over the network.
- O means the board is an order/entry board and the
questionnaire is really an order form to allow users to
purchase merchandise with their computer.
- E means this board is a network Echo conference. See the
section about Network Echo Conference for more details.
- N means this board does not have a matching
questionnaire, it is not used in the network, and it is
not used for order entry. None-of-the-above.
- ? means that this board is a header only for the
multilevel subboard menu selection function. See MENUB
in special messages for more details.
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Hold messages until release by sysop (Y/N) [N] : N
The system operator may desire to review all messages for
inappropriate information before allowing other users to view
them. If Y, then any new messages or messages with new
comments added will be marked as being HELD until the sysop
can read and approve them. Assistant sysops, but not sigops,
can also release a message. An H will appear next to the
summary and "**HOLD**" will appear in the heading of a held
message. At the end of the message, a reminder "Reminder:
this message is being HELD" will display to sysops. The
sysop then enters H at the end of the message to change the
HOLD status. If the message is already being held, N or
[enter] will remove the hold and update the message
date/time. Y will retain the hold or hold a nonheld message.
D will delete the message if the sysop thinks it is
objectionable. Messages that are HELD are not visible to
users, will not be sent out over the network, and held echo
messages will not be transmitted. This allows the sysop to
monitor messages before the public sees them or before they
can be sent out from his system on a board by board basis.
Also, if a user has flag H in his record, then any new
messages or messages that he adds comments to, regardless of
the board hold flag, will be marked as held. So if you have
a problem user, you can hold only messages which he affects
in case he is putting profanity in a message.
Is this board Read Only (Y/N) [N] : N
Some boards will be read-only boards. The system operator
can always enter a message on this board, but users cannot
enter messages or comment on messages entered here. An
example of this type of board is the Utility/helpfile board
which holds all the help files and questionnaires. You may
want the users to be able to read this board to download the
help files, but you would not want them posting messages
here. Enter Y if this is a read-only board. A board can
also be "Partial Read Only", i.e. a user can enter messages
on the board but no comments can be added to the message.
Enter P to make a board "noncommentable".
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Anonymous messages only (Y/N) [N] : N
Some newspapers have a personals or classified section where
advertisers can post text anonymously. The newspaper just
shows a box number, people respond to the box number, and the
newspaper forwards the response to the advertiser. This
prompt allows a board to be set up with the same facility.
The messages are always anonymous, but the system knows who
posted the message. Other users can "forward" a message to
the originator whereby the system will send the message to
the originator but not reveal the account of the originator
or responder. Answer this prompt with Y if you want all the
messages on this board to be anonymous. Note: users can
still enter anonymous messages using the "E ANON" or EY
commands even if you answer N to this question. The system
operator can always see who posted the message even though it
is anonymous to the other users. You can also enter C which
is like Y, except comments will be allowed on the messages.
Summary type (M/L/N/B/C) [L] : L
When a user enters a board, the system will automatically
generate an initial command. This command is either a read
or, by default, a summary command. The subcommand can be
either an M for an SM or Summary-of-My-own messages, L for an
SL or Summary-of-messages-added-since-my-Lastlogon, N for no
summary or read command when the user enters the board, B for
Summary Backward, or C for Summary Complete. Normally, if
the board is used for private personal mail, the summary type
would be M. If users are allowed to place messages on this
board, the summary type is normally L. If this is a read
only board, the summary type is N since there will not be
much activity on a board that only the system operator posts
messages or help files. These are guidelines, not firm
rules. Enter M, L, N, C, or B based on your use of the
board.
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Minimum access level [0]: 0
Each user has an access level and each board has an access
level. For a user to even be aware that a board exists, the
user's access level must be at least as high as the board's
access level. The minimum access level being prompted for
here is the lowest level which a user can have and still be
able to read the messages on this board. This is a number
from 0 to 32000. Boards which only the system operator can
access should be set very high, such as 30000. The
combination of access level and SIG should be used carefully
to determine what boards users can access. If a board may be
accessed by users who may each have different access levels
(such as subscribers and nonsubscribers), make the board aa
SIG. If the board will be accessed by users with the same
access level, control the access by adjusting the minimum
access level of the board.
Days to Autopurge Messages or 0 Nopurge:
Oracomm will automatically purge messages which have not had
any activity for the time period specified here in days.
Some messages, such as read-only stories or helpfiles, will
never have comments added, but should not be deleted. On
those boards where you do NOT want the system to purge
messages, enter 0 for this prompt. The maximum purge days is
255.
Sequence number [30]: 30
The sequence number determines the order in which the boards
are shown to the user. You should increment the sequence
numbers by 5 or 10 so that you can insert other boards later.
The sequence number can be any number between 1 and 99.
NOTE: if you change the sequence of any boards, do it when no
other users are online. This includes inserting new boards
among previously existing boards.
16
Access Level for E M W and D command
Oracomm allows you to have a different access level for the
Enter, Match, Who, and Download commands on each board. You
will be prompted for each access level here. If a user's
access level is less than the download access level specified
here but greater than the default access level for the
upload/download command as specified in the system
parameters, the user can list the directory of files for that
board but cannot download them. Assume that the access level
on a particular directory is 10, the user's access level is
20, but the D access level on this board is 30. The user
will be able to do an F command to list the files in the
directory since his access level is higher than the directory
access level, but he will not actually be able to download
the file since his access level is less than the D access
level on this board. He may still be able to download files
on other boards, just not his board. This provides a way to
letting the user know what he could have if his access level
was higher.
After prompting with the above questions, the program will
again show you the new board table including your latest
addition. If you wanted to change an entry, enter C to
signify a change. You will then be asked for the
abbreviation of the board that you want to change. You are
allowed to change all the information except the abbreviation
itself. If you want to change the abbreviation, you must
delete the board and then add it again. When changing a
board, the current values for each of the prompts will be
shown in brackets ([]). Pressing Enter without entering any
data will cause the old value to be retained.
To delete a board, enter D to signify delete. You will then
be asked for the abbreviation of the board that you want to
delete. You cannot delete a board if there are any messages
on the board. In that case, the system operator should go to
that board, read the messages forward and delete each one,
then try to delete the board again.
When you are finished adding, deleting, and changing all the
boards. Enter Q to return to the system installation menu.
You can come back to this menu and change the boards at any
time. Adding a new board or deleting an unused board is a
quick and simple process which will be done frequently as the
needs and interests of the users change.
17
HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM PARAMETERS
Selection P on the installation menu allows you to change the
system parameters. The system parameters control the
operation of the board, access level required to use each
command, time limits, etc. The most important change that a
new SYSOP will want to make is to change the default
communications port on item I. Then change the other
parameters as required. After pressing P on the installation
menu, you will be presented with the following system
parameter menu:
System Parameter Menu
A - Sign on message M - System Password [test]
[This text will print as the second line during logon ]
B - Printer On (Y/N) [N] N - BBS name [Oracle]
C - Printer log (0-3) [1] P - Place to prompt MMQ
D - # of carbon copies [ 3] R - RS/SS acc level [5]
E - Visitor logic (Y/N) [Y] S - MS/MP command acc level [5]
F - Backup level [1] T - WS command acc level [5]
G - Default acc lvl [10/10/10/10] U - C command acc level [5]
H - Max min. of inactivity[ 5/15] V - Database acc lvl [5]
I - Minimum A/L to delete [11] W - \BRING acc level [10]
J - Days to autodelete acct [45] X - Utility/Help board [UTL]
K - Days to autopurge msgs [45] Y - Allow anon msgs (Y/N) [Y]
L - Description line (Y/N) [Y] Z - Disable bell (Y/N) [Y/Y]
1 - Default Session Controls [1d] 2 - Verify acc lvl [1]
3 - Message Read Counter [Y] 4 - Status of all lines [Y]
5 - Allow acct change (Y/N) [N] 6 - Personal Mail board [PSL]
7 - Alternate disk drive [C] 8 - O command acc lvl [10]
9 - ANSI graphics (Y/N) [Y/Y] 0 - Downloads/upload [10]
Q - Finished, update file
What option:
The information in brackets [] is the current value of each
field. The information in parenthesis are values which are
acceptable. To change any parameter, enter the letter or
number corresponding to the parameter that you want to
modify. This is what each of the parameters does:
A - Sign on message
When a user first connects his modem to your system, the
first lines that he sees will be something like this:
Oracomm#1 619/346-1608 ORACOMM#1 Rel 999
This text will print on the second line during logon
The phrase "Oracomm#1 619/346-1608" is called the site id and
cannot be changed. "Oracomm#1" is the node, and "Rel 999" is
the release of the program that is running. The second line,
18
the one beginning with "This text will print...", is called
the sign on message. Use it to display your bbs name or to
tell your users something such as "New bbs is running so
answer NEW to setup an account". This line can also be blank
in case you do not wish to use this feature. If you have a
message which is longer than 1 line which you need to tell
your users, you can also setup a help file called LOGO.
After the sign on message is displayed and before the system
prompts the user for his account code, the system will
display the LOGO message. This message will be discussed in
more detail in the section entitled SPECIAL MESSAGES.
B - Printer On
Is there a printer attached and turned on? Diagnostic
messages, log messages, cntl-N printing will come out on the
printer if this is set to Y. Valid values are Y, N or X. If
you enter N, the log will go to a disk file named
BBSLOGmm.DAT. If the log does go to disk, be sure check and
delete the log files periodically. You can delete the file
with the DOS DEL command and the system will start a new file
the next time the program begins. If you enter X, neither a
printer log nor a disk log will be maintained. This is not
recommended since you would not know about any system errors
if they occurred. If you enter control-N to get a printer
log of your session but you have the log going to a disk
file, the text from the screen will go to the disk log file.
This can be useful if you want to capture a session, list of
users, list of messages, etc to include in a document with
your word processor later.
C - Printer log
This parameter determines how much information will be
displayed on the printer or log file. Valid values are 0
through 2.
0 - No log of users should be printed, only error messages
and diagnostics will be written.
1 - Print the date and time when a user logs on or off
2 - Show what command the user is using also
It is a good practice to have this set to 1 when you first
start your bbs and change it to 0 when you feel comfortable
with operating the system. If you are having strange
problems or a user is entering something which is causing the
system to not function properly, set this option to 2 so that
you can trace what command is causing the difficulty. If you
are running a subscriber system, use option 1 to maintain an
audit trail of time/money in users accounts.
19
D - # of carbon copies
After a private message is entered, Oracomm will allow the
system operator to send the same message to another account.
This is called a "carbon copy". Normally only the system
operator will have this feature since some users could fill
up the disk by sending the same message to many users.
Oracomm allows the system operator to determine whether the
users can have this feature, and if so, how many copies that
they can make. If the number of carbon copies is zero, the
user cannot use this feature and it will not display. If the
sysop sets this to a number from 1 to 254, the user can make
up to that many carbon copy messages. The sysop will always
have this feature even if the number is set to zero.
E - Visitor logic
Some systems may get a lot of one-time callers -- users who
log on, read the public messages, then never call back. They
waste a lot of system time and disk space by setting up an
account which will never be accessed again. If you have this
problem, you can activate the "Visitor Logic". Valid values
are Y or N. If set to Y, the system will ask a new user if
"they want to set up a new account or just look around". If
they just want to look around, it will assign them account
code VISITOR, and give them read-only access on those boards
whose access level is less than or equal to the access level
that you have set account VISITOR. Oracomm treats account
VISITOR like any other account, so you must assign it's
access level depending on what features and boards that you
want it to use. The N command is blocked and multiple
VISITOR accounts can be logged on simultaneously.
F - Backup level
All of the data files should be backed up to floppy disks at
least once per week. In addition, Oracomm can create
additional files to assist in the situation where the files
are destroyed and need to be recreated using the last backup
plus any changes made since the last backup. See the section
about BBUTILn to see how this procedure is accomplished. The
backup level parameter determines if or how any additional
data is saved. Valid numbers are 0 thru 4:
0 - Do not save any record of changes made to the system.
This will allows the fastest operation but provides no
way to recover any information added since your last
physical backup.
1 - Copy any DELETED messages or accounts (regardless of
whether they were deleted by the system, sysop, or
user) to a file named XXyymmdd.BAK. A new file would
be created every day. Since the same file is opened
20
and closed with each addition, there is a chance that
this file could be destroyed in a system crash also,
but it does provide some additional protection while
slowing the system down the least. It also gives you a
way to recover messages or accounts that were deleted
accidentally.
2 - Copy any ADDED, CHANGED, or DELETED messages or
accounts to a file named XXyymmdd.BAK. This provides
additional protection, but causes more overhead.
3 - Copy any DELETED messages (not accounts) to separate
files called XXXnnnnn.bbb where nnnnn is the message
number and bbb is the board abbreviation. This
provides even more protection than 1 or 2 above since
the file is never open during a possible crash, but as
more files are added to the directory, the system will
become progressively slower. If you use this option,
be sure to copy the files off the hard disk and delete
them every day to avoid degrading the system.
4 - Copy any ADDED, CHANGED, or DELETED messages (not
accounts) to separate files called XXXnnnnn.bbb. This
is similar to 3 above, but includes more files.
Use utility program BBUTIL to restore deleted messages or
accounts back into your databases.
G - Default access level
This will prompt for the feature, time limit, download
command time limit, and chat command time limit access
levels. The feature access level is the access level that a
new user is assigned when he first logs on. It is
recommended that this be set to 5 and the access level for
the "enter" command be higher than 5. This way a new user
cannot leave any messages until the system operator raises
his access level. The purpose of this is to prevent
"hackers" from posting illegal or inappropriate material on
the bbs. The TIME access level that access level a new user
is assigned when he first logs on. It determines how long a
new user will be allowed on the system. The chat time access
level determines how much time the user can be using the chat
command, and the download time access level determines how
long a user can be downloading. The purpose of these last
two access levels is to prevent users from spending all their
time in chat or downloading.
21
H - Max inactivity by USER before disconnecting:
A user may log on to the system then go to answer the door or
another phone and forget that he is logged on and keeping
other users from logging on. This parameter determines how
long the system should wait for the user to enter a character
before automatically logging him off. A normal value would
be 5 minutes. If the system is waiting for input for more
than 5 minutes, cancel the session so that others can get on.
A warning is displayed 1 minute before cancelling his
session.
Max inactivity by ORALINK before disconnecting:
If two systems are connected in private chat by Oralink,
there must be some activity (even if that activity is limited
to users logging on and off) on either system to keep them
connected. This parameter indicates how long it should wait
without any activity on either system before disconnecting.
You may have defined Oralink to be connected for two hours,
but if no one logs on or off either system for this defined
amount of time, Oralink will terminate before the end of the
two hour period. A normal value would be 15 minutes.
I - Minimum access level to delete
If a user has not been on for a period (that period defined
in J below) and his access level is less than or equal to
this value, his account will be deleted. If you want users
to not be deleted for inactivity, set their access level
above this value. Subscribers with time or money in their
account are never deleted automatically.
J - Days to autodelete acct
Oracomm allows the system operator to determine when to
automatically delete accounts rather than restricting it to
only 30 days. If the number of days is set to zero, it will
not purge accounts just like setting the N in the other
versions. This feature works just like the "autodelete
account Y/N" described above with respect to access level and
subscribers. The number must be between 0 and 254 days where
0 means do not purge accounts automatically.
22
K - Days to autopurge msgs [30]
This parameter is provided for compatibility with older
versions of Oracomm. The number of days to autopurge
messages is now changeable on each board with the IB command.
This parameter is used, however, to autopurge private files
and to purge mail to/from deleted accounts. The number of
days must be in the range of 1 to 254. If the number of days
is zero, it will not purge files. Oracomm will purge
personal upload files (files on the personal mail download
directory with a file name ACCOUNT.@nn) if the time between
the upload date (not the date the user downloaded it) and the
current date exceeds the days defined here.
L - Description lines
This parameter enables or disables the 3-line description for
each user. Enter Y if you want your system to prompt for and
display the user description, or N if you do not want to use
this facility.
M - System Password
Some systems are very popular and get many calls from people
with various interests. If your board is designed for
specific interests, such as a camera club for instance, you
may want to limit the system to only those people interested
in cameras. In this example, set the system password to
"camera". When a new user logs on, it will prompt him with
the following message:
"If you know what this bbs is about,
then you also know the password.
Enter the system password:"
If he enters "camera", he will be allowed to set up an
account. Otherwise, it will disconnect him. The purpose of
this is to limit the number of new users when the system
becomes too busy. By forcing people to know what the system
is about to get on, you eliminate the "one time callers". If
the system password is blank, the prompt will not be asked
and anyone can set up an account.
If you enter an * for the password, Oracomm will prompt the
user for a password, but will accept any password. It will
then save that password in the user's record. The sysop can
view the users record with the WI command and see what
password was used to log on. This can be useful to give
certain users access to special boards or to trace where
users heard about the system. If you use a different
password in various advertisements, you can find out what
adds are bringing in the most users.
23
The XS system operator command allows the sysop to define
multiple system passwords with a separate access level and
preset SIGs for each. For instance, you may have defined a
system password as CAR so that if a new user uses CAR for the
system password, his default access level would be 5 instead
of 0 and he would automatically have access to the CAR SIG.
In the system password field of the parameter file, you can
have 2 special characters:
* - will check for a predefined password record, if it is
found, it will set the access level and SIG, but it
will allow the user on to the system even if the
password is NOT found.
# - will check for a predefined password record, if it is
found, it will set the access level and SIG, but it
WILL NOT allow the user on the system if the predefined
password is not found.
See the section on the X command, option S for details about
defining the system passwords. Help file BADPSWRD will
display if an invalid password is entered and that file is
present.
N - BBS Name
This is the name that will appear in the salutation and on
menus periodically. It can be at most 20 characters in
length.
P - Place to prompt MMQ
Some system operators want to prompt their uses to answer the
questionnaire when they enter a board that has the
questionnaire, while others want to prompt the user only when
the user enters a command that checks someone else's
questionnaire. Enter B if you want the user prompted to
answer the questionnaire, or M if you want the user to be
prompted only when he enters an "M" (Matching) command.
R - SS/RS command access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to
access the searching functions of the S and R commands.
S - MS/MP command access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to
access the Matching or locator functions of the M command.
It controls the MS/MP command even if a user can access the
rest of the M commands due to the access level of the M
command on the board level.
24
T - WS command access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to
access WS function of the Who command.
U - C command access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to
access the Chat command. This command is only applicable on
multi-user systems.
V - Database access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to be
able to access the general purpose database feature.
W - /BRING access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have to be
able to access the /BRING command in chat.
X - Utility/help board
This parameter is the 3 character abbreviation for the board
that will contain the help files and questionnaires.
Y - Allow anonymous messages
This allows the sysop to disable the EY and E ANON commands
which allows users to enter anonymous messages (and anonymous
comments). The sysop is always shown the originator, even on
anonymous messages. Anonymous boards will still function
even with this parameter set to N.
Z - Disable Bell
When a user pages the system operator using the "Call sysop"
command, the bell will ring on the computer. Since this can
be annoying, this parameter allows the bell to be disabled.
Enter Y to disable the bell or N to allow the bell to ring.
When a user logs on, the bell will ring on the computer.
Since this can be annoying, this parameter allows the bell
to be disabled. Enter Y to disable the bell or N to allow
the bell to ring. Even if both of these values are N, the
"sysop available to chat" command must be selected on the
control window before the bell will ring. Therefore, you can
turn the bell on or off from the control window rather than
changing this parameter.
25
1 - Default Session Controls
Oracomm will prompt the sysop for the same questions it would
prompt a user if the user selected the session controls
option on the N command. The parameters that are determined
include:
Pause after every 22 lines
Initial command R instead of S
Show menus and headings
Show board introductions when entering a board
Prompt for next subboard if no new messages
Enable chat shell for novice users
Confirm message deletion
Send 10 nulls after each line
Do a WO LONG rather than a short WO during logon
These values become the defaults for new users.
2 - Verified access level
Most of the access levels defined in Oracomm determine what
the user can do on the system. The verified access level
limits what the system can do to the user. For example,
assume that you are running a closed system. This means that
no one except the sysop knows that a user is on the system
unless the user has been verified by the sysop. If the new
user's access level is less than the verified access level,
he will not display to other users in any W or WO command, he
cannot receive mail or chat calls from other users, and is
generally "invisible" to anyone except the sysop. Raising
his access level to the verified access level or higher will
allow him to function like all the other users.
3 - Activate message read counter
This activates a counter each time a message is read so the
user knows how often a particular message has been read. It
will be slightly inaccurate if two users are reading the same
message at the same time, or the reader exits the message
with Y. It also slows Oracomm down since every message must
be rewritten even if no comments were added. Consequently,
this option is NOT recommended on those large systems with a
lot of message reading activity due to performance
degradation.
4 - Show status of ALL lines
If a user logs on with \Invisible, if a user is invisible due
to board separation, or if lines are in use with outside
features, it is possible for the system to appear empty to a
caller when actually it is quite busy. This parameter
provides the sysop with the option of leaving "invisible"
26
lines truly invisible, or showing "in use" on lines that are
being used. If the sysop decides to show the true status of
lines being "in use", then a caller will see that the system
is busy but he will not know who is online.
5 - Allow account change (Y/N)
Once a user has set up an account, he cannot normally change
his account code. The reason for this is that 1) the user
would not get mail addressed to old account, and 2) the user
could send some undesirable mail or illegal information and
change his account again so that the sysop would not know who
actually entered the message. There are some circumstances
when the sysop may want to allow users to change their codes.
This option allows the sysop to turn on or off that
capability. If it is turned on, the user can use the N
command to change his account code. If it is turned off, the
user cannot change his account code REMOTELY, but it can
still be done LOCALLY. A sysop may not want to allow all his
users to be able to change their codes, but the sysop could
change a specific user's code by logging on locally as the
user and change it. Remember, a user will NOT get mail
addressed to his old account if he changes his account code.
MenuN will have to be modified in the utility help file board
to add or delete the entry for option 0 - Account Change.
6 - Personal Mail board
This parameter is the 3 character abbreviation for the
personal mail board to be set up with Installation menu
selection B. It is used to route personal mail to that board
no matter what board the user is on when he enters the
message.
7 - Alternate disk drive [C]
This will be the disk drive in the active directory where the
log file will be written if the log goes to disk rather than
the printer. Set this to asterisk (*) if you want to use the
default drive.
8 - O (Outside Features) command access level
This is the minimum access level that a user must have before
the Outside Features menu will display to him. Each feature
on the outside features menu has a separate access level
also. This feature is used to disable Outside Features to
all users.
27
9 - ANSI Graphics
If you answer Y to this question, the bbs will prompt the
user with the question:
"Do you want ANSI graphics (Y/N)? "
If the user answers Y, it will transmit the escape sequences
that you have defined to his screen to set graphics on his
terminal. Option 9 will also prompt you with a second
question "Simulate ANSI locally (Y/N)". If you are using a
color monitor and want to show what the user is seeing on
your own screen, answer Y. Otherwise, answer N.
For a user to be able to see the ANSI graphics, he must have
ANSI.SYS defined in his CONFIG.SYS file and he must be using
a terminal program that will recognize and process the ANSI
codes. Two such terminal programs are Qmodem and Termulator
although there may be others that will support graphics also.
If a user is not calling with a computer that supports ANSI
graphics and he answers Y to the question, he will probably
get a lot of strange characters on his screen.
0 - # of Downloads/uploads
Some systems experienced a problem of users downloading files
without contributing (uploading) any. This parameter allows
the sysop to restrict how many files can be downloaded before
an upload is expected. If a user is a subscriber, this
restriction is ignored. If you do not care how many files
are downloaded, enter 0 to bypass this logic. Oracomm
maintains a count for each user of the number of kilobytes
downloaded and the number of kilobytes uploaded. The ration
of the number of kilobytes downloaded to those uploaded is
defined here. If the user's ration exceeds this value, he
will not be permitted to download more. If the user uploads
a garbage file just to allow more downloading, the sysop can
adjust the download/upload counts for that user with the +
command. The calculation is incremented to the next highest
increment of 1024 bytes, i.e., downloading a 3,500 byte file
will increment the user's counter by 4.
28
HOW TO CHANGE UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD DIRECTORIES
Assume that an installation has the following boards:
Personal Mail
Apple Computers
IBM Computers
Utility/Helpfiles
Also assume that the Apple board is to contain separate areas
for utilities and games, and the IBM board is to contain
separate areas for utilities, games, and communications
programs. The areas might be divided into subdirectories as
follows:
C:\BBS\PSLUPDN (personal mail - upload/download)
D:\BBS\APPLE\UTIL (downloadable Apple Utility files)
E:\BBS\APPLE\GAMES (for downloadable Apple Games)
C:\BBS\APPLE\UPLOADS (for Apple uploads)
D:\IBM\UTIL (for IBM Utilities files)
C:\IBM\GAMES (for IBM Game files)
E:\IBM\COMM (for downloadable IBM communication files)
E:\IBM\UPLOADS (for Upload to IBM)
Use the IF command to define the above mentioned path
definitions.
This involves creating a 4-character Path-ID which will be
used with the IF command and fully defining the subdirectory
path. For example:
PATH-ID PATH
PESL C:\BBS\PSLUPDN
AUTL D:\BBS\APPLE\UTIL
AGAM E:\BBS\APPLE\GAMES
AUPL C:\BBS\APPLE\UPLOADS
IUTL D:\IBM\UTIL
IGAM C:\IBM\GAMES
ICOM E:\IBM\COMM
IUPL E:\IBM\UPLOADS
Now use the ID command to define each subdirectory on each
board. Enter a letter or number which the user will enter
(like a menu selection option) to select that subdirectory, a
32-character description of subdirectory, the path-id of the
download subdirectory, the path-id of the upload
subdirectory, and the access level required to access that
subdirectory.
29
BOARD SELECTION DESCRIPTION DOWN UPLD ACCESS LEVEL
PSL A PERSONAL FILES PESL PESL 0
APL A APPLE UTILITIES AUTL AUPL 10
B APPLE GAMES AGAM AUPL 15
IBM B IBM UTILITIES IUTL IUPL 5
B IBM GAMES IGAM IUPL 5
C IBM COMM PGMS ICOM IUPL 15
If a user was on the personal mail board and he entered F, D,
or U, he would NOT be prompted to select a directory since
there is only one. If he was on the Apple board, however, he
would see the following submenu:
Which subdirectory:
A Apple Utilities
B Apple Games
K Return to main menu
If the user was doing an F or D command and he selected
subdirectory B at this prompt, Oracomm would read a board
definition for board APL selection B and find it referred to
path-id AGAM. Oracomm would then read the path definition
record for AGAM and get the subdirectory path
E:\BBS\APPLE\GAMES.
There can be at most 35 subdirectories within each board.
Multiple subdirectory descriptions can refer to the same
subdirectory. This may happen if the same upload directory
is used for multiple descriptions. The upload and download
path-id may be the same so that an uploaded file can be
downloaded immediately.
For a user to be able to see (and subsequently access) a
subdirectory description, his access level must be at least
as high as the access level defined for that description.
The selection letters do not have to be sequential, but K is
reserved for returning to the main menu. U could have been
selected for Utilities, G for games, C for comm programs etc.
That way, if a user does not have access to an area, it will
not be as obvious as it would if the areas were numbered or
lettered sequentially.
30
File management can be done with an option on the + command
so that assistant sysops can access it. The functions are:
1 - List subdirectory information like the ID list option
2 - List Path information like the IF list option
3 - Modify the download database entry
4 - Show a true directory for a path definition
5 - Update the download database from actual files in
directory
6 - Copy a file from one path to another (or across drives)
7 - Move or rename a file within a path on the same drive
8 - Delete a file within a subdirectory based on path-id
9 - Add a new file from a floppy disk into a subdirectory
Note: on function 7, Oracomm is renaming the file. For this
reason, it cannot move or rename to a path on a different
drive. Be sure that the source and destination directories
are on the same drive. On functions 6 and 9, Oracomm is
doing a physical file copy. The subdirectory holding the new
file and the path specified by the path-id must not be the
same path.
Oracomm maintains a database of files that the user can
download. The database includes the path-id, file name, date
of last update, file size, minimum access level required to
download the file, a flag defining whether the file is
private (V) to a specific user or password protected (P), the
account of the private file or the password if protected, and
a description of the file contents up to 9000 characters in
length. Any of these fields may be modified by the sysop.
If the file is private (not to the user attempting to
download it) or the user's access level is too low to
download it, the file will not display to the user and he
cannot download it even if he guesses it is there. If the
file is password protected, the file will display, but
Oracomm will prompt for the password before the user is
allowed to download it.
31
CHANGING PATH DEFINITIONS
The IF command allows you to change the path definition or
path-id. This is a 4-character "word" which is used in place
of writing out the entire path description each time a path
to a subdirectory is referenced. It also allows the same
directory to be used on several boards and have the same
directory message updated regardless of which board a user is
one when it is updated. The path-id can be any 4 letters,
but for ease of use, it is recommended that it be the board
abbreviation and possibly the option selection letter.
When you enter IF, you will be prompted to add, change,
delete, or list the path definitions. You enter a letter
which determines what action you want to take, then the
4-letter path-id. Finally you will be prompted for the
complete path description of the subdirectory you are
defining. Be sure to include the drive and any root
directories such as:
E:\BBS\UPLOAD\UTIL
Do not put a trailing \ at the end of the path.
CHANGING SUBDIRECTORIES PER BOARD
Enter ID to define all the subdirectories which will be
accessible on each board. You will first be prompted for the
action you wish to take: add, change, delete, or list.
Enter the 3 character board abbreviation. Then enter the
selection letter for the subdirectory on that board. Next
enter the description of the subdirectory, the download
path-id defined with the IF command, and the upload path-id.
Finally enter the access level required to access that
subdirectory.
32
HOW TO DEFINE TELEPHONE LINES
If you do not have the special version of Oracomm capable of
processing more than one user at one time, then you will not
even see the L option on the Installation/Customization menu.
If you do have the multi-user version of Oracomm, entering L
on the I menu will allow you to change various parameters
that affect the telephone lines and modems.
In a single user system, Oracomm knows whether to look at com
port 1 or com port 2 based on parameter I in the System
Parameter menu. On a multi-user system, Oracomm needs to
know what telephone lines will be assigned to each
communications port. Oracomm was designed to handle at least
nine (9) telephone lines. When you entered L on the
Installation menu, you were shown a table listing each line,
the com port it is attached to, whether that line will be
used for networking, what kind of modem is on that line, and
whether that line is limited to subscriber use only.
Line Port Net Modem Acc-Lvl Tm-Limit BF1 BF2 CB
1 1 Y H 0 0 1 1 N
2 2 N H 0 0 1 1 N
3 3 N h 0 0 1 1 N
4 4 N H 0 0 1 1 N
5 5 N C 50 0 1 1 N
6 6 N C 50 0 1 1 N
7 7 N C 50 0 1 1 N
8 8 N D 50 0 2 1 N
9 9 N D 50 10 1 1 N
10 N N C 1000 0 1 1 N
Enter line to change or Q to quit:
If you want to add, change, or delete a telephone line
definition, enter the line number. When you are finished
altering the table, enter Q to return to the Installation
menu. After entering the line number, you will be prompted
with the following questions:
Com Port (1-2 or N):
If the phone line that you are adding, changing, or deleting
is on com1, enter 1. If it is on com2, enter 2. If you want
to define a local line so that the system operator can log on
locally which is not associated with a phone line or com
port, enter N meaning NONE.
Network call (Y/N):
One line should be Y, all others should be N.
33
Modem type:
Oracomm only supports Hayes-compatible modems. If there is
no modem attached to the com port, N is in the com port
column, enter N for the modem type. The following variations
are allowed:
H - True Hayes type modems that respond to DTR termination
C - Compatible modems that do not respond to DTR
D - Dumb modems or direct connection
N - No user callable modem connected. Use for Outside
Feature lines only.
P - Practical Peripheral modem. No CTS/RTS flow control
enabled.
For true Hayes modems, DTR is turned off before the command
is sent so that the modem will not answer the phone while the
commands are sent. Most compatible modems require that DTR
be on for them to respond to the commands being sent to them,
so they should be type C. Some nonHayes compatible dumb
modems, such as the Racal-Vadic VA212LC, can be used with
type D. The initial baud rate is defined with the IM command
and the user presses carriage return as the program switches
baud rates until it recognizes a carriage return.
The top line (line 10 in a 10-user version, line 3 in a 3-
user version, etc) is normally reserved for local console
use. It is on this line that the 3am purge will be done.
The modem type on this line should be H or C even though the
comm port will be N. It must be H or C for the automatic
cleanup process to be performed.
Some offices which require terminals to be direct connected
or "hardwired" without the use of a modem should also use
type D. The initial baud rate should be set to the baud rate
of the terminal, normally 9600, and a special cable will
connect the terminal to the computer. The cable should be
wired so that pins 6, 8, and 20 on the computer end are
connected together (providing CD and DTR high). Pins 2 and 3
should be crossed, and pin 7 connected straight thru.
Some Practical Peripheral and Supra modems do not work as
expected with CTS/RTS flow control. If the modem appears to
"hang", change the modem type to P to avoid hardware flow
control.
Acc-Lvl:
This is the minimum access level required to gain access on
that telephone line. It allows the sysop to set a line for
subscribers only, sysops only, or only certain users.
34
Tm-Limit:
This is the time limit in minutes allowed on a phone line.
If this is set to zero, then the user's time access level is
used to determine how long he can be online. If this is a
nonzero value and the user's time access level would allow
him MORE time than this, this time limit will take
precedence. This allows a sysop to devote a telephone line
as an "express line" for users to pick up their mail, but use
the other telephone lines for longer sessions. The time
limit will not apply to sysop accounts.
BF1 and BF2
These are "billing factor 1" and "billing factor 2" integer
values. Some systems may want to charge more for use of
certain lines such as 9600 baud lines. Use these two values
to adjust the billing on a line by line basis. Oracomm will
calculate the normal charge, either cents or minutes, when a
user logs off based on the prime/nonprime rates. It then
multiples the charge by BF1 and divides by BF2.
user-cost$ = normal=cost$ X BF1 / BF2
If you wanted to double the cost for use of a certain line,
BF1 would be 2 and BF2 would be 1. If it was a 50%
surcharge, BF1 would be 3 and BF2 would be 2. If it was a
20% DISCOUNT, BF1 would be 4 and BF2 would be 5.
CB (Call Back allowed)
This parameter determines whether the callback feature is
allowed on a particular line. Enter Y if callback is allowed
(assuming the user's access level is high enough and callback
is enabled with the XP parameter), or N if callback is not
allowed on the telephone line.
35
HOW TO MODIFY THE MODEM CONTROL COMMANDS
If you are using a Hayes-compatible modem, you should never
need to use this command. It is presented here for those
system operators who have modems which are not 100%
Hayes-compatible and who are very familiar with modem
commands. If you alter these values incorrectly, your modem
may not answer the phone. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Note: You can only change these parameters if you started
the program with NOMODEM. You can view the parameters, but
any changes will not be saved since it could interfere with
the settings in operation at that time.
Oracomm will make five (5) attempts to initialize the modem
to accept calls. If it does not get a 0 return code back, it
will shut the bbs down automatically. You should then
restart Oracomm, but override the com port with NOMODEM so
that no modem commands will be sent. You can then log on to
change the commands using the M option of the I command.
EXAMPLE: C>BBS NOMODEM
If you are sure that you must change these commands, enter M
on the Installation menu and you will be prompted with a
series of questions as defined below. The current value is
shown in brackets []. Pressing ENTER without entering a
value will retain the current value.
YOU ARE CHANGING THE MODEM COMMANDS FOR LINE n
This message is to warn multi-user system operators which
line you are modifying. Remember, you must change each line
separately by logging on to each line.
INITIAL BAUD RATE [1200]
This is the baud rate that the serial I/O port will be set to
when the first commands are sent to the modem. If you are
using a 2400 baud modem, you may need to change this to 2400.
Normal 300/1200 baud modems will probably need this to be set
to 1200 indicating 1200 baud. The baud rate can be up to and
including 38,400 baud. If you enter an asterisk (*) for the
baud rate, Oracomm will prompt for the line number to copy
FROM. This allows you to copy the parameters from one line
to another without having to reenter each parameter again.
ESCAPE SEQUENCE [+++]
These characters are sent to the modem to force it into a
mode to receive commands. You should never need to change
this since this seems to be a universal standard among modem
manufacturers at this time.
36
Some users have experienced a situation whereby a user calls
in while the modem is resetting so the modem does not get a
valid return code from the reset. One solution is to enter
an invalid command such as a period (.) in the escape
sequence field and setting the delay before and after the
escape sequence to zero. This will only work if your modem
is the type that will reset when DTR is turned off. To
disconnect, for example, the system turns off DTR. Your
modem would then reset making the +++ unnecessary, so it
eliminates the time when a user could possibly call in and
cause the modem to not reset properly.
DELAY BEFORE AND AFTER ESCAPE SEQ IN TICKS
(18 TICKS = 1 SECOND) [36]
For the escape sequence to be recognized, the modem needs a
period of "silence" before and after the sequence. "Silence"
means that no other characters are sent for a period before
or after the escape sequence. The time period is usually
about 1 to 1.5 seconds. The computer measures time in TICKS
where 1 tick is 1/18th of a second or there are 18 ticks per
second. A 2 second silence period would, therefore, be a
delay of 36 ticks.
RESET MODEM [ATZ]
This command resets the modem back to its default state when
preparing for the next call.
BEGIN ANSWER SEQUENCE [ATV0X1E0M0Q0H0S0=1]
This command tells the modem to begin answering the telephone
on the next call. It is critical that you tell the modem to
return integer codes rather than human-readable words when it
is returning a status code (the V0 in the command). The S0=1
tells the modem to answer the phone on the first ring. Some
modems may need some additional commands here. The Hayes
2400B modem requires the following command string:
ATV0X1E0M0Q0H0S0=1&C1&D2
If you are having problems with the modem not resetting
properly or not detecting loss of carrier, check your modem
documentation for any addition commands that may be missing
and which may affect the problem.
37
OFF HOOK FOR LOCAL SESSION [ATH1]
When the system operator enters control-K to log on to the
system locally, the bbs "takes the phone off the hook" so
that an outside caller will get a busy signal rather than the
phone simply ringing. If the phone simply rang, the outside
caller might think the system had crashed and not try calling
again. If the outside caller gets a busy signal, he knows to
try again later since the system is up but in use. This may
cause the speaker on your modem to sound the "phone off hook"
tone. This is normal and should stop after a minute or so.
DO NOT ANSWER PHONE [ATS0=0]
When you shut the bbs down, this command is sent to the modem
so that the modem will not answer the phone while you are
running other programs on your computer.
DELAY AFTER EACH COMMAND IN TICKS
(18 TICKS = 1 SECOND) [36]
It may take some time for your modem to process a command,
particularly the "begin answer sequence" command. This
provides a time delay after each command to allow your modem
to process it. Normally about 1/2 second should be
sufficient. Since there are 18 ticks in 1 second, 36 ticks
would be the 2 seconds which should be more enough time.
DELAY AFTER CONNECTION IN TICKS [0]
After the modem returns a code to Oracomm indicating that it
has connected at a particular speed, Oracomm will wait this
number of ticks before proceeding. The purpose of this is to
allow some time for the line to settle or for error
correcting modems to establish a reliable connection.
Otherwise, Oracomm will immediately transmit the header lines
which will be lost in the modem's buffer.
ORIGINATE DIALING PREFIX [ATV0DT]
This is the command that will be sent before the phone number
when the system dials out to initiate network transfer. The
network phone number will be appended to this command to
cause the modem to dial the number. Be sure to include V0 so
that the modem will return numeric codes. This will allow
Oracomm to determine if the calling number is busy, no
carrier, no dial tone, or other error to abort the dial
prematurely. If you experience problems while dialing out,
add &C1 to this command. For example, if ATD does not work,
try AT&C1DT.
38
The modem will return a code which indicates what baud rate
the caller is connected at. Normally there will be three
return codes: 1 indicates 300 baud, 5 indicates 1200 baud,
and 10 indicates 2400 baud. Oracomm allows up to five return
codes to be specified with baud rates up to 38,400 baud. You
must tell it what the return code will be and what baud rate
this will correspond to:
RETURN CODE (1 OF 5) [1]
BAUD RATE (1 OF 5) [300]
The first of five return codes is set to a value of 1. This
means that when the modem returns a code of 1, the caller is
calling in at 300 baud.
When the bbs is sending out the commands to the modem, they
will display over the line information on the control window.
You will also see the return code from the modem. This
should always be 0 to indicate that it processed the command
correctly. If it is sending the begin answer sequence and it
does not get a 0, it will try to resend the commands. This
could be due to a slight timing problem in which case the
resend should result in a 0 return code, or it could be that
you have an invalid command in the sequence. In that case,
you may need to shut the bbs down and log on without using
the modem. This can be done by overriding the com port with
NOMODEM. For example:
C>BBS NOMODEM
Log on as sysop, then use the I command selection M to
correct the command code.
39
ANSI GRAPHICS -- GENERAL INFORMATION
This chapter is not intended to be a primer on ANSI graphics.
It is intended to summarize some of the common codes and
explain how Oracomm handles these codes so that you
understand how to setup the codes in the command discussions
that follow.
ANSI graphics codes are a string of characters, preceded with
an escape character (1bH), which causes certain things to
happen on systems that are setup to handle those codes. The
most common things include changing colors, clearing the
screen, and manipulating the cursor. The remote system which
receives the codes must have ANSI.SYS defined in the
CONFIG.SYS file and must be using a modem program such as
Qmodem which recognizes the codes. The local system which is
running Oracomm will NOT have the colors generated since that
clears the window at the bottom and would prevent systems
that don't support graphics themselves from providing
graphics for their users. The local system will show the
escape sequences (without the escape character), but not the
colors.
Oracomm handles graphics in two ways: it can send out a
special message which contains imbedded graphics codes in
place of the normal message (such as the MENUB), or it can
send out a string of characters which contain escape
sequences for controlling color etc.
The easiest way to implement graphics is to send out escape
sequences which are strings of commands to cause the remote
system to change colors or clear the screen. It can send out
the sequences when the board changes. Oracomm will construct
the strings for you when you select the colors as follows:
1 - Black
2 - Red
3 - Green
4 - Yellow
5 - Blue
6 - Magenta (purple)
7 - Cyan (light blue)
8 - White
Foreground:
At this point, you are selecting the color of the text
(foreground). Enter a number from 1 to 8 to select the color
of the text. You will then be prompted for the background
color:
40
Background:
Again, enter a number from 1 to 8 to select the background
color.
Next you will be asked if you want the text (foreground) to
be in high intensity or low intensity. The background is
always in low intensity. Enter H for high intensity or
anything else for low intensity. The default is low
intensity if you just press ENTER.
Intensity (High/Low):
HOW TO DEFINE ANSI GRAPHICS FOR SPECIFIC PLACES
To define graphics for the specific places defined within the
program, enter G from the I menu, or IG from the main menu.
You will be shown a list of specific places which you can
have graphics displayed:
Enter the number of the area to add or change,
enter -number to delete it, or enter cntl-c
while list is displaying to exit to prompt quickly.
Graphic areas that can be changed:
1 Board Selection Menu
2 Main menu prompt
3 Default
4 Control Window
5 Line Usage Stats
7 Waiting Window
Which area (0 or [RETURN] to quit) ?
Enter the number of the area, 1 through 7 that you wish to
change, enter the negative of the number to delete it, or
enter 0 to return to the I menu. After entering the area,
you will be prompted for colors as described previously.
41
HOW TO CHANGE THE COLORS FOR EACH BOARD
To change the colors which are displayed on each board, enter
A on the I menu or IA on the main menu. You will be shown a
list of your boards along with a number. For example:
Enter the number of the area to add or change,
enter -number to delete it, or enter cntl-c
while list is displaying to exit to prompt quickly.
Board colors that can be changed:
1 Personal Mail
2 System Operator's
3 Technical Info
4 Network Source
Which board (0 or [RETURN] to quit) ?
Enter the board number to define the colors for that
particular board, the negative of the board number to delete
them, or zero to return to the I menu. You will be prompted
for the colors as discussed previously.
42
EXTENDED FEATURES -- X COMMAND
In addition to the Installation/Customization command (I),
the commercial versions of Oracomm have extended features
accessed with the X command. The Personal Oracomm, Shareware
version, Basic version, and Demonstration versions do not
have this command or the functions that it controls. The
functions that these commands provide is shown here for
informational purposes only. At the main command prompt, the
system operator can enter X to get the Extended Features Menu
or Xn where n is he subcommand on the X menu. The X menu
looks like this:
Extended Features Menu
S - Add, Change, Delete SYSTEM PASSWORDS
P - Extended Installation Parameters
$ - Subscriber Parameters
A - Additional sysop password
T - Time limits per access level
N - Text Branching Parameters
C - Changing Counters
O - Outside Features Parameters
L - Changing network node information
Q - Finished
You can now enter any of the above subcommands or Q to return
to the main menu.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
HOW TO ADD, CHANGE, DELETE SYSTEM PASSWORDS
The system password defined in System Parameter menu provides
a basic way to control who gets on to the system. It either
allows everyone on (if an * was placed in the password) or
allows only those that enter the single password to set up a
new account. The default access level will be the access
level set in the system parameter and no SIGs will be
defined. The S subcommand on the Extended features menu
allow the system operator to define more than one system
password, predefines the initial access level for the new
user entering that password, and predefines any SIGs that the
new user can access. In addition, Oracomm will tally the
number of users that have logged on with that password and
the date/time when it was last used. This can be useful for
marketing considerations. The initial password that the new
user uses to get access to the system to set up an account is
always saved in the users record for marketing research at a
later time.
43
If the system password in the parameter menu is set to *,
Oracomm will search for a predefined password as defined
here. If it is found, the new user will have his access
level and SIGs set to those predefined. If a predefined
password is NOT found, the user will still be allowed on the
system, but will not have the access level or SIGs
predefined.
If the system password in the parameter menu is set to #,
Oracomm will also search for a predefined password as defined
here, but if the password is NOT found, the user will NOT be
allowed to set up an account.
There can be up to 99 passwords predefined. Since Oracomm
must read through each one every time a new user sets up an
account, you should probably limit the number to less than
five for performance reasons.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
HOW TO CHANGE EXTENDED SYSTEM PARAMETERS
This menu allows you to change the following features:
Extended System Parameters
A - Verify Questionnaire [Y]
C - 3-line desc or name/address [3]
D - Call back users [N]
E - Call back access level [32000]
F - Limit 300 baud hours from hhmm to hhmm
G - Network Time [100/300]
H - Time between retries [10]
I - Max retries [5]
J - Allow remote new accounts [Y]
L - Multiport board [N]
M - SS/RS Search (S)ummary only or (M)essage text also [S]
N - Board abbreviation for separation [ABC]
Q - Finished, update file
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
44
HOW TO CHANGE SUBSCRIBER PARAMETERS
Some system operators may want to charge their users for
accessing the bbs. You can charge based on minutes online or
by date. At the Installation/Customization Menu, select
option S. You will then be shown the Subscriber Parameter
Menu. This menu allows you to change those parameters
relating to the time and financial aspects of a
subscriber-based system.
Subscriber Parameter Menu
A - Subscriber logic (Y/N) [Y]
B - Method of timing (D)ate, (T)ime$, (M)inutes [D]
C - Activate billing logic (Y/N) [Y]
D - Prime time begins (HHMM) [1800]
E - Prime time ends (HHMM) [2359]
F - Prime time rate (in cents) [200]
G - Non-prime time rate (in cents) [100]
I - Minimum subscriber access level [10/15/30/20]
J - Subscribers only begin time (HHMM) [1800]
K - Subscribers only end time (HHMM) [2000]
L - Max total time for nonsubs [180]
M - Sat/Sun prime/nonprime [P]
Q - Finished, update file
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
ADDITIONAL SYSOP PASSWORD
As an additional security measure, Oracomm allows the system
operator account to have an additional password which will be
requested by the system when the sysop logs in remotely. It
will NOT be requested when the sysop logs on locally. It
will only apply to accounts that begin with SYS, not
assistant sysop accounts (beginning with ASYS). This
additional password can only be added, changed, or deleted
locally, not remotely. Also it is never displayed anywhere
and is encrypted in the file. If you forget the additional
password, the only thing that you can do is to log on locally
and set up a new one or delete the current one. Only the
logged on sysop can change his own password. SYSOP1 cannot
change or establish a password for SYSOP2, for example,
unless SYSOP1 logged on as SYSOP2.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
45
TIME PER ACCESS LEVEL
Oracomm provides each user with two access levels: one
access level to determine what boards, commands, and features
he can access, and a second access level to determine how
much time he can be online. It also counts time spent during
prime time differently than nonprime time. The hours that
determine prime and nonprime time are defined in the
subscriber parameters. How much time the user can be online
during these two periods, which is determined by his time
access level, is defined by the XT command.
If you select option T from the installation menu, you will
see a table that looks something like this:
Access Prime time NON-Prime time Combined
Entry Level Min/day Min/ssn Min/day Min/ssn Min/day
1 0 30 10 120 60 120
2 10 120 30 240 60 120
3 100 120 120 240 240 240
4 500 999 999 999 999 999
Entry to change, Q to quit, L to list:
If a user's time access level is less than or equal to 10 in
the above example, he would be allowed on at most 30 minutes
per session or 120 minutes total during prime time, and 60
minutes per session or 240 minutes total during nonprime
time. To set or change any of the entries, enter the "entry
number" that you want to change - 1 to 12. You will be
prompted for the access level and times. The "combined
minutes/day" is the total time the user will be allowed
online during the day regardless of how much time was spent
in primetime or nonprime time. It may be the sum of the
prime and nonprime values, or it may be less. The access
levels must be in ascending sequence. The system operator is
always given 999 minutes per session and per day regardless
of his access level.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
46
HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM COUNTERS
The system counter menu allows you to reset the last message
number and the total call count. The only time you may need
to reset either of these counters is when you are starting a
new bbs, or restarting a bbs after being "down" for a long
period, and you want the counters to begin from zero. Press
C on the Extended Features Menu and you will see the System
Counter menu. The only counters that can be changed are the
last message number and the total calls. The other counters
are shown for informational purposes only and will be reset
by the system automatically.
System Counters
A - Last message# 11233
B - Total calls 65434
Total New users 340
Today's date 851201
L - Manually reset line statistics
W - Manually reset weather ranges
R - Manually reset daily statistics
Q - Finished, update file
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
47
OUTSIDE FEATURES ("DOORS")
A feature which is sometimes found on single user bbs
software, called "doors", allows the bbs to run other
programs in memory not being used by the bbs software.
Although this may work in a single user environment, it does
not work in a multiuser environment for several reasons.
Usually there is not enough unused memory in a computer
running a multiuser bbs such as Oracomm to run any program of
significant size. Even if there was enough memory available
to run an external program (a 128K program for example), if
10 users each decided to run that program at the same time,
it would require 128K * 10 users or 1280K of memory --
clearly more than MS-DOS will allow. Most programs are not
written for multiple users to access them at one time, they
are not reentrant and would have file conflicts if multiple
copies of a program accessed the same files at the same time
for updating. Most programs write to the console screen and
there is no way to trap the output and route it to each of
the 9 or 16 ports managed by Oracomm. Even if the output
could somehow be routed to the proper port, Oracomm would not
be in control to check for loss of carrier or timeout. If a
program used a lot of computer time to do disk searches or
computation, the other users in the multiuser bbs would stop
until that program finished. Clearly this makes running
outside programs on the same computer as the bbs impractical.
Oracomm gets around this problem with a feature called
"Outside Features". It allows Oracomm to connect to another
computer to run the program. Oracomm is just in "terminal
mode" to the other computer, therefore Oracomm can monitor
carrier loss or timeout. Oracomm can route the output to the
correct port. Disk, computation, or memory intensive
programs will not affect the performance of Oracomm since
they are done on a totally separate computer. The separate
or remote computer can either be dialed up or directly
connected. Any program can be run on the remote computer and
have all the available memory it needs -- none is being used
by the bbs software. Here are some common possible
configurations:
One or more lines from a Digiboard can be directly
connected to a true multiuser computer such as a
CompuPro. When the user selects the feature that goes
to that computer, Oracomm will transmit an initial
command such as "BASIC GAME.BAS" which will cause the
user to act as a dumb terminal program to the CompuPro
which will then run the BASIC program GAME for the
user. When the user enters control-K, times out, loses
carrier, or the game is over, Oracomm will transmit a
terminating command such as "SYSTEM" to the CompuPro to
48
cause BASIC to exit to operating system on the
CompuPro. The BASIC program can also transmit a
control-K to Oracomm to cause the disconnect.
Rather than direct connect, Oracomm can dial out on any
line, including a line normally used for dialing in by
users. If one of the "outside features" was connecting
to another bbs, Oracomm will find a line not being used
by callers at that moment and dial out to the remote
system.
Oracomm can also direct connect to another MS-DOS
computer. One line of a Digiboard may be directly
connected to COM1 on another PC. A special program
would be needed to allow any program output on the
remote PC to go to and from the COM1 port rather than
the console and keyboard.
If a custom program was written for the remote PC which
used another Digiboard, then multiple lines from
Oracomm could be connected to multiple lines on the
remote PC for a multi-player game or any other
multiuser application.
Up to 36 different "outside features" can be available at the
same time. These could all be on the same remote computer,
separate remote computers, or a combination of direct connect
and dial out computers. Oracomm has separate phone numbers
if dial out, initial commands, and access levels for each
feature. A user may be able to access some features but not
others based on his access level and that of each feature.
ORASLAVE is a shareware program which allows Oracomm to
access any of the doors written for PC-BOARD, RBBS, QBBS, and
some other applications.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
49
TEXT-BRANCHING FEATURE
Oracomm has a unique feature called "Text-Branching". In its
simplest form, text-branching will display some text (a
message) to a user, prompt the user for a word or sentence,
search that sentence for certain key words, then branch to
the next message based on the key word that the user entered.
This can be used in such applications as a data search,
programmed learning, or a simple game. Consider the
following possible messages.
"It's saturday night and you are thinking of something to do.
Your choices include going to a movie, going to a restaurant,
or visiting friends. What do you want to do?"
The user then types in "movie" which causes a branch to the
next message which may be something like "What part of town
are you in? ". The user may then type in "valley" which
causes a branch to a message which lists all the movies
currently playing in "the valley". Had the user typed in
"restaurant" or "food" or "dinner", a different message would
have been displayed next such as "What kind of food do you
want to eat?" If the user typed in "spaghetti", but that was
not one of the key words predefined, the user could then type
in "HINT". He would then get a list of valid key words, one
of which might be "Italian" food. He then enters "Italian"
and gets a listing of Italian restaurants.
A school may construct entire courses composed of messages
which lead students to more complex subjects or reexplain the
subject in a different way if the student answers
incorrectly.
"Plants make food by photosynthesis. A byproduct of the
process is chlorophyll which is a green substance... If a
plant is healthy and making food, what color would you expect
the leaves to be?"
If the student types in "green", he would go to the next part
of the lesson. If he types in "brown", he would be shown
another message that tries to explain the concept in a
different way.
The simple Adventure game could also be written.
"You are in a small clearing and there are four paths leading
away, north, south, east, and west. Which path do you want?"
The user may enter "north" which causes the next message to
be displayed such as "The north path takes you to an old
50
castle. You stop at the door. Should you go thru the door
or walk around the castle?" If the user entered "thru" or
"door", it would take him to one message while "walk" or
"around" might take him to different message.
There could be hundreds or even thousands of messages which
would inform, teach, or entertain users. Each message linked
to any number of messages until the last message has a key
called "END".
After you have defined the database, lessons, or game that
you want for your bbs, there are three steps which must be
done to implement it: 1) create a text file containing the
messages, keys, and key words in a predefined format, 2) run
the functions in BBUTIL to create a database from the text
file, and 3) use the XN command within Oracomm to define the
parameters of the text-branching to the BBS.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
CUSTOMIZING MENUS, HELP FILES, AND PROMPTS
Almost all of the menus, help files, and user-visible prompts
can be changed by the sysop. In addition, there are separate
menus displayed when the user selects ansi graphics. The
menus are stored on the utility/helpfile board and the ansi
equivalent is named just like the ascii file except it is
preceded by an A. For example, the menu for the W command is
called MENUW and the ansi menu for the W command is AMENUW.
The next section on "Special Messages" gives a detailed list
of all the special messages and menus.
The main command menu has an ascii name, MENU, and an ansi
name, AMENU, like the other submenus. Unlike the other
submenus, however, if either MENU or AMENU are not present
(which is the more common situation), Oracomm will construct
the main menu based on what commands the user has access to
on that particular board. For this reason, it is more common
to let Oracomm display the main command menu rather than
being sysop supplied. If Oracomm constructs the menu, it
will only show the features that the user can access or the
features which are available on a particular subboard. If
MENU or AMENU are used, then all features will show and the
selective display will not occur.
The help files only have an ascii file name. There is not a
separate help file for users requesting ansi graphics at this
time.
Most of the user-visible prompts are contained in messages
PROMPT0 thru PROMPT9. You may change the wording of some of
51
the prompts within certain restrictions. There is not a much
free space in the prompt buffer. If you make any prompt
longer than the existing prompt, you may have to shorten
another prompt to keep the prompts within the buffer. Do not
use any percent signs (%) in your prompts. Do not remove any
percent signs or percent/letter combinations (such as %s, %d,
%c) in any existing prompts. Do not change the numbers that
precede the prompts. The prompts cannot span more than one
line and cannot be more than 140 characters long. The \n in
the prompts signify a new line (carriage return). Changing
the prompts is not really recommended since the user
documentation will not be accurate and a typographical error
could cause the system to not function at all. The facility
is made available for foreign language systems and places
where only minor wording (such as changing "Board" or "BBS")
is necessary.
UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD FILE NAMES
File names can only be made up of numbers 0 through 9 and
letters A through Z. No special characters except @ can be
used. You cannot even use a colon, :, so you cannot specify
a different drive. The reason is that a user could specify a
nonexistent drive and hang up the system.
If you want a file to only be accessible by a specific user,
name the file USERACCT.@nn where USERACCT is the account code
of the user that you want to download the file, the @ tells
Oracomm that only that user can see the file in the directory
or download it, and nn are any characters so that the user
can have more than one file. If any user other than USERACCT
does a directory or tries to download it, the file will "not
be found".
If a user uploads a file with filename USERACCT.@, Oracomm
will search for other files for that USERACCT on the personal
mail download directory and add the nn suffix to make the
name unique. It will also create a message to the SYSOP and
to USERACCT notifying them of the upload. If the .@ is not
present, the file will be downloadable by all users and will
be placed in the upload directory awaiting sysop
verification. At 3am, when Oracomm purges messages, it will
also check for files in the personal mail download directory
which also exceed the day limit and will be purged. If a
file is purged, a message will be put into the log indicating
that the system deleted it.
52
SPECIAL MESSAGES
The help files, questionnaires, menus, and various other
special messages are stored on the board which was set up as
the utility/help-file board in the system parameters. These
special messages are identified by the key word in the "TO"
account field. For example, assume you wanted a message to
display every time a user logged on. There is a special
message for this called the Message-Of-The-Day. It has a key
word of MOTD. To create such a message, you can:
Go to the Utility/Helpfile board and enter E
MOTD. Then, enter the message online as you
would any message.
or
Create the message off line with your word
processor, go to the utility/Helpfile board, and
enter E@ MOTD. The @ in the E@ will cause the
system to ask you for the file name. Enter the
name of the text file which you created off line.
The file must not be larger than a standard
message and must not contain any imbedded word
processor commands. NOTE: be sure the text file
is in the same drive/directory as Oracomm.
or
Create the message off line with your text editor, but
name the file MOTD.UTL. Now use the utility program
BBUTIL menu option L to load all files with extension
.UTL into the utility/help file board replacing those
that are already there.
If there already was a MOTD message on the utility board,
simply read the message and use the D command to delete it
after it was read.
The special messages can also be loaded using BBUTIL option
L. This utility function will take any file on the disk with
file extension UTL and will load it into the utility board.
This allows you to put the messages on the utility board in
those situations where you cannot log on to the bbs. See the
description of BBUTIL for more details.
Some messages may have an "ANSI equivalent". For these
messages, the message to-account is preceded by an A. If the
user answered Y to "Do you want ANSI graphics" at logon, then
the ANSI equivalent message will be displayed if it exists.
53
Here is a list of the special messages and what they display:
1HOUR In Oracomm if you are using the subscriber feature
of timing by minutes, this message will display to
the user when his account has fallen below 60
minutes remaining. A1HOUR is the ANSI equivalent.
2HOUR In Oracomm if you are using the subscriber feature
of timing by minutes, this message will display to
the user when the time in his account has fallen
below 120 minutes. A2HOUR is the ANSI equivalent.
1WEEK This is similar to 1HOUR above. It displays to
subscribers who are billed by date when their
account has only 1 to 7 days before it expires.
A1WEEK is the ANSI equivalent.
2WEEK This is similar to 2HOUR above. It displays to
subscribers who are billed by date when their
account has only 8 to 14 days before it expires.
A2WEEK is the ANSI equivalent.
ANSIIxxx Each board can have an introduction message (see
INTROxxx below). If, however, you want to have an
ANSI graphic introduction, create a message called
ANSIIxxx where xxx is the board abbreviation which
contains the ANSI graphic strings for the graphic
on that board. You can also embed characters to
create music as well. If this message is present
for a particular board and you have ANSI graphics
enabled via the system parameters and the user has
answered Y to wanting ANSI graphics, then this
message will be displayed.
ATHOME This message will display to the user when he logs
on if the sysop has sysop chat enabled from the
control window. It is used to tell the user that
the sysop is there and available to "chat" if the
user needs assistance.
BADWORDS This message, if present, contains a list of words
or phrases which you do NOT want used in user's
accounts, name/handles, city, or 3-line
description. It is used to restrict profanity in
the user information. The messages are not checked
for these words. The format of the message is one
word per line. The list could fill an entire
message, but it would take some time to compare
each word in the user information with such a large
glossary.
54
BADPSWRD If a system password is required for new user logon
and an incorrect password is entered, this message
will be displayed if present.
DISCLAIM If this message is present, it will display a
"disclaimer" to the user when he logs on to set up
an account. The user must enter Y or YES after
this message is displayed. If he enters anything
else, he will be disconnected.
FREELOAD For subscriber systems charging by minutes or
cents, if a nonsubscriber exceeds the amount of
time a free user is allowed before subscribing,
this message will be displayed and he will be
disconnected. This only applies to users with an
access level less than a subscriber. For
subscriber systems charging by DATE, Oracomm will
compute the days from first logon to present and
present this message if the user has been on more
days than specified in the IS/L parameter.
HELPbbb This is the help menu for the main command prompt
on the board with board abbreviation bbb. This
describes all the commands in general. It replaces
the older HELPO.
NOTE: For all the help files, messages beginning
with HELP, there can also be an ANSI equivalent.
Precede the help file name with A such as AHELPDB.
These ANSI equivalent help files will be sent to
users who answer ANSI GRAPHICS = Y when they logon.
HELPDB Help for the general purpose database feature.
HELPC Help for the Chat command.
HELPE1 Help for the Enter command at the beginning of the
command as to options such as ALL, AUTO, etc
HELPE2 Help for the Enter command when the board is an
order entry board and enter is entering an order.
HELPF Help file for the Files command.
HELPE3 Help file for the Enter command when the board is
the Network Source of messages.
HELPM1 Help with the match command when matching to
accounts.
HELPM2 Help with the match command when matching to
messages.
55
HELPN Help with the N command.
HELPR Help for the Summary and Read command at the
beginning of the command as to what subcommands are
available.
HELPU Help file for the upload/download/file directory
commands.
HELPW Help with the W command.
INTROxxx Board introduction for board xxx. If this message
is present for a particular board, it will be
displayed every time a user enters that board. It
is used to give the user an introduction to the
board and to notify him of the contents, purpose,
or rules of each board. Note: the introduction
will only display to users who are in NOVICE mode,
not to users in EXPERT mode.
LOGO Displays when a user first gets a connection and
before he has entered his account code. ALOGO is
the ANSI equivalent.
LOGOFF Ascii logo displayed at logoff. ALOGOFF is the
ANSI equivalent.
MENU Menu for the main command menu. If this is not
present, Oracomm will display the main commands
based on what commands are available on a board and
based on the user's access level. If MENUbbb (see
below) is present, MENUbbb will display rather than
MENU.
NOTE: For all the menu files, messages beginning
with MENU, there can also be an ANSI equivalent.
Precede the menu file name with A such as AMENUbbb.
These ANSI equivalent menu files will be sent to
users who answer ANSI GRAPHICS = Y when they logon.
56
MENUB Subboard selection menu, B command.
The subboard selection menu can also be split into
submenus. MENUB may have only choices 1 thru 9 for
sequence numbers 1 thru 9. If the special feature
indicator (IB command) is set to ?, then when the
user enters 1, Oracomm will display MENU1. MENU1
will then have ten choices, 0 thru 9. User selects
3, for example, and Oracomm will construct board
selection 13 as if the user had entered 13 from the
board selection menu directly. MENU1, MENU2,
MENU3...MENU9 are therefore submenus for boards
1,2,3...9 from MENUB.
MENUbbb Main menu for subboard bbb where bbb is the board
abbreviation. This menu will display in place of
MENU if present. If MENUbbb is not present then
MENU (or MENUS2 to SYSOPs) will display. If
neither of these are present, then Oracomm will
display the commands the user can access from the
prompts.
MENUC Menu for chat command.
MENUE1 Menu for Enter Message command.
MENUF Menu for the sysop +F command.
MENUFC Menu for the Files command.
MENUI Menu for the installation command, I.
MENUM1 Menu for Match subcommands by account.
MENUM2 Menu for Match subcommands by message.
MENUN1 Menu for N command with 3-line description.
MENUN2 Menu for N command with name/address/city.
MENUO Menu for the O command (Outside Features).
MENUR Menu for read/summary command.
MENUS Menu for system management command, +.
MENUS2 Main menu like MENU, but showing sysop commands
also.
MENUU Menu for upload/download protocols.
57
MENUW Menu for the Who command.
MENUX Menu for the eXtended sysop commands.
MOTD Message of the day, displayed at logon. AMOTD is
the ANSI equivalent.
MOTDxxx Message of the day for board xxx. AMOTDxxx is the
ANSI equivalent.
MOTDn Message of the day displayed when the caller logs
on telephone line n. AMOTDn is the ANSI
equivalent.
NEWUSER New user setup instructions. ANEWUSER is the ANSI
equivalent.
NEWUMSG Message sent to new users after their first logon
as a personalized "welcome".
NEWUMSGS Message sent to new users after their first logon
as a personalized "welcome" to those users who are
SEPARATED (whose SIG list contains the SIG listed
in the board separation parameter XP/N).
QUESTxxx Match questionnaire for board xxx. This also is
for the order entry form, both the objective and
subjective (text) questionnaires, and the verify
questionnaires.
OFFLINE This message will be displayed to a caller if the
OFFLINE parameter was used when Oracomm was
initialized.
PROMPT0 thru PROMPT9 User visible prompts and messages.
To conserve on literal space, only those commands
which are visible to the remote caller are
included. Error messages or information displays
which show only on the local console are not
included in the prompt files.
RANDOMn Every time the user reaches the main command
prompt, the system generates a random number
between 0 and 35. This number is appended to the
characters RANDOM to create a "to" name of RANDOM0
thru RANDOM9 and RANDOMA thru RANDOMZ. If the
message does exist and has not already been
displayed to that user in that session, it will be
displayed at that point. It is used to display
random announcements to users during their
sessions. There can also be an ANSI equivalent to
58
this message by preceding the file with A such as
ARANDOM0.
SUBINFO Subscription information displayed when user enters
$ on the main menu.
TUTOR1 thru TUTOR6 - Messages used for the user tutorial.
These messages must be linked together to have them
all displayed when the user enters T. See the
section "Additional Sysop Commands" for details
about special characters active within these
messages.
VERIFYQU This message holds the verification questionnaire.
WELCOME Message to the user after setting up an account.
AWELCOME is the ANSI equivalent.
Note that if a message exceeds 9000 characters, you can
create a second message with a DIFFERENT To-account name and
LINK the first part to the second part. This will not work
for questionnaires, but will work for help files.
"Linking" is done as follows: Assume you are linking TUTOR1,
TUTOR2, TUTOR3, TUTOR4, TUTOR5, and TUTOR6 together. Also
assume that when you entered "E@ TUTOR1", you noticed that it
was message number 1201, TUTOR2 was message 1202, TUTOR3 was
message 1205, TUTOR4 was message 1207, TUTOR5 was message
1210, and TUTOR6 was message 1215.
Enter RA TUTOR1. At the post read prompt, enter L to link the
message, then enter 1202 (the message number of TUTOR2) to
link to next. Now enter RA TUTOR2, enter L to link the
message, then enter 1205 to link TUTOR2 to TUTOR3. Next
enter RA TUTOR3, then L, then 1207 to line TUTOR3 to TUTOR4.
Next enter RA TUTOR4, then L, then 1210 to link TUTOR4 to
TUTOR5. Finally enter RA TUTOR5, then L, then 1215 to link
TUTOR5 to TUTOR6. Since TUTOR6 is the last message, it does
not get linked to any others.
59
BULLETINS
A bulletin is a file displayed to users similar to the way
Oracomm displays messages or messages-of-the-day. It was a
common feature in other bbs software that did not have the
sophisticated message system found in Oracomm. Bulletins
have the following problems over message notification: 1)
There can be up to ten times more disk I/O overhead to
display bulletins than there is to display
messages-of-the-day. This could affect the performance
especially on 17 and 33 user systems. 2) Bulletins requires
an additional 2000 bytes of code space memory. 3) users can
get confused as to which message area or directory to find
the bulletin. It is recommended that "bulletins" be placed
as messages on a board with initial command of RL for optimum
performance. For those sysops who are coming from other bbs
software who MUST have bulletins, a bulletin feature has been
implemented in association with the download database. This
is an optional feature which must be specifically requested
and compiled into the bbs.exe for requesting sites.
On each board, Oracomm will go to the path id with selection
option A and search for all files which have been added since
the users last logon (similar to an FL command, but FA will
display on the control window) and if the file is a bulletin,
it will display a directory entry or the entire file based on
the "display" option. If there is no directory selection A,
if the user does not have access to the directory of
selection A, or if the user does not have access to the
bulletin file (based on the file access level), the bulletin
will NOT be displayed. If the user wants to read the
bulletin again or at a later time, he would use the normal
file and download commands to display it. There can be one
path id (with selection A) per board each containing any
number of bulletin files and the bulletins for each board
will be displayed when a user enters that board. Once the
use logs off with Q or G, his message lastlogon date/time is
updated so he will NOT see that bulletin automatically, and
must use the F and D commands to access it again.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
60
RESERVED WORDS
Any account that begins with SYS will be given system
operator privilege. Therefore, you can set up SYSOP1,
SYSOP2, SYSOP3, etc to assist you in operating the board.
However, the account must be set up locally. A new user
cannot log on remotely and set up a sysop account.
Likewise, there are several words which cannot be used as the
first characters of an account unless they are set up
locally. This is to prevent confusing the system because of
their similarity to other commands. The reserved words are:
ALL An option of the enter command
ANON An option of the enter command
ASYS Assistant sysop account prefix
POLL An option of the enter command
BBS Used for networking
HELP An option of the enter command
NET Used for networking
ORA Used for networking
READONLY An option of the enter command
SYS Special system operator account
VISITOR Special account for checking out the
system
ONLINE WEATHER STATION
Oracomm will interface to the PCW weather station hardware
and software to provide users with instanteous temperature,
wind direction, wind speed, and barometric pressure. The PCW
weather station comes with a board that fits in a slot within
the computer, two temperature probes, wind speed and
direction sensors, software to calibrate and display the
weather data, and extensive documentation. This is an
optional feature of Oracomm.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
ONLINE DATABASES
Many bulletin board applications require the ability to
search for, retrieve, and display a small subset of data from
a larger collection of data. The sysop's first comment is
usually "I need a database". The term "database" has become
a broad term and has lost much of its meaning in tats quickly
changing computer jargon. To some users, "database" refers
to a sophisticated indexed hierarchical record structure such
as b-tree so that given an account code, for example, an
entire user record could be retrieved. To other users,
"database" simply means a collection of data searched
61
sequentially if necessary such as searching for the city in a
user's record. The city would not be a key, so each record
would have to be searched to look for the character string of
the city name. This could get more confusing since one user
may say he lives in L.A. while another says he lives in Los
Angeles and a string search would not match on both. A key
search is quicker, but there are practical limits to the
number of possible keys and the spelling of the keys must be
consistent: LA, Los Angeles, LosAngls, would be considered
different entities. A string search is more flexible, but
requires searching the entire file which could take a
significant amount of time.
Oracomm provides several means of maintaining, searching, and
accessing a group of data items. The means that you choose
depends on the amount of data you have, how it is organized,
and how it will be used.
The bbs files are actually themselves a database. The user
database is accessed by account code with a "indexed
sequential b-tree access method". This means that given the
account code, Oracomm goes directly to the record, it does
not search the entire file. If your application required
maintaining a list of registered owners and the registration
number became their account code, then to ask the question
"who is M123754" you would enter "WA M123754". If instead
you wanted to know all the users who lived in Beverly Hills,
you would enter "WS Beverly Hills" and Oracomm would do a
sequential search thru all the city fields (since the city is
not a key) looking for that string. If a user misspelled or
abbreviated the city, however, he would not be found in that
match. Each user can answer a multiple choice questionnaire.
Oracomm can search thru the answers of those questionnaires
very rapidly searching for certain replies. The WA, WS, and
MS commands are actually powerful data searching commands for
accessing information about people.
If your collection of data is about "things" such as book
subjects, titles, and authors, each "thing" could be put into
a message. The book subject could be put into the message
summary. The boards could be split by subject matter so that
one board was science fiction, one board about technical
subjects, and another about romance novels. The user would
go to the board containing the subject matter of interest and
search thru summary only or the summary and message content
for specific key words, author's name, or book title. If the
summary was "IBM software bugs and fixes", the user could
find the information by entering either "IBM", "software",
"bug", or "fix". If this was a keyed field, such as the
account name in the user database, he would have to spell the
summary exactly and therefore would probably not find the
information he was looking for. Oracomm may take some time
62
to read through the summary or message to look for the string
containing the information that the user requested, but if
the subject matter was separated into individual boards, that
time would not be too great. You can also define a
matchmaker questionnaire which points to a particular
message. Then quickly searching the questionnaires would
locate the message with the required information. The MS,
RS, and SS commands then become powerful data search
commands.
If your data is organized into a large file of repeating
information where all the data for one occurrence is on one
line such as football player's name, age, height, weight,
speed, scores, etc, then a simple sequential file search
could be done. You could request a list of all players with
a particular age. This is done with a simple "download
search". The DS command, which is a subset of the download
command, will only list those lines in the file containing
the search string.
Oracomm also has a "general purpose database". It allows
keyed searches for ranges on a limited number of fields. If
each of the items in the football player's file above was
defined with a key, it would be possible to select all
football players within a certain age range (rather than a
specific age) and with a score greater than a set standard.
This would be done by having the data from another file (such
as Dbase III) converted to a "flat delineated" file, and
loaded into an Oracomm organized file. See the section "How
to install the Oracomm General Purpose Database" for further
details.
The important thing to remember is that one person's solution
to "database" may not work for someone else. It all depends
on the type of data, how it is to be searched, how much data
has to be online at one time. One of the above mentioned
techniques may work faster or provide more flexibility than
another.
63
HOW TO INSTALL THE ORACOMM GENERAL PURPOSE DATABASE
The Oracomm database feature is intended to take data from a
Dbase-like file, convert the keys to the C-tree structure
used with the other Oracomm files, and make the data
available online for very fast search and access. It
consists of additional logic within the BBS program itself
plus a utility program called BBUTILDB.
NOTE: If you are using DOS 3.3 or later and have FILES=35 in
CONFIG.SYS, BBUTILDB will open enough files to run properly.
If you are running a version of DOS prior to 3.3, you will
need to run FILESnn.COM immediately before running BBUTILDB
as discussed in the section about "Starting Oracomm".
Installation of this feature requires three steps:
1) Create a delineated "flat" file from the existing
database
2) Setting the parameters for the Oracomm database using
BBUTILDB
3) Loading the Oracomm database from the delineated file
using BBUTILDB
A delineated "flat" file is a sequential file where each
field of data is separated by quotes and commas, and each
record is terminated by a carriage return/line feed. A
sample file provided is a list of companies which supply
public domain/shareware software. A Dbase program was used
to maintain the data, and the "copy" function was used to
create the delineated flat file. A few records of the file
would look like this:
"","","","","","","",,"Shareware Express","","32302 Camino
Capistrano, Suite 204","Box 219","San Juan
Capistrano","CA","92693-0219","714","240-0729","","","","",""
,T,F,F
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
64
ASSISTANT SYSOP CAPABILITY
Some installations may require additional personnel to manage
a BBS. There may be a different individual responsible for
each subboard, for example. Although there can be any number
of system operators (accounts beginning with SYS), an
installation should only have one or two full sysops for
management and security reasons. The other personnel should
be ASSISTANT sysops (or "SIGop"s) -- accounts beginning with
ASYS.
Assistant sysops have most of the capability of full sysops.
They can
Use E@ to load a message from a disk file,
Have unlimited carbon copies,
Use % after reading a message to create a disk file,
Delete user accounts or questionnaires,
Change SIGs and access levels on user accounts,
Monitor messages and move, hold, release, or "private"
offensive messages,
Have access to sysop + commands,
Copy, move, rename, or delete upload/download files with
the + command.
They CANNOT:
Have a second remote password,
Access user's passwords,
Access the I, X, P or = commands to modify the
installation parameters,
Access the A or B options on the + command to change
money in a subscriber's account,
Change other SYS or ASYS accounts,
View other user's personal mail,
View "from account" in anonymous messages,
Access all boards, (They can only access those boards
which their SIG or access levels will allow.)
Use those options of the Y command which allow lines to
be shut down, monitor other users, or disconnect
other users.
Cannot delete a message, but they can move it to a
"holding" board or make it "private",
Cannot Modify a message after it has been entered.
Cannot view the address or telephone numbers of users if
the name/address option is being used.
Remember, all transactions with the + command, including
deleting accounts, are noted in the log file to indicate who
altered an account. SYS and ASYS accounts can only be set up
locally. If a sysop receives a message which is to be
answered by an assistant, the sysop can reroute it to the
assistant with the R postread command.
65
SPECIAL CONTROL KEYS
Control keys are entered by holding down the key marked ctrl
on the keyboard while pressing the alphabetic key at the same
time. Control-K is entered by holding down the ctrl key and
pressing K simultaneously.
Control-N to toggle the printer on and off just like
control-P in MS-DOS or CP/M. If your log is set to go
to a disk file, all text displayed after control-P is
toggled on will also go to the disk file. Be careful
since this can create a rather large file.
Control-O to go into sysop chat mode. "Sysop chat mode" is
the condition when the user and the sysop are in direct
communication typing to each other. The sysop may have
noticed that the user was online and wanted to "talk"
with him over the keyboard, for instance. Control-K
exits sysop chat mode back into normal user mode. This
only functions after the user has finished logging on.
You cannot break into chat mode while a new user is
setting up an account.
Control-Y to cause carrier loss and immediately disconnect
whoever is logged on.
[HOME] Returns you to the control window
F1 - Fn Allows you to view the activity on a particular
line. (Shift-f1 thru shift-f10 to access lines 11 thru
20, control-f1 thru control-f10 for lines 21 thru 31,
and Alt-f1 thru Alt-f3 for lines 31 thru 33 on the 32-
line/33-user version.)
Alt-F1 - Alt-Fn (Press Alt while pressing a function key)
will add windows into that user to the window previously
displayed with the Fn key. A user window, not the
control window, must be displaying before you can add
another line to the display. If you wanted to watch
lines 1, 2, and 3, for example, press F1 then Alt-F2
then Alt-F3 to show all three windows simultaneously.
To go back to only one window, press HOME or Fn. (This
feature is does not apply to the 17-user or 33-user
versions.)
66
SPECIAL SYSOP SUBCOMMANDS
There are several commands that only the sysop can access.
@ is a subcommand of the Enter command. It causes the system
to prompt you for a file name. This allows you to load a
message from a disk file. Be sure that the disk file is not
larger than the maximum message size. If you created the
file off line using a word processor, be sure that the file
is a "printer file", not a word processor file. In WordStar,
for example, do not try to use the E@ command to load from a
document file. Print the file to disk and load the print
file.
After you have read a message, you are prompted with a number
of options:
D - Delete the message...
F - Forward a message to the author of the message
C - Add a comment to the message...
etc. These are called post-read commands since they are
commands that you can perform after reading a message. The
system operator has several additional commands available:
G - Sometimes there may be two copies of a message on a
board, one containing ANSI characters for users that
answer "Y" to the initial prompt "Do you want ANSI
graphics" and one without ANSI characters. To avoid
showing the nonANSI message to the ANSI user and showing
the ANSI message to the nonANSI user, the SYSOP can flag
the message as being an ANSI graphic message. The sysop
would read the message and at the post read menu enter
G. Oracomm will then prompt the sysop with "ANSI
Graphic Y/N/B". Enter Y if the message will only be
displayed to the users who are receiving ANSI message
and do not show it to nonANSI users, enter N to show it
nonANSI users and not show it to ANSI users, or enter B
(the normal default) to show it to Both ANSI and nonANSI
users.
H - The system operator may desire to review all messages
for inappropriate information before allowing other
users to view them. If Y, then any new messages or
messages with new comments added will be marked as being
HELD until the sysop can read and approve them.
Assistant sysops, but not sigops, can also release a
message. An H will appear next to the summary and
"**HOLD**" will appear in the heading of a held message.
At the end of the message, a reminder "Reminder: this
message is being HELD" will display to sysops. The
sysop then enters H at the end of the message to change
the HOLD status. If the message is already being held,
N or [enter] will remove the hold and update the message
date/time. Y will retain the hold or hold a nonheld
67
message. D will delete the message if the sysop thinks
it is objectionable. Messages that are HELD are not
visible to users, will not be sent out over the network,
and held echo messages will not be transmitted. This
allows the sysop to monitor messages before the public
sees them or before they can be sent out from his system
on a board by board basis.
Also, if a user has flag H in his record, then any new
messages or messages that he adds comments to,
regardless of the board hold flag, will be marked as
held. So if you have a problem user, you can hold only
messages which he affects in case he is putting
profanity in a message.
I - Make the file "read only". It will prompt for a Y or N
to make it read only or allow comments. There must be
at least 500 bytes remaining in the message to make it
"commentable".
J - Make anonymous. Oracomm will then prompt to determine
whether this is to be an anonymous or a public message.
L - Force the message to autolink to another message. If a
user puts on several stories and you want to be sure
that they are read in the proper sequence, the system
operator can set the link on the first one to the
message number of the second one to force them to be
read in order. You will be prompted for the message
number to link TO. The messages must be on the same
board. This can also be used to link help file messages
that take more than 9000 bytes to explain.
M - Modify the entire message. This allows the sysop to
edit a message after it has been sent.
N - No-delete. Oracomm will then prompt to determine
whether the system or the originator can delete this
message, or if it should only be deleted by the sysop.
P - Make a message public or private. Oracomm will then
prompt for whether it is to be public or private.
R - Reroute the message to a different account. This allows
the sysop to route a message to a different user to be
answered. The TO account is changed, but not the TO
name so that the new receiver can determine that it was
not intended originally to him. This command will also
prompt for additional text to be added as a comment to
the message before it is rerouted, and whether a copy of
the message is to be retained in the original account.
You can also reroute a message to a user on another
68
network node by entering / and the node number: for
example, SYSOP/ORA1 or just SYSOP/1 to reroute the
message to Oracomm Central.
S - Swap the "TO" and "FROM" accounts just like adding a
comment. If you have two system operators and someone
leaves a message to SYSOP1 but SYSOP2 answers the
message, the to and from accounts will not be swapped
since it was addressed to SYSOP1, not SYSOP2. SYSOP2
can then use the S command to reverse the to/from so
that the user will get the message when he logs on
again.
T - Transfer boards. This allows you to change the board on
which a message is shown. You will be prompted for the
3-character abbreviation of the new board that it is to
be transferred to. You will then be prompted for M to
move the message or C to copy the message to the other
board. Pressing Enter defaults to Move.
V - No Interruption. If set to Y, the message will pause
every 22 lines regardless of the individual user's pause
setting, and control-K will not break out of the
message. The user will be forced to read the message
without interruption. If the message is set to N, it is
reset to a normal interruption mode. If set to G, it is
a graphics message that will NOT pause every 22 lines
regardless of the user's pause setting to properly
display animation.
X - Delete the last comment. If there is a message on the
system that has some good dialogue going, but an
inappropriate comment was added, the last comment can be
deleted. Use the M command (modify) to delete a comment
in the middle of the message.
% - Create a disk file from a message. Just as E@ allows
you to create a message from a disk file, the % will
create a disk file from the message that you just read.
The header information will not be included. The
message is NOT deleted when a disk file is created from
it. This allows you to download a message to a file,
modify it with your word processor, then use the E@
command to upload it again. Note: the header of the
message is also put into the file. If you upload it
with E@, you may want to delete the first four lines
which are the message header telling when the message
was entered and by whom.
@ - Add a comment to a message but take that comment from a
disk file similar to the E@ command.
69
ADDITIONAL SYSOP COMMANDS
The = Command
The = command allows the system operator to manually initiate
network communication. The system will ask for the node id
to dial, it will then check that there are messages that go
to that node, dial the number, and perform the transfer. On
a multi-user system where only one telephone line is used for
dialing out on the network, you must be on that one line to
be able to use this command and dial out.
WC DELETE
An option on the WC command, DELETE, is only accessible to
the sysop. If the sysop enters "WC DELETE", Oracomm will
display each user from oldest (oldest last logon date/time)
thru the current and will show complete information such as
the sysop sees with the WI command. It will then prompt the
sysop with the message "Delete Y/N?". If the sysop answers
Yes, the account will be deleted and copied to the backup
file if that parameter is active. This allows the sysop to
review and delete any old accounts which are not
automatically purged due to the access level of that account.
T - Tutorial
The T command is the Tutorial/Teach/Demonstration command
available to all users. The purpose of it is to teach users
by demonstration how to use the system. When the user enters
that command, Oracomm displays file TUTOR1 thru TUTORn from
the utility/helpfile board. These messages must be linked
together to have them all displayed. It also replaces
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16 X's) with the date and time that would
normally show on the main command prompt. YYYY (4 Y's) are
replaced by the execution of the WO command, and ZZZZ (4 Z's)
are replaced with the WM command. The purpose of this is to
make the tutorial more pertinent to the user showing his own
information. The text file itself can be obtained by calling
Oracomm with another system and capturing a session. Then
edit the captured text as desired to demonstrate the system.
Although a TUTOR1 thru TUTOR6 is provided with the software,
it is recommended that each sysop create his own file so that
it reflects his own boards, message base, frequent users,
etc.
70
DD filename (Download to diskette)
Sysops logging in from the local console (not remotely) have
an additional download command which will automatically copy
a file to a floppy diskette in drive A. This avoids having
to use the +V to copy a file to floppy, using the +Y to
delete the file, then the +f 5 to update the download
database. It only works locally so there is no chance for
the sysop to use the command if no diskette is in the drive,
and it always goes to drive A to avoid having the sysop enter
the drive and file name each time.
E MASSMAIL
The sysop can send the same private message to all users who
have access to a particular board and who have logged on
within a certain period. This is called MASSMAIL for "mass
mailing". Enter "E MASSMAIL" and the system will prompt for
the number of days during which a user must have logged on to
get a copy of the message. It will then prompt you for the
message as usual. However, it will create a copy of that
message to every user who has access to the board that it was
placed on (even though the message itself will be placed on
the personal mail board) and who have logged in during the
specified period. Caution, this feature could fill up a disk
very quickly with an excessive number of messages as well as
slow down the performance of the system. This feature is
available only to the sysop, not the assistant sysop or
users.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
E NEWUSERS
This feature is similar to "E MASSMAIL" except that it only
sends mail to new users. A new user is defined as one that
has logged on 5 times or less. This command will prompt for
the number of days during which a user must have logged on
just as MASSMAIL does, and will check for the user's access
to the board on which the message is placed. This command is
only available to the sysop.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
An alternative to sending mail to all NEW users is to set up
help file messages NEWUMSG and NEWUMSGS. If these messages
are present, they will be automatically sent to new users
AFTER their first logon. Although they are system generated
messages, the header information reflects the header
71
information of the message as it appears on the utility/help
file board (usually from SYSOP) and will not be listed as a
"system generated message". This feature provides a friendly
personal message to new users on their next logon. The
difference between NEWUMSG and NEWUMSGS is that NEWUMSGS is
sent to users who are SEPARATED (who contain a SIG in their
SIGlist matching the board separation SIG defined in XP/N).
P - Purge messages/accounts
Oracomm normally purges messages and accounts at 3am. On
those systems running on an local area network, or to
manually force purging at times other than 3am, simply enter
P to initiate the purge cycle. The purge cycle occurs on the
highest line number. This is normally the line which has no
modem and is used by the sysop only. The purge then occurs
at night when the sysop is asleep and will not interfere with
users who call in at the same time. If the top line is
connected to a modem and is not a sysop-only local line, the
purge may not be run if a user logs in or the network dials
out around 3am. The modem type (IL command) must be H, C, or
P (even though the comm port will be N) on the top line for
the purge to be performed automatically.
Y - Display Control Window
The control window which normally displays on the local
console can be viewed remotely as well. If a user enters Y,
he will only see the first two lines of the control window
which show the system capacity and performance. If an
assistant sysop (accounts beginning with ASYS) enters Y, he
will also see the list of lines, who is on them, and the
status. This can be useful to check on a line to see if it
is down, not started, or stopped due to modem error. If the
sysop uses the Y command remotely, he will also see the menu
at the bottom of the control window and will be able to use
some of the functions.
The sysop can enter S to start 1 line only, X to stop one
line only, or D to disconnect a user on another line. You
can disconnect and shut down your own line, so be careful.
Although you cannot use the L, N, Q, or E commands to shut
down all lines, you can shut down each one individually and,
in effect, shut down the entire system making remote
restarting impossible.
The sysop can also use the B command to broadcast a message
to all users (same effect as entering /CALL ALL) and the Y
command to list the line statistics.
72
To view another telephone line remotely, enter F while in the
Y command. You will then be prompted for the line number to
monitor. To revert back to your own line, enter control-K.
A remote line cannot monitor the local console, and the local
console cannot monitor a remote line. The local console
should use the Fn keys to monitor a remote line.
BRITISH AND EUROPEAN CONSIDERATIONS
The dates that display in Oracomm are normally shown in
month/day/year format or MM/DD/YY. A version can be compiled
which will display them in day/month/year format for use in
those countries more familiar with DD/MM/YY.
For French systems, a version is available which will accept
the letter O rather than Y for any prompt requiring a YES
answer.
It is also possible to get a version compiled which will
allow all 8 bits input for those countries that use graphics
characters such as the umlaut in German. Note, however, that
if a user calls with 7E1 rather than 8N1, Oracomm will not
detect the difference and the user's screen will be filled
with unrecognizable characters.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
73
LINE USAGE STATISTICS
The U subcommand, either from local control window or the
remote display of the control window using the U command,
will display statistics about the usage of the phone lines.
The display will look similar to this:
Lines 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Min/line 20 150 79 68 26 53 0 0 0 0
Min in use 214 117 73 30 5 0 0 0 0 0
HOUR: 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
AM 134 100 0 0 0 0 60 75 150 180 240 350 375
PM 400 450 500 525 600 650 700 640 610 525 400 310 200
The first line shows the number of phone lines in your
configuration. The "Min/line" shows the number of minutes a
user was on each line. If your phone lines are in "rotary"
and users always call the "pilot" number on line 1, then the
numbers will be in increasing order since line 1 will get the
most usage. If users do not call the pilot number such as
when you have a 2400 baud line separate, the time will not be
in any particular order, but you can determine how much time
is spent on the 2400 baud line. The "Min in use" tells you
how many minutes at least one line was in use, two lines,
etc. In the above example, at least one line was in use for
214 minutes during the day, two lines were in use 117 minutes
during that day, etc. The Min/line and Min-in-use counters
are reset at midnight or can be reset manually with the XC
command. The next three lines, "minutes per hour in use",
are counts of the number of online minutes spent in each hour
of the day. There are 24 values -- the first value is a
count of the number of online minutes between midnight and
1am, and the last value is a count from 11pm to midnight.
These numbers are reset at each new hour, so at 5pm the 6pm
value is from the prior date. The entire 6 lines are written
to the log file every night also. The purpose of these
statistics is to give you management information about when
the system is the busiest and when to add additional phone
lines. The maximum number for any hour is number of phone
lines multiplied by 60 (minutes/hour). If you find that your
usage is close to the maximum during certain hours, you may
want to consider getting an additional line.
74
THE + COMMAND -- SYSTEM MANAGEMENT
The system operator can modify or delete accounts remotely as
well as locally. This is done with a special command
available only to sysops.
System Operator menu
1 - Delete the account Z - Display directory
2 - Set the access level Y - Delete a file
3 - Set the SIGs X - Rename a file
4 - Set user flags W - Display any file
5 - Change the password V - Copy a file
6 - Change minutes-on-today A - Set cents remaining
7 - Remove a questionnaire B - Set paid-to-date
8 - Change up/download counts C - Set MSG lastlogon date/time
9 - Verify questionnaire rcvd F - File manment by path-id
S - Save the changes K - Return to main menu
D - Change the users class N - Messages per board
What do you want to change:
1 - Delete the account. You will be asked to verify that you
do want to delete the account before proceeding. Once
an account is deleted, it cannot be restored (unless you
had the appropriate backup option, but that is a time
consuming process).
2 - Set the access level. This allows you to set the access
level on any account. BE SURE THAT YOU DO NOT SET THE
ACCESS LEVEL BELOW THE ACCESS LEVEL OF ALL BOARDS. If
you set the access level greater than or equal to that
of a subscriber and there is no time in the user's
account, Oracomm will assume that he is a subscriber who
has let his account expire and will automatically reduce
his access level temporarily (it will not alter his
record, just the session limit) to the default.
Therefore, do not set a nonsubscriber to an access level
as high as a subscriber.
3 - Set the SIGs. This allows you to change the list of SIGs
(Special Interest Group boards) available to that user.
Note that this is a 30 character string: 10 SIGs and
each SIG is identified by the 3-character board
abbreviation. To add, change, or delete a SIG, you
must type in all the characters again. You can use the
wild card character ? as part of the SIG. For example
AB? will give the user access to any SIG which begins
with AB in the abbreviation. A?? will give the user
access to any SIG beginning with A. ??? will give the
user access to any SIG.
75
4 - Set user flags. Each user record contains 10 characters
for flags. Only letters A, B, and V are currently used
by the system. The other letters and numbers are not
currently used by the system so they can be set to
anything by the sysop. For example, you may want to set
a flag to N if you received a bad check from a user
to warn you not to take checks from him again. Like the
SIGs above, this is a 10 character string so adding,
changing, or deleting a flag requires you to enter all
the characters again.
The following characters are reserved for specific
purposes:
A - Do not charge the subscriber or deduct anything
from his account.
B - Oracomm will play the announcing note for 3
seconds to tell the sysop when this user logs
on.
H - Mark any messages added by this user or any
messages with comments added by this user as
HOLD until the sysop can review and release
them.
I - Make this account Invisible when it logs on.
This is most useful for networking accounts.
M - Oracomm will NOT prompt the account for the
matching questionnaire.
V - The account has been "verified" and shows a V
next to the users description.
Other characters may have meaning in the future.
Numbers, however, will never be used so you may use
those for your own purposes.
5 - Change the password. At times, you may need to lock a
user off the system. If you delete the account, he
could log back on and setup the account again. By
changing the password on his account, you can prevent
him from logging on under that account. If you have the
account purge logic turned on, the account may be
deleted after one month anyway. This could also be used
if the user forgets his password and you want to set up
a new password for him rather than tell him the old
password.
6 - Change minutes-on-today. The system records how much
time a user was on per day over several logon sessions.
If the time exceeds the maximum defined in the system
parameters, the user will not be able to log on until
the next day. The sysop can change the amount of time
on today for a user thereby allowing the user to be on
longer or be on less depending on the value set by the
system operator. Oracomm will prompt for prime and
nonprime minutes.
76
7 - Remove a questionnaire. This can function for a specific
account or all accounts. If you want to force a user to
reanswer a questionnaire, delete it here and he will be
prompted to answer it again the next time he logs on.
If you change the questionnaire, you will want to delete
all the questionnaires for that board to force all users
to reanswer it. The system will prompt you for the
board abbreviation so that it knows which one you want
deleted. To delete all user replies after changing the
questionnaire, enter ALL rather than a specific account
code.
8 - Change upload/download counts. If a sysop is restricting
the number of downloadable files a user can have and the
user uploads a garbage file to be able to download more,
the sysop can reduce his upload count or increase his
download count to correct the situation. Note that the
upload count is used in the calculation of the status
index on the users WI line. (Status index is the sum of
the number of public message, public comments, and two
times the number of uploaded files.) The count is the
number of kilobytes of data transferred, not the number
of files.
9 - New verify quest flag: Set to N if you want the user to
reanswer the verify questionnaire, or set to Y if you do
not want the user to have to answer it. Oracomm sets
this field to Y when the questionnaire has been
answered.
A - Set cents-remaining. If you are using subscriber logic
by time, enter the amount of money that the user
advances you here in cents. If the user gives you
$25.00, enter 2500 and the money will be deducted from
here when he logs off. NOTE: THE SYSTEM DEDUCTS MONEY
FROM HIS ACCOUNT ONLY WHEN HE LOGS OFF. IF THE SYSTEM
CRASHES, IT WILL NOT CHARGE HIS ACCOUNT. This field can
also be used to define MINUTES if the subscribers are
being charged by minutes rather than dollars.
B - Set paid-to-date. If you are using subscriber logic by
date, enter the date that his account will expire in the
format YYMMDD. If he logs on after that date, the
system will not recognize him as a subscriber.
C - Set MSG Lastlogon date/time. The message lastlogon
date/time (YYMMDDHHMM format) determines what messages
will display with an RL or SL command. It is sometimes
useful for a network node account to reset the message
lastlogon date/time to a different date and time to
force prior echo messages to be retransmitted.
77
D - Set the user's "class" code. "Class" code on each user
is an expanded "board separation". It allows up to 36
classes, A-Z and 0-9. If a class is present, the user
will not show to users of a different class. This
provides even more separation than the board separation
logic which still exists for ease of use and
compatibility with other versions. Use BBUTIL option B
to reset all classes to nulls. Enter any invalid
character, such as a character less than 0 or greater
than Z like * for example, to delete the user's class
code.
F - File management by path ID allows the system operator or
assistant sysop to use the following functions.
1 - List subdirectories for each board
2 - List path ids
3 - Modify the download database entry
4 - Show true directory for a path id
5 - Update the database from actual files in directory
6 - Copy a file from one path to another (or across
drives)
7 - Move/rename a file within a path on the same drive
8 - Delete a file within a path
9 - Add a new file into a subdirectory. This will copy
from one directory (or from the floppy disk) to another
directory and update the download database of the
destination with the size and description as well. The
source and destination directory must not be on the same
path.
Oracomm will prompt you for the file name, path ID, the
access level required to download the file, a P/V flag
(enter P if the file is Password Protected or V if it is
priVate to a specific account), to/pswd (the password if
the flag was P or the receiving account if the flag was
V), and the description. Oracomm will also ask if this
file is a bulletin (Y or N), and if YES, Oracomm will
prompt for whether the bulletin is to be displayed
(enter Y), displayed uninterrupted by the user (enter F
for Forced), or not displayed (enter N) and only a file
listing and description will be shown.
N - Read thru all the message keys and show the number of
messages on each board.
78
Z - Display directory. If the Z is not followed by a
parameter, a directory of all files in the default
upload will be displayed. If the Z is followed by a
parameter, then all those files in the parameter
directory will be displayed. For example: "Z *.NEW" or
"+Z *.DAT" from the command prompt. You can get a list
of the files in any directory by prefixing the path such
as Z \BBS\DOWNLOAD\*.* After listing the files, this
function will show the remaining free disk space on
drive. If you wanted to know the free space on the D:
drive, for example, you could enter Z d:\anything.tmp .
Y - Delete a file. If the Y is not followed by a parameter,
you will be prompted for a file name. You will then be
asked to verify that you are sure you want it deleted.
You can also enter the file name on the command such as
"Y BADFILE.DAT" or "+Y BADFILE.DAT" from the command
prompt. Be sure to enter the file extension as well as
the file name. You can delete a file in other
directories by prefixing that path to the filename.
X - Rename a file. You will be prompted for the old file
name then the new file name. This command will not
accept a file name on the command line. Be sure to
enter the file extension as well as the file name. You
can also "rename" a file from an upload to a download
directory which causes it to be "moved" and makes it
downloadable. Both the path and filename must be
entered.
W - Display any file. If the W is not followed by a
parameter, you will be asked for a file name. Be sure
to include the extension along with the file name. The
purpose of this command is to allow the system operator
to view files that users have uploaded before allowing
them to be downloaded by other users.
V - Copy a file. This option allows the sysop to copy files
between the hard disk and the floppy disk while the
system is online. Be sure to give the drive, complete
path, and full file name to BOTH the "from" and "to"
prompt. "To" does NOT default to the "from" file name.
The 9000 byte message buffer is used to buffer the data
so while the copying is occurring, it will display "n"
as an indication of the progress of the copy and each
"n" is 9000 characters.
79
HOW TO WRITE A MATCH QUESTIONNAIRE
The match/locator questionnaire and the order entry form are
messages on the utility board. They are sent to account
QUESTxxx where xxx is the abbreviation for the board they are
active. The questionnaires can have up to 30 questions and
each question can have up to 8 replies. There can be fewer
than 8 replies, but they must be lettered A through n. If
there are only 3 replies, they must be A, B, C, not A, E, H.
Except for the first column, there cannot be an asterisk (*)
or # used in the text of the questionnaire. It can be free
form within certain bounds. Note the following questionnaire:
*181. AREA I LIVE IN:
A) LOS ANGELES AREA (ALL OF L.A. & ORANGE COUNTIES)
B) SOUTHERN CALIF. (OTHER THAN LOS ANGELES AREA)
C) NORTHERN CALIF.
D) EAST COAST-NEW ENGLAND
E) THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES
F) THE MIDWEST
G) ROCKY MOUNTAIN-SOUTHWEST
H) PACIFIC NORTHWEST
*182. MY AGE:
A) UNDER 18
B) 18-20
C) 21-25
D) 26-29
E) 30-34
F) 35-39
G) 40-49
H) 50 AND OVER
*183. PROFESSION:
A) STUDENT
B) BLUE COLLAR
C) CLERICAL
D) PROFESSIONAL
E) TECHNICAL
F) ENTERTAINMENT
G) MEDICAL
H) UNEMPLOYED
*184. I AM INTERESTED IN:
A) SPORTS CARS
B) RACING CARS
C) VINTAGE CARS
D) 4X4 TRUCKS
E) PICKUP TRUCKS
F) MOTORCYCLES
G) DIRT BIKES
H) ATV
************
80
Notice the "*181." on the first line of the questionnaire.
The * signals the beginning of a question. The "1" means
that there can be at most 1 response. This can be any number
from 1 to 8 depending on the question. The "8" means there
are 8 responses possible. This can also vary from 1 to 8.
The "1." is the question number. THE QUESTION IS TERMINATED
BY A COLON, AND EACH RESPONSE IS SEPARATED BY A RIGHT
PARENTHESIS ")". These key points must be present or the
matching routine will not work. There should be no blank
lines within the questionnaire. The match questionnaire must
be no more than 9000 characters in length to fit within a
message. The format is the same for both match by account
and by message number. The question can span multiple lines
and must be terminated by a colon, the responses must fit on
one line and are terminated by a carriage return. The row
of *** at the end signals the end of all the questions.
The question can begin with * or #. If the question begins
with # and the user uses the quick match feature (MS QUICK or
MP commands), it will EXCLUDE that user if that user's
responses matches the user doing the search. If question 3,
for example, is the user's sex and responses are A) Male, B)
Female and it is delineated by #, then any males doing an MS
Q will only match to females and females will only match to
males.
To create or change a questionnaire, construct the
questionnaire off line with your text editor, log on to
Oracomm, go to the utility/help-files board, and enter "E@
QUESTxxx" where xxx is the board abbreviation where the
questionnaire is to be used. The "E@" will cause Oracomm to
get the questionnaire from a disk file. Be sure to remove
the old questionnaire by entering "RA QUESTxxx" and respond
with "D" to delete it. You will also want to delete all the
users old responses so they will re-answer the questionnaire
again. Use the + command, option 7, to delete the match
questionnaires for that board. Be sure that the file
containing the questionnaire is in the same directory as the
BBS program itself.
If you get the error message:
ERROR IN QUESTIONNAIRE. DO A MQ
it means there is an error in your definition of the
questionnaire. Enter command MQ and the system will give you
more information about what line contains the error. It will
stop displaying at the point of the error. Be sure not to
use any * (asterisks) in the responses or questions and that
there are no blank lines at the beginning of the message.
81
HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY QUESTIONNAIRE
The subjective questionnaire is exactly like the order entry
form except it is accessed with the match commands. It is
placed on the Utility/Helpfile board as a message to account
QUESTxxx where xxx is the board it is active on. The form
plus the users responses must fit within a 9000 byte message.
The * and : rules for order/entry form also apply to the
questionnaire.
HOW TO WRITE A COMBINED QUESTIONNAIRE
The "combined" questionnaire contains the multiple choice
questionnaire which is useful in doing a match search along
with the essay questionnaire which allows the user to express
himself in his own words. Create a multiple choice
questionnaire as mention previously including the string of
asterisks (******) at the end. Follow that with the essay
questionnaire described above. Both parts must fit within
the same message.
NETWORKING -- GENERAL INFORMATION
The term "networking" is used here to define the ability to
enter a message on one BBS and have that BBS transmit it to
another remote BBS at a later time. The other remote BBS is
called a "node". This section will discuss how the
networking feature works and what information the system
needs to function within the network.
The SYSOP must establish two special boards on the bbs to
implement networking. The first board is the "network
source" -- it is the source of messages transmitted to a
remote node. The access level of this board should be low
enough to allow users to access it. For a user to send a
message to a node, it is necessary to enter the message on
this board. The system will prompt the user for the node ID
when a message is entered here. An additional command, L, is
also available to LIST the nodes that this system will
transmit to and receive messages from.
The second board is the "network destination" -- this is
where messages received from other nodes which are either
public or are addressed to an invalid account code. If the
message is addressed to a valid account code, the system will
then forward it to that users account on the personal mail
board. Since one system may have many boards each with a
different subject matter, incoming messages are placed on one
board so that the system operator can read them to determine
82
what board they should be forwarded to, or even deleted if
they are unsuitable or objectionable to that system. It is
STRONGLY advised that the access level, therefore, should be
high enough so that only the system operator can read this
board.
There should be at most one source and one destination board.
The board is defined as either source or destination by
placing a S or D into the indicator field of the board
definition.
The system will automatically try to transmit the messages to
the remote system during the time that the sysop determined.
If the call is long distance, however, and the sysop does not
want the computer to dial the number unless he initiates it,
the sysop can mark that node as "manual only" in which case
the sysop must issue a "=" command to cause that node to be
dialed. The time that the system dials is also determined by
the sysop by placing the beginning time and ending time in
the system parameters. Usually this will be at an hour when
user usage is lowest and long distance rates are the cheapest
(example 0200 to 0600 -- 2am to 6am). The system will
attempt to dial once every 10 minutes if it cannot get
through on the first try.
The format of the data transmitted between systems is called
the PROTOCOL. There are many protocols in use between
different systems. If the system is communicating to another
Oracomm , it is more efficient, faster, and less error prone
to use the Oracomm protocol.
Here is an example to show what must be prearranged by each
sysop when two systems are to be networked together. Assume
Oracomm#23 wants to network to Oracomm#41. The two sysops
get together and agree to put each other in their table. The
sysop of Oracomm#23 does the following:
Log on locally, enter NEW to set up a new account, use ORA41
for the account code, and something unique for the password.
He then tells the sysop of Oracomm#41 what password to use.
The sysop of Oracomm#41, in the meantime, has set up account
ORA23 and tells the sysop of Oracomm#23 that his password is
APPLEPIE.
Sysop of #23 now has an account ORA41 in his user file, and
now goes to add ORA41 to his Network node table. Using the I
command, he enters ORA41 as the account code.
He enters the bbs name in the node name, Joe's bbs, for
example.
83
He enters the phone number of Joe's bbs along with any
special AT codes for his modem: ATD5551234, for example.
He enters the password that Oracomm#41 set up: APPLEPIE.
He enters the protocol. Since each is an Oracomm, he uses
protocol O.
Since it is not a long distance call, he sets the "Manual
Only" to N so that the system will automatically dial out at
night.
Finally he sets the baud rate to 9600 so it will transmit as
fast as possible since he knows there is a 9600 baud modem on
line he will be calling.
The sysop of Oracomm#41 does the similar steps, but he enters
Oracomm#23 telephone number, and enters the password for
ORA41 as defined on Oracomm#23.
Now assume that Oracomm#23 wants to network to Oracomm#72,
but Oracomm#72 is a toll call to #23 but local to #41. The
sysop of #23 sets up an account for Oracomm#72 locally as he
did for #41. He also sets up an entry in the node table for
#72, but the password is not needed since he will never call
it directly. Instead he will enter /ORA41 for the telephone
number so that all messages to #72 will be sent to #41.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
NETWORKING -- NETWORK ECHO CONFERENCE (NEC)
A Network Echo Conference (Echo Boards) is an feature and a
slight variation of the general network. There can be only
one network source board and one network destination board.
Messages placed on the network source board will be prompted
for a specific node that it is to be sent to and the message
will only go to that node. There can be many network echo
conference boards, however. Each one is defined with an E
(instead of S or D) in the Special Features column of the
board setup command (IB).
The purpose of the Network Echo Conference is to carry on
discussions with messages and comments across multiple bbs
nodes. For example, assume that one node has an adult NEC
and a technical NEC. One of the nodes that calls him should
not have access to the adult NEC, so the sysop just puts the
technical board abbreviation and not adult board abbreviation
in the calling system's SIG list. The calling system should
have already defined (by agreement, phone call, or message
84
between the two sysops) a board with the same abbreviation
and type E as the called system for the technical messages to
go over properly.
NETWORKING -- ORALINK(tm)
The system operator can force Oracomm to dial another system
to send messages that are on the network source board at any
time using the = command. After his messages are sent,
Oracomm will also receive any messages waiting at the remote
system for the calling system. When this operation is
manually initiated by the sysop (not at automatically at
night), Oracomm will prompt the sysop with the message:
Establish Oralink also (Y/N)?
If the sysop answers Y, then after exchanging messages, both
the calling and the called systems will go into public chat.
If another user also goes into public chat, then any messages
entered by that user will be transmitted to other users in
public chat at both systems. This allows users on multiple
systems to communicate in public chat. Since Oracomm can be
called by more than one remote system at one time, there can
be multiple systems in Oralink public chat simultaneously.
Once Oralink is established, it must be terminated by either
the calling or the called sysop, or it will self terminate if
initiated automatically. It will terminate due to inactivity
if you set the time limit for inactivity in the IP command.
If a user does a WO command while the two systems are in
Oralink, they will see a message indicating that the systems
are linked.
Two or more nodes (up to 16 nodes for 240 users) can be
connected in Permanent Oralink. This is useful if you are
running two systems, each with different subject matter, but
want the users on either system to be able to chat with users
on the other system at any time. Set the IL command for the
line to be permanently connected to modem type D (Direct
connect) and the Network call to C (Continuous). Baudrate is
normally 9600 baud. In the cable connecting the two systems,
be sure that the carrier detect, pin 8, is high such as
jumping it to pin 4. If it is necessary to terminate this
Oralink, use the X command on the control window to shut down
that line.
Note: #WO (not /WO) will list who is online on the remote
system.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
85
SENDING FILES OVER THE NETWORK
Sometimes it may be necessary to transmit information from
one network node to another where the information is larger
than will fit in a message or if it is a program like a game.
An example would be if you wanted to transmit the new user
manual, for instance. To do this you must transmit a com-
bined message which causes both the file to be transferred,
and also serves to tell the sysop on the destination system
that a file has been transmitted and to look for it on hard
disk in the upload directory.
The message must be from account SYSOP and to account SYSOP
on the destination system. The first line of the message
must begin with @ followed immediately (with no space in
between) by the file name and extension as it exists on the
source system. From the second line onwards would be the
message to the destination SYSOP. The message entered on
source system may look something like this, for example:
MSG# 1460 09/11/86 09:30
FROM: SYSOP SYSTEM OPERATOR
TO: SYSOP SYSTEM OPERATOR
FROM NODE: ORA10 TO NODE: ORA15
SMRY: NEW USER MANUAL
@USERMANL.DOC
Hi Tom, here is a copy of the user manual that you
wanted.
NOTE: THE FILES YOU ARE TRANSMITTING MUST BE LOCATED IN THE
DIRECTORY DEFINED AS THE "DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY" OF THE NETWORK
SOURCE BOARD. THE FILE WILL BE RECEIVED IN THE DIRECTORY
NAMED IN THE "UPLOAD DIRECTORY" OF THE NETWORK SOURCE BOARD.
If you have a file on your download directory and you want
only a specific user to see it or be able to download it,
name that file aaaaaaaa.@nn where aaaaaaaa is the account
code of the user that you want to download it, @ tells Oraco-
mm that it is a special file downloadable only by aaaaaaaa,
and nn is any two digit number (normally 01, 02...) which
allows user aaaaaaaa to download multiple files. Any user
other than aaaaaaaa or sysop will not see that file if they
list the directory (using the FT command) and will not be
able to download it.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
86
NETWORKING -- OTHER NETWORKS
Networking in Oracomm has been designed to send and receive
messages at any time of the day while other users are online.
In a multi-user environment, particularly with paying sub-
scribers, it may be unacceptable to have the bbs terminate to
allow networking. Some systems, however, may want to network
to nonOracomm systems and are willing to terminate bbs opera-
tion briefly to do this. It is possible to have Oracomm shut
down at a specific time, run an external utility to extract
messages from Oracomm and make individual files, run a "mai-
ling" program to send those messages as files to another
network, run another utility to load Oracomm messages re-
ceived from the network, then restart Oracomm. The following
is a simple .BAT file which would do this:
:top
bbs all down0400
if errorlevel 25 goto mailer
goto end
:mailer
fromora \bbs\fido E11 all echo msgs for E11
fromora \bbs\fido */* */ora333 NET all netmsgs for
Ora333
db external mailer
program
toora \fido\net*.msg- sysop/fido1 all tch
toora \net\tome.txt sysop guyy psl "Network mail"
goto top
:end
exit
Utilities to extract messages from the Oracomm message data-
base and to load messages into the Oracomm message database
are provided free of charge and can be downloaded from Ora-
comm Central BBS. The external mailer programs with inter-
face to other networks such as FIDO or Uni-Net are not pro-
vided. Contact the particular network coordinator for those
programs. Oracomm currently provides four programs, FROMORA,
TOORA, TOFIDO, and FROMFIDO, to create files to be trans-
mitted. Additional programs may be available from time to
time to accommodate other networks as required. The follow-
ing is a description of these programs so you can determine
if they will work in your network.
(THIS FEATURE AVAILABLE ON COMMERCIAL VERSION ONLY.)
87
REBUILD - FILE REBUILD UTILITY
If you lose power to the computer or some other tragedy
occurs which caused the data files to become corrupted, run
this utility and the key files will be reconstructed. If you
get any of the C-Tree errors, run REBUILD to see if that
fixes the problem. To run REBUILD, simply enter
C>REBUILD
If Oracomm terminates abnormally, the indices are not written
back to the disk and the files are not closed properly. A
flag is set in the datafile indicating this condition. The
following message may appear from REBUILD:
DATA FILE CORRUPT (FLAG = -1)
This just means that the file was not closed and the updated
indices were not written back to disk, therefore the indices
need to be recreated. Do not be alarmed by this message. If
you get a C-Tree error 123, however, it means your data has
been damaged. If REBUILD cannot recover it, try running
COMPACT to recreate the pointers between the records. If
COMPACT cannot recover it, you must revert to a copy of the
file from your backup disk. In most cases, COMPACT will
recover the data. REBUILD must be run every time you use
COMPACT.
88
BBUTIL -- MISCELLANEOUS UTILITY FUNCTIONS
In the operation of a bbs, it is frequently necessary to have
various utility programs to do some specific function. If
there is a separate program for each function, then the code
required to do file handling etc will be duplicated in each
program. To minimize the number of utility programs, utility
functions have been combined into one program -- BBUTIL. As
needs require more functions, they will be added to this same
program rather than create new programs.
NOTE: If you are using DOS 3.3 or later and have FILES=35 in
CONFIG.SYS, BBUTIL will open enough files to run properly.
If you are running a version of DOS prior to 3.3, you will
need to run FILESnn.COM immediately before running BBUTIL as
discussed in the section about "Starting Oracomm".
Running BBUTIL will display the following menu:
1 - Subscriber Report
2 - Create data file of user info
3 - Report of downloaded files
4 - Unload BBSMSGS.DAT to individual files/messages
5 - Load BBSMSGS.DAT from individual message files
6 - Load messages/accounts from XXyymmdd.BAK files
7 - Mass access level change
8 - Tally System Passwords
A - Analyze log data
B - Reset fields in user records
C - Create file of user names and addresses
D - Load users/messages from text files
E - Modem setup and test
F - Delete all messages from a specific board
G - Copy messages to another board
H - Tally all responses on matchmaker questionnaire
L - Load *.UTL to help files
M - Preload pathid-filename-description
Q - Quit
(THIS UTILITY COMES WITH THE REGISTERED SHAREWARE AND
COMMERCIAL VERSIONS ONLY.)
89
COMMON QUESTIONS WHICH NEW SYSOPS ASK
"I can't even get started. I keep getting the error:
Cannot open printer/log because 4"
You do not have "Files=35, Buffers=20" in the CONFIG.SYS
file. Reread the first paragraph of the installation in-
structions and be sure that the file is in the main directory
and not just in the bbs directory. After changing the CON-
FIG.SYS file, be sure to reboot your computer.
"How can I create a message from a text file?"
Prepare the message off line with your word processor. Be
sure to use non-document mode or route the printed output to
a disk file and use that output file. Do not use the word
processor text file which contains special characters and
commands for the word processor. Then enter E@ on the board
you want the message posted. You will be prompted for the
account. If it is a help file, enter the appropriate help
file name and the system will display "Account not found,
assuming category" and continue. Type in the message sum-
mary. Then you will be prompted for the file name. Be sure
to put in the file extension such as TESTFILE.TXT
"How do I create a text file from a message?"
Read the message that you want to have copied to a text file.
Then use the % command at the end of the message to copy it
to disk. The message will not be deleted from the bbs. Be
sure to enter the file extension if you want one on the file
name.
"How do I delete a comment?"
Read the message that you want to change. At the end of the
message when the system prompts for the post-retrieve menu,
you will see the subcommand X. Entering X will delete the
last comment on the message. If you want to delete a comment
other than the last one, you can read the message and use the
M command to Modify the existing message. After entering M,
you will get a prompt the same as you get after entering a
message. Enter L to list the line numbers, then use the D
90
command to delete those lines containing the comment which
you want removed.
"I don't want to leave my printer on all the time to display
the log. How can I stop the logging?"
Use the I command, system parameters menu, option B and set
printer on to N. This will cause the information which was
going to the printer to be put into a disk file labeled
BBSLOG.DAT.
"How do I chat with a user?"
After the user has logged on, NOT DURING NEW ACCOUNT SETUP,
you can press control-O to break into sysop chat mode with
the user. You should also do this if the user enters C to
call the sysop into chat. No matter where in the user's
session he is at, just enter control-O to interrupt it. To
break out of sysop chat and let the user continue his session
or log off, either the user or the sysop can enter control-K
(the universal command for returning to the main menu).
"If a user is entering obscene messages, how can I disconnect
him quickly?"
Press control-Y and you will disconnect him immediately.
"How do I get a printed copy of one of the messages or of a
user list?"
Pressing control-N while at a prompt will toggle the printer
on and off just as control-P does under CP/M or MS-DOS.
Note, however, that you must have told the system that the
printer was on using option B of the parameters menu in the I
command. If you have that set to N to route the log to a
disk file, the control-N function will write to disk, not to
the printer.
91
"I have the computer in my office and the bell from the users
calling me into chat is annoying. How can I turn off the
bell?"
Use the I command to set options Y and Z in the system param-
eters menu to Y to disable the bell. The screen will still
display the call, but the bell will not sound.
"I am using the bbs in my business and the personal descrip-
tion line is not relevant. How can I suppress it?"
In the system parameters, IP command, option L controls the
description lines. If you set that option to N, it will not
prompt users for the description and it will not show the
description to users when they do a W command. If you want
to suppress the M and W commands as well, simply set the
access level for those commands very high FOR EACH BOARD
(using the IB command).
"How do I change the LOGO or Message of the day?"
The LOGO displays to the user before he enters his account
code during logon. The Message-of-the-day or MOTD will
display after he has logged on and before he has entered any
boards. To change them, go to the Utility/Help-file board
and enter RA LOGO or RA MOTD for the message of the day.
After reading it if it existed, delete it with the D post-re-
trieve command. Now load the new one which you created off
line with your word processor by entering E@ LOGO or E@ MOTD.
"How do I change the help files?"
Prepare the help file off line using your word processor.
Determine the name of the help file as specified in the
section entitled "Special Messages" in this manual. Go to
the Utility/Helpfile board and move the old help file by
reading it and answering D on the post-retrieve menu. Now
load the new one which you created off line by entering E@
followed by the special message name. The system will dis-
play the message "Account not found, assuming category" and
then prompt for the summary and file name of the text file
containing the new helpfile message.
This also applies to the messages used as introductions to
each board and to the match questionnaire.
92
"How do I force the user to get a Summary when he enters a
board?"
Use the I command to set the initial command on any or all
boards to an L or M. The M is used only on boards which can
have personal mail. The L should be used on all boards where
there will frequently be new messages added. The N option is
used if there will be very little activity on the board such
as the Utility/Helpfile board. This will only determine
whether the user gets a summary, and if so is it an SM or SL.
To force the user to read the message rather than just get a
summary, each user would individually have to change their
own option with the N command. There is no way for the sysop
to automatically force an RM or RL to all users.
"A message was entered on the wrong board. How do I move it
to the proper board?"
First, be sure you know the three character board abbrevia-
tions for all of your boards as you define them with the I
command. Then read the message. On the post-retrieve menu
prompt, enter T to transfer the message. You will be prompt-
ed for the board abbreviation of the new board that you want
the message to be posted on. This will automatically remove
it from the current board.
"How do I delete an account?"
The system will automatically delete any account who has not
logged on within the last month and whose access level is
below that set in option L, system parameter menu, with the I
command. If you want to delete someone anyway, use the sysop
+ command option 1. The information about the user will be
displayed and you will be asked to verify that you do want to
delete him.
93
"How do I just delete the match questionnaire for an ac-
count?"
The match responses are maintained separately for each board.
Use the + command, option 7 to delete the questionnaire for a
specific user. You will be prompted for the users account
code and the three character abbreviation for the board on
which the questionnaire is active. If you change the ques-
tionnaire and need to delete those responses for all users,
you can enter ALL for the user account code when you are
prompted for it. If you change your questionnaire and want
everyone to reanswer it, use the +7 command again, but enter
ALL instead of an individual account code.
"When I start the bbs, it sends out some modem commands, then
it shuts itself down. I can't log on to change the modem
commands."
Your modem is not returning a valid return code so the modem
commands may be wrong. Your modem must return a 0 after the
command is sent. Start Oracomm using the NOMODEM override:
EXAMPLE: C>BBS NOMODEM
This tells Oracomm there is no modem port, then you can log
on to fix the modem commands.
"The date gets reset to an invalid date on or around midnight
every day. This causes Oracomm to delete my messages and
accounts."
You have a defective BIOS ROM. You can turn off the auto-
purge and autodelete with the I command menu P selection J,
and the B command "Purge Y/N" to N on each board. This will
keep the accounts and messages from being deleted, but will
not fix your clock. You should contact your computer sales-
man and have your ROM replaced. This was a common problem
with some foreign made systems. Most computer owners don't
notice this problem since their computer does not run 24hrs/-
day or when the date changes. There is also a file on Ora-
comm #1 called CLOCKFIX.ARC which contains a program which
can be included in your CONFIG.SYS to override the system
rom. If you are having clock problems, download this file,
UNARC it, and see if that fixes your problem.
94
"A user drops off and the system does not detect loss of
carrier"
There is a dip switch in almost all modems which determines
whether carrier detect is set high all the time. What it is
called and how it is described in your manual will change
from modem to modem. For example, the Promodem describes it
in their manual like this: "Switch#1 is the switch that
controls the condition of carrier detect. If switch#1 is ON,
the modem will hold the carrier detect line in a true state
at all times regardless of what is actually happening on the
phone line. If switch #1 is in the OFF position, carrier
detect will be true only when carrier is actually detected on
the phone line." If your system is not detecting carrier,
check your manual for such a dip switch and put it in the
opposite position.
"My modem does not answer the phone or shuts down after
several attempts"
Although many modem manufacturers claim to be "Hayes com-
patible", some are not. The commands that are supplied with
the system do work on Hayes modems, but yours may be slightly
different. One modem, for example, requires a &D3 in the
command string to cause auto answer in addition to the com-
mands supplied. If you are not using a true Hayes modem,
check your manual for any different commands. Also check
that the initial baud rate is supported by the modem you are
using and that the cables are properly connected. Oracomm
sends the modem the commands and expects a 0 return code back
from the modem. If the modem does not return a 0 within five
attempts, Oracomm will shut down that line. Check Oracomm#1
for messages from other sysops with similar modems to see
what they had to do. As specific info about each modem
obtained, it will be posted on Oracomm#1.
"When the modem attempts to dial out to network, I can hear
the dial tone and I hear the tones from the modem dialing the
number, but the tones to NOT break dial tone and the number
is not dialed."
Some telephone companies charge separately for touch tone
service. If you have not paid for touch tone service and
your dialing code is ATDT (where the T tells the modem to use
touch tones rather than pulses), the tones will be ignored.
Change your dialing prefix code to ATD or ATDP to dial with
pulses rather than tones, and it will dial correctly.
95
"I try to load a new questionnaire using E@ but it can't find
the file"
The text file that you are loading is probably not in the
same directory as the bbs program, or you are not specifying
the correct extension. Some word processors append a default
extension to a file if you do not enter one. Be sure you are
on the Utility/Helpfile board when issuing the E@ command.
"I get the message ERROR IN QUESTIONNAIRE. DO A MQ every time
someone uses the M command."
There is an error in the way that your questionnaire is
formatted. Be sure there are no extraneous asterisks (*),
parentheses ()), or colons (:) in the message. Check your
format with the sample shown in "How to write a match ques-
tionnaire". Be sure there are no blank lines at the beginn-
ing of the questionnaire.
"I have a subscriber system but when I raise a subscriber's
access level, the system changes it back to the default
access level."
A subscriber must have a positive value in the cents/time
remaining field if you are charging by time or dollars, or he
must have a paid-to-date greater than today's date if you are
charging by date. If the value is zero or less, or if the
paid-to-date is zero or less than today, the system assumes
that the subscriber has allowed his account to expire and
will change the access level back to the default. In a
subscriber system, you cannot have a user with an access
level equal to or greater than that of a subscriber unless
there is time in his account or has a future paid-to-date.
"I want to monitor users on lines 1, 3 and 5 at the same
time. How do I do that?"
Press function key F1 to monitor line 1, then hold down the
ALT key while pressing F3, then hold down the ALT key again
while pressing F5. To display the control window again,
press HOME or to display a single line, press the function
key for that line. You cannot display the control window
while monitoring lines.
96
"I am running a dating board and I want to separate the gay
users from the straight users. How can I do that?"
Create a SIG such as GAY and give your gay users access to
that SIG. Use the XP command, option N, to define that SIG
as the separation board. A user with access to SIG GAY will
only display to other users with that access, and users
without access to that SIG will only show up to other users
without that SIG.
"I am running a technical support board and do not want the
matchmaker command to show. How do I suppress any reference
to it in the menu?"
Set the special feature option (SF) in the board definitions
(IB command) to N on ALL boards. If there are no matching
questionnaires anywhere, the command will not display on the
menu.
"When someone calls in, they get the message
Due to technical difficulties, the system is temporarily
down. Please call back later.
Why can't callers get on?"
During the initialization phase of starting Oracomm, some
error messages were displayed and you pressed [enter] to
continue. Oracomm will let the sysop on to correct the
problems, but it will not let any users online. A common
ituation on 3-user systems is that there is only one modem
attached to the computer, but Oracomm thinks there should be
two modems (COM1 and COM2). Use the IL command to set the
unused line to COMN port.
97
ORACOMM ERRORS AND MESSAGES
Oracomm puts out a series of warning, informational, and
error messages to either the printer or to the disk file log.
Messages that are not preceded by a number will only display
on the monitor. Messages beginning with 0 or 1 are informa-
tional only. Messages beginning with 9 are errors and a
further description is listed under Error Codes. The disk
file is a simple sequential file which can be easily read
with a word processor or a BASIC program. Since the error
messages are in a fixed format, the sysop can write a program
to extract information about the operation of his system
based on the message numbers listed below if he chooses:
1010 Purged questionnaire for aaa xxxxxx. -- Informational
message noting that the questionnaire on board aaa for
account xxxxxx was deleted.
1030 Deleting account xxxx by acct. -- Informational message
saying that account acct deleted user xxxx.
1040 File xxxxxx uploaded by yyyy. -- During a network
connection, a file named xxxxxx was uploaded during the
connection to node yyyy. This message is in the log
file for informational purposes to explain the source of
any uploaded files. **
1100 Attempted to dial xxx at yyy. -- This tells that Ora-
comm attempted to dial node xxx at telephone number yyy,
but was NOT successful in connecting. It could be that
the line was busy. If the message shows up repeatedly,
check that the telephone number is correct. This mes-
sage appears in the log file and is for informational
purposes only. **
1110 Logged on to xxx. -- This informational message warns
you that Oracomm successfully connected to node xxx to
network messages. The purpose of this message is to
explain any long distance telephone calls that were
dialed. **
1115 RCVD. -- This message appears in the log file and is
for informational purposes only. It provides an audit
trail of messages received over the network. **
1116 Sent. -- This message appears in the log file and is
for informational purposes only. It provides an audit
trail of messages sent over the network. **
1118 NOSAVE. -- This is an informational message written to
the log file to as an audit trail for any messages that
98
were transmitted over the network but were not saved.
Normally this would indicate an echo board message that
has already been received, or an echo board message for
a board which does not exist on the receiving system.
**
1119 Network aborted. -- The network transmission was abort-
ed prematurely. This could be cause by telephone dis-
connection and is for informational purposes only. **
1130 No carrier xxx yyy. -- No carrier was received while
calling node xxx at telephone number yyy. This is an
informational message written to the log file. If it
occurs frequently, check that you have the correct
telephone number for that node. **
1131 Connected and logging on xxx. -- This is an informa-
tional message written to the log file to explain any
long distance telephone calls initiated by Oracomm. It
indicates that it did connect, but if the account or
password on the remote system are not correct, a suc-
cessful network connection may still not have been made.
**
1300 xxxxxx downloaded ffffffff. -- Informational message
indicating that account xxxxxx downloaded file ffffffff.
1301 aaaaaa deleted ffffffff. -- User aaaaaa deleted file
ffffffff.
9000 Error in xxxxxx err cte on file ctf. -- These are Ctree
file errors. The function that it was performing was
xxxxxx on file ctf when Ctree returned error cte. The
file, ctf, can be identified by files listed in BBSFILE-
5.DAT. You should never get Ctree errors in normal
operation. If you do, run COMPACT and REBUILD. This
should correct any problems caused by a power failure or
other type of crash. If the error persists, contact
Surf Computer Services. **
9010 xxxx. -- This is a general message. xxxx will be the
text of the message which should be self explanatory.
The message goes to the log file. **
ABORT - Cannot create xxxxx eee. -- During an xmodem upload,
Oracomm could not create file named xxxxx because of DOS
error eee. **
Bad hdr toacct xxxx. Bad header, msg deleted. -- The "to
account" header information was bad and displaying it
could cause Oracomm to terminate. To protect the system
99
from terminating, any message containing bad header
information is deleted. **
Can't setup COMn, status e. -- COMM port n cannot be setup.
The status error return is e. Check that the multiport
board is configured and installed correctly. **
Cannot add temp record cte ctf. -- While copying the utili-
ty/help file board to the temporary file on the ram
drive, a record could not be added. Probably the ram
drive is not large enough to hold all of the messages on
the utility board. If you cannot increase the size of
the ram drive or remove some files on it, do not use the
VDISK parameter. cte is the Ctree error and ctf is the
Ctree file number. **
Cannot create file ffffffff error nn. -- DOS error nn was
detected trying to create an uploaded file named ffffff-
ff.
Cannot find node xxx key yyy. -- The network node xxx is not
defined in the network node table. yyy is for diagnos-
tic purposes. Use the XL command to setup that node.
**
Cannot init port d at xxx because yyy. -- While trying to
dial out for the network, Oracomm could not initialize
COMM port d at baudrate xxx because of modem error code
yyy. Check that the baudrate is a valid baudrate and
correct the calling baudrate with the XL command for the
node you are calling. **
Cannot init port d at bb because xx task tt. -- This error
occurs when Oracomm attempts to connect with Outside
Features on COMM port d at baudrate bb. The modem error
code is xx and the originating user task is tt. (This
information is provided because port d will not be on
the line that created the message which is line/task
tt.) Check that the baudrate as defined in Outside
Features Definition, XO, is a valid baudrate. **
Cannot open file error nn. -- nn is a DOS error message.
Cannot open file xxxxx error nn. -- Xmodem error sending
file xxxxxx and DOS error nn.
Cannot open printer/log because n. -- The printer or log
file could not be opened. The DOS error is n. See the
list of DOS errors for the possible reason why the log
could not be opened. The log will go to the drive
listed in the IP command for the alternate drive. * is
100
the default drive. Check that the alternate drive is a
valid drive for your system. **
Cannot open BBSFILE5.DAT to start database -- Either file
BBSFILE5.DAT is not in the default directory, or one of
the files referenced in BBSFILE5.DAT is not found in the
default directory. **
Could not create TEMPHELP.DAT cte ctf. -- The VDISKn par-
ameter was used to create a temporary file of the util-
ity/help file board on a ram drive, but the file could
not be created. Check that you selected the proper
drive (the n on VDISKn) in the parameter. The Ctree
file in error is ctf and the error code is cte. **
Counter record not found. -- The parameter file may be
corrupted. Delete BBPARMS.IDX and run REBUILD. Use the
XC command check or reset the counters. **
Data error nnn with key xxx, notify sysop. -- The text
branching data is incorrect.
Drive xxx has only nnn bytes free. -- This message will
display when the drive, specified by xxx or DFLT for
default, has less than 64K of space remaining. nnn is
the amount of space remaining. **
Due to technical difficulties, the system is temporarily
down. Please call back later. -- This message will
display to users calling remotely if any errors occurred
during initialization. Oracomm will allow the sysop to
log on locally to correct the errors, but it will not
users on remotely. This most commonly happens when an
error is detected on another port or modem command. The
error will be displayed to the sysop locally during
startup, and the sysop must "press return" past the
errors. **
Error n on file nn -- n is a Ctree error and nn is the file
number. The file number corresponds to the files listed
in BBSFILE5.DAT. Check to see that the file exists in
the default directory. **
Error n on port d. -- Could not initialize COMM port d for
reason n. This is an error not reported with the other
more specific error messages. Contact Surf Computer
Services regarding this error. **
Exceeded retry call count. -- If an attempt is made to dial
a node automatically but the retry count (as defined in
the IP command) has been exceeded, Oracomm will NOT
attempt to dial it again. Check that you have the
101
correct telephone number, password, and baudrate for
that node. It could be that Oracomm is repeatedly
calling but not getting through because of one of these
parameters is incorrect. **
Extended Memory error xx user n. -- An error occurred trying
to allocate extended memory. There is probably insuffi-
cient extended memory. The HeapExpander error code xx
will help Surf Computer Services uncover your problem if
more assistance is necessary. **
Files are corrupted. Run REBUILD. -- The system was stopped
abnormally and the files were not closed properly. This
will occur if there is a power failure. Run the REBUILD
program to recreate the index files. **
Header error stat = nnn. -- Xmodem error on header record.
nnn is the DOS error.
HELP file xxxxxxxx missing. -- One of the required messages
on the utility/help file board is missing. The name of
that message is listed as xxxxxxxx. **
Hxderef err xx user n. -- Heap Expander error occurred
accessing extended memory. The HeapExpander error code
is xx and it occurred on user n. Check that you have
sufficient extended memory if you use the EMS parameter.
There should be 16K for each user. Be sure you do not
have all extended memory allocated for a ram drive. The
HeapExpander error code xx will help Surf Computer
Services uncover your problem if more assistance is
necessary. **
Insufficient memory for user n. -- Too many users were
specified for the amount of available memory. Reduce
the number of users with the USERSn parameter on the
command line. If it then works, remove some of the
device drivers or buffers in config.sys or use a memory
expander to increase the amount of available memory.
You can also use the EMS parameter to swap the message
buffer to extended memory. **
Insufficient memory for window n. -- There is not enough
memory available to run windows for the number of users
specified. Start Oracomm with the NOWINDOWS parameter,
or reduce the user memory requirement with the EMS or
USERSn parameters to provide more memory for the win-
dows. **
Invalid multiport option (c). -- The multiport board, c, is
incorrect. Use the XP command to correct the multiport
board type. **
102
Invalid parameter: -- The parameter on the command line is
incorrect. **
Literal # nn exceeds array xx in record yy. -- While loading
PROMPTyy, the size of buffer was exceeded. It was
loading literal number nn at the time that the buffer
was full. The maximum size of the literals is xx. The
literal number is the number at the beginning each line
in the PROMPT message. Check that a number was incor-
rectly modified. **
Literal buffer size exceeded at prompt yy. -- While loading
PROMPTyy, the size of buffer was exceeded. This will
occur if you modify the PROMPT messages and the result
of all the literals from the modified PROMPTs exceed the
maximum allowed. Reduce the size of some of your mes-
sages so that they will fit in the buffer. There are
approximately 500 bytes of slack space over the size
needed for the default prompts. **
Literal Missing. -- One of the lines from the PROMPTn mes-
sages in the utility/help file board is missing. Res-
tore the default prompts supplied when you received
Oracomm. **
Logic fault detected. -- Contact Surf Computer Services,
Inc. **
Message deletion forced. -- A message was found which was
too big to fit in the Oracomm buffer. Since it was too
big to read, no diagnostics could be displayed, so the
message was deleted. **
Modem commands missing for line n. -- The modem commands are
not defined for line n. Use the IM command to define
the modem commands. You can also enter * for the ini-
tial baud rate to copy modem commands from another line.
**
Multiuser stat rec not found. -- The status record, as defin-
ed with IL command, was not defined. This usually
occurs only when upgrading to a new version with more
telephone lines. Use the IL command to define the
telephone lines. **
No 8250 UART installed on port d. -- There is no port hard-
ware installed on the port referenced as port d. Use
the IL command to correct the port definitions. **
Node not in node table. -- A node attempted to network into
your system, but a definition for that node was not
103
found in the node definitions. Use the XL command to
define that node to your system. **
Not enough memory for windows. -- Oracomm could not get
enough memory to open a window. Start Oracomm with the
NOWINDOWS parameter. **
Only n users will be able to download simultaneously. -- DOS
will only allow 20 files to be open at one time. Check
that config.sys has FILES = 40. If you are using a
version of DOS prior to version 3.3, you will to run
FILES3x.COM before running Oracomm. FILES3x.COM can be
found in FILES20.ARC which can be downloaded from Ora-
comm Central. **
Port d out of range. -- The COMM port d is not a valid port.
Use the IL command to correct the comm port definitions.
**
Port d invalid baud rate. -- The baud rate defined for COMM
port d is incorrect. Use the IM command to correct the
initial baud rate for the line accessed with COMM port
d. **
Port d is already set up. -- COMM port d is already defined.
Use the IL command to correct the comm port definitions.
**
Record for nnn is missing. -- While trying to load the
PROMPT messages, PROMPTnnn could not be found. **
Sent xx rcvd yy. -- During networking, Oracomm synchronizes
with the remote system by sending out xx and expecting
to get xx back. If the remote system is saving a mes-
sage or retrieving a message, there will be a delay
sending it back hence the requirement for synchroniza-
tion. This message will occur if it sends out xx but
receives back yy instead of xx. It will then retry for
45 seconds. This frequently happens if it finds tele-
phone line noise. **
Shared interrupt error on port d. -- The multiport board is
not installed or configured correctly. **
System calling itself. -- Oracomm will not network to a-
nother system with the same node number. **
System date yymm less than last date yymm. -- The current
system date is more than a month from the last date the
system was started. Check that the DOS date is correct.
If the current DOS date is correct but the DOS date the
last time Oracomm was run is incorrect, start Oracomm
104
with the DATE parameter to override the date checking
logic. Running with an incorrect date can cause mes-
sages to be purged prematurely. **
System expired. -- Contact Surf Computer Services, Inc. **
System parameter record not found. -- The parameter file,
BBPARMS.DAT may be corrupted. Delete BBPARMS.IDX and
run rebuild. Also use the IP command to check or reset
system parameters. **
Time/acclvl not defined. Use the XT command. -- The par-
ameter file may be corrupted or you may be upgrading
with a newer version of Oracomm which now supports the
XT command. If you are upgrading from an older version
of Oracomm which does not support the XT command to the
newer version, log on a sysop and use the XT command to
define the access levels. If you are running a version
which does support time access levels, delete BBPARMS.-
IDX and run REBUILD. **
Timeout sndrecv sending xx. -- During networking while
trying to synchronize with the remote system, Oracomm
sent an xx but did not receive the xx back in sufficient
time. **
Write error nn. -- This error may occur during uploads. nn
is the DOS error number. Check that there is enough
space on the disk. **
Messages marked with ** are hardcoded and are not included in
the PROMPT files.
DOS FILE ERRORS
2 - File does not exist
3 - Path not found
4 - Exceeded maximum number of file descriptors.
Check the CONFIG.SYS for FILES= parameter
5 - Invalid access request. File is read only.
6 - Bad file descriptor
8 - Insufficient memory
13 - Invalid data. No file name supplied.
17 - Not same device. Cannot rename to a floppy.
19 - File already exists
105
MODEM I/O ERRORS
2 - Requested Port Out of Range
3 - Port already set up
4 - Invalid buffer size requested
5 - No memory available for buffers
6 - Asifirst, or asiopen not run on port yet
7 - Invalid Parameter
8 - Buffer is empty
9 - Buffer is full
10 - Function timed out
11 - Clear to send was not active
12 - Carrier detect was not active
13 - Data set ready was not active
14 - No 8250 UART installed at I/O address
15 - Xmodem error
16 - User abort
17 - Error on file open, close, read, or write
18 - Xmodem protocol error
20 - Shared interrupt parameter problem
106
SUMMARY OF USER COMMANDS
MAIN MENU
R = Read Messages C = Chat with other users
E = Enter a message D = Download large files
S = Summary of Messages U = Upload large files
W = Who are the Users H = Help
M = Match G = Goodbye (normal logoff)
B = Bulletin Board Selection Menu Q = Quick Logoff
N = Change user info and Z = Quick Logoff, no LLO reset
user settings T = Tutorial
J = General Purpose Database A = Adventure (Text Branching)
F = list downloadable Files L = List network nodes
O = Outside Features V = View a text file
/ = Display any outstanding chat
messages
SYSOP COMMANDS
+ = Change user parameters P = Manual purge initiation
I = Installation parameters = = Initiate manual networking
X = eXtended installation parameters Y = Remote view control window
READ SUBCOMMANDS SUMMARY SUBCOMMANDS
RF = Read Forward SF = Summary of Msgs Forward
RL = Read Since Last Logon SL = Summary Since Last Logon
RR = Read Restart SR = Summary Restart
RB = Read Backward SB = Summary of Msgs Backward
RM = Read My Messages SM = Summary of My Msgs
RA = Read Acct XXXX's Messages SA = Summary of Acct XXXX's Msgs
RS = Read those msgs with string SS = Summary string search
RC = Read complete system SC = Summary complete
99999 = Read Message #99999
COMMANDS AT END OF MESSAGE READ COMMANDS DURING MESSAGE READ
(with or without CONTROL key)
C = Add Comment to message CONTROL Z = Skip to comments LLO
E = Enter a new message CONTROL X = Skip to next comment
F = Forward message to originator CONTROL C = Skip to end of message
W = Who originated the message? CONTROL V = Skip 1000 characters
A = Account, view profile of CONTROL B = Jump back one comment
B = Begin reading again CONTROL S = Pause
99999 = Go directly to msg # 99999 CONTROL Q = Resume from pause
SPACE BAR = Pause
107
"ENTER" PARAMETERS EDIT OPTIONS AFTER ENTERING A MSG
ANON = Public Anonymous Message E = Edit individual line of msg
POLL = Create an Autopoll L = List the message
READONLY = No comments allowed Q = Quit (Abandon message)
SYSOP = Private to Sysop S = Send message to ACCT or board
HELP = Read help message SR = Send msg to ACCT with Receipt
ALL = Create message to everyone R999 = Replace line 999
ALL$ = Create msg to subscribers I999 = Insert a line before 999
ACCT = Send private msg to ACCT D999 = Delete line 999
C, X, 1 = Protocol transfer C = Continue (append new lines)
Y = Anonymous subcommand
WHO SUBCOMMANDS MATCH COMMANDS
Shows users' profile Shows users' profile
(ID and description lines) and answers to questionnaires
WF = List users Forward by acct MA = List Answers for an account
WI = List Individual account MI = ("I Am") Reanswer questionnaire
WO = Who is Online now? MI n = Reanswer question# n only
WL = List users since Last logon MS = Search user questionnaires
WN = List New users since llo MQ = List Questionnaire w/o answering
WT = List users on Today MS QUICK = Quick match by percentage
WA = List entry for an Account MP = Match by %. same as MS QUICK
WM = List My own information
WS = Search for character string
WO LONG (or WOL) = Who is online long format
WO REPEAT (or WOR) = Repeated show who is online
WB = Who backwards by account
WD = Who by date (newest to oldest)
WC = Who by date (oldest to newest)
CHAT COMMANDS "N" MENU OPTIONS
/CALL ACCT text (To change your personal information
/CALL ALL text and system operating parameters)
/BRING ACCT text
/HELP 0 = Account code (if enabled)
/PRIVATE ACCT text 1 = Password
/UNPRIVATE 2 = Name/Handle
/WHO 3 = City/State
/ANNOUNCE text 4 = Three-line description
/MATCH 5 = Set session controls
/NOCHAT 7 = For future use
/EXIT 8 = For future use
/TO acct text 9 = Turn ANSI Graphics on/off
/GROUP ln1 ln2... H = HELP (INSTRUCTIONS)
/INVISIBLE S = SAVE CHANGES JUST ENTERED
/L channel#
108
Upload/Download commands
FB = Show files, with descriptions newest to oldest by date
FL = Show files added since last logon
FC = Show files added since last logon COMPLETE across all boards
FF = Show files forward in alphabetical order
FQ = Show a Quick directory of file names only
FT = Show filenames only (True directory)
FS = File Search, search directory for character string
FG = File Search GLOBALLY across all directories
UA = Upload a file with ASCII (X-ON/X-OFF) protocol
UX = Upload a file with XMODEM checksum protocol
UC = Upload a file with XMODEM CRC protocol
U1 = Upload a file with XMODEM 1K protocol
UB = Upload multiple files with Ymodem batch protocol
UG = Upload multiple files with Ymodem-G batch protocol
Use UG with high speed error correcting modems only
DA = Download a file with ASCII (X-ON, X-OFF) protocol
DS = Download search. Search a file for a string.
DX = Download a file with XMODEM checksum protocol
DC = Download a file with XMODEM CRC protocol
D1 = Download a file with XMODEM 1K protocol
DB = Download multiple files with Ymodem batch protocol
DG = Download multiple files with Ymodem-G batch protocol
Use DG with high speed error correcting modems only.
V = View. Same as DA filename.TXT where the .TXT is automatically
added. Download time and download/upload ratio are NOT checked.
User Control-Keys
ESC or cntl-K Return to main command prompt
Space Bar Pause Scrolling
Cntl-C Skip the current menu or message
Cntl-B During R command, jump backward one comment
Cntl-Z During R command, skip to first comment since last logon
Cntl-X During R command, skip to next comment
Cntl-V During R command, skip forward 1000 characters
109
INDEX
1HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
1WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
2HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
2WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
300 BAUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39, 44, 110
ACCESS
Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 21
Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 17, 24, 46, 75
ACCESS LEVEL . 7, 16-18, 20-22, 24-27, 29-32, 34, 35, 43-46, 49, 55, 56, 60, 70,
75, 78, 82, 83, 89, 92, 93, 96, 110, 114
ACCOUNT
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 93
System Operator (SYSOP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 61
ALL CHARGECARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 110
ALTERNATE DISK DRIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 27, 110
AMENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 110
ANON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 18, 25, 61, 108, 110
ANSI . . . . . . . . . 10, 18, 28, 40, 41, 51, 53-56, 58, 59, 67, 108, 110, 111
Color Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Escape Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 40
Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Terminal Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
ANSIIXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
ASYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 61, 65, 72, 110
AUTODELETE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 22, 94, 110
AUTOPURGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 18, 23, 94, 110, 112
BACKUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 7, 18, 20, 70, 75, 88, 110
BADPSWRD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 55, 110
BADWORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 110
BBPARMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101, 105, 110
BBSLOG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 110
BBSMSGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89, 110
BBUTILn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 110
BELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 25, 92, 110
BELL, Disable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 92
BILLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 45, 110, 114
BOARDS 1, 9-11, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 42, 46, 57, 62, 63, 65, 69, 70,
75, 82, 84, 92, 93, 97, 109, 110, 113
Add . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 17
Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Define . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 17
Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Readonly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
BRACKETS [ ], Use of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
BUFFERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 90, 102, 106, 110
BULLETIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 60, 61, 78, 107, 110
110
CALL BACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 35, 44, 97, 101, 111
CENTS-REMAINING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 111
CHAT . . . . . 1, 5-8, 21, 22, 25, 26, 54, 55, 57, 66, 85, 91, 92, 107, 108, 111
CLASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 78, 111
COM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 9, 33, 34, 36, 39, 64, 89, 104, 111
COMMANDS, System
"=" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
"%" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 90
"@" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 67, 86
"E@" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 90
"I" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
"J" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"L" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"N" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"P" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"S" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
"T" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
"X" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43, 69
^K (local access) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
^O (SYSOP Chat) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
^P (printer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
^Y (disconnect on line user) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
COMMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 61, 67-69, 90, 91, 107, 109, 111
COMMENT, Deleting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
COMPACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 88, 99, 111
CONFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 84, 111
CONFIG.SYS . . . . . . . . . 1-4, 10, 28, 40, 64, 89, 90, 94, 102, 104, 105, 111
CONTROL WINDOW . . . . 1, 5-9, 25, 39, 41, 54, 60, 66, 72, 74, 85, 96, 107, 111
CONTROL-N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 66, 91, 111
CONTROL-O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91, 111
CONTROL-Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91, 111
Date Format
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
DEFAULT . . 3, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 24, 26, 27, 37, 41, 43, 67, 75, 79, 96,
101, 103, 110, 111
DESCRIPTION LINES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 92, 108, 111
DIALING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38, 49, 70, 95, 111
DIGIBOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 10, 48, 49, 111
Direct connect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
DIRECTORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 10, 29, 31, 32, 79, 109, 111
DISCLAIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 111
DISCONNECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 23, 37, 49, 65, 66, 72, 91, 111
DISCONNECT USER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
DOORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 49, 111
DOS . . . . . . 2-4, 19, 48, 49, 64, 66, 89, 91, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 111, 113
DOS COMMANDS
Ansi.sys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Config.sys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3
Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Version Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
111
DOWNHHMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 112
DOWNLOAD . . 1, 3, 4, 14, 17, 21, 23, 28-32, 52, 56, 57, 60, 63, 65, 69, 71, 75,
77-79, 86, 94, 104, 107, 109, 112
ECHO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 13, 14, 68, 77, 84, 87, 99, 112
FILES 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19-21, 23, 25, 28-31, 48, 51-53, 55-60, 62,
64, 65, 77-79, 81, 86-90, 92, 98-102, 104, 105, 107, 109, 112
Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Help (user) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Name (Upload/Download) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Fn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9, 66, 73, 112
FOREIGN LANGUAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 73, 112
FREELOAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
FROMFIDO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 112
FROMORA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 112
FUNCTION KEYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 112
HARDWARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 4, 9, 34, 61, 103, 112
Hardwired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
HELPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPE1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPE2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPE3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPM1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPM2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 112
HELPO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 112
HELPW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 112
INTROXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 56, 112
LAST MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 51, 59, 112
LINE USAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 41, 74, 112
LINES, TELEPHONE
Disable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Local Line, SYSOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 33, 38
Multi-User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 33
Subscribers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
LINK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 68, 112
LOGGING ON, Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10
LOGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 56, 92, 112
LOGOFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 56, 107, 112
MASSMAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 112
MEMORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 4, 9, 10, 48, 60, 102, 104-106, 112
MENU 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 27, 29, 30, 33, 36, 41-47, 51, 53, 55-59, 67, 72,
75, 89, 90-94, 97, 107-109, 112
MESSAGES
Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Autopurge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Broadcast message to all users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Carbon Copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 90, 98
Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
112
Reset Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Signon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 92
Special . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 53, 54
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 93
Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
MODEM
Baud Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Control Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
MODEM COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 5, 10, 36, 94, 103, 113
MOTD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 58, 92, 113
MOTDn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 113
MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 3, 48, 49, 66, 91, 113
MULTIPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 44, 100, 102, 104, 113
NETWORK . . 11, 13, 14, 33, 38, 42-44, 55, 68-70, 72, 77, 82-87, 95, 98-100, 103,
104, 107, 113
Boards, special . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Name - Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
NEWUMSG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 71, 72, 113
NEWUMSGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 71, 72, 113
NEWUSER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 113
NOMODEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 4, 5, 36, 39, 94, 113
NOTIFY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 56, 101, 113
ORALINK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 22, 85, 113
ORAnnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 113
ORDER ENTRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 55, 58, 80, 82, 113
PAID-TO-DATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 77, 96, 113
PARAMETERS, Change System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
PARENTHESIS ( ), Use of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
PASSWORD 1, 10, 18, 23, 24, 31, 43-45, 55, 65, 75, 76, 78, 83, 84, 99, 102, 108, 113
PASSWORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 44
# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 44
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Multiple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
SYSOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 45
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 43
PATH-ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 29-32, 75, 113
PC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5, 9, 10, 49, 113
PERFORMANCE MONITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 113
POLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 108, 113
PRINTER
Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 91
PROMPT0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 58, 113
PROTOCOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 83, 84, 106, 108, 109, 113
PURGE
Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 75
QEMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 113
QUESTIONNAIRE . 1, 13, 24, 44, 58, 59, 62, 63, 75-77, 80-82, 89, 92, 94, 96, 98,
108, 113
113
Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 80
Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 94
QUESTXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 80-82, 114
RAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100-102, 114
RAM DRIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100-102, 114
RANDOMN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 114
READONLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 108, 110, 114
REBUILD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
RENAME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 65, 75, 78, 79, 105, 112, 114
RESERVED WORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 114
RESET . . . . . . . . . . 37, 47, 69, 74, 77, 78, 89, 94, 101, 105, 107, 113, 114
ROTARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 114
SEQUENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 11, 13, 16, 36-39, 46, 57, 68, 114
Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 16
SHUT DOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 6-9, 65, 72, 85, 87, 95, 114
Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Power Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
SIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 11, 12, 16, 24, 58, 65, 72, 75, 84, 97, 114
STARGATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 114
STARTING ORACOMM
Multi-user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5
Single User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
STARTUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 101, 114
STATISTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 47, 72, 74, 114
STATUS INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 114
SUBINFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 114
SUBSCRIBER . . . . . . 1, 19, 28, 33, 43, 45, 46, 54, 55, 65, 75-77, 89, 96, 114
Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Payment Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
SUPPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 28, 40, 97, 105, 114
TEXT-BRANCHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50, 51, 114
TIME . 2-9, 14, 16-23, 26, 32, 33, 35-38, 43-49, 51, 53-56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66,
67, 70, 71, 72, 74-77, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 91, 95, 96, 103-105, 109, 114
Access Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Inactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 45
Minutes/day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Non-prime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46, 76
Prime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46, 76
TOFIDO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 114
TOORA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 114
UPLOAD 17, 18, 23, 28-30, 32, 52, 56, 57, 65, 69, 77, 79, 86, 99, 107, 109, 112, 114
USER FLAGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
USERSn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102, 114
VDISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 100, 114
VERIFICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 59, 114
VERIFYQU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 114
VISITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 18, 20, 61, 114
WC DELETE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70, 114
WEATHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 61, 114
WELCOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 59, 114
114
XXYYMMDD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 21, 89, 115
1HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
1WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
300 BAUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39, 44
ACCESS
Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 21
Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 17, 24, 46, 75
ACCESS LEVEL . 7, 16-18, 20-22, 24-27, 29-32, 34, 35, 43-46, 49, 55, 56, 60, 70,
75, 78, 82, 83, 89, 92, 93, 96
ACCOUNT
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 93
System Operator (SYSOP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 61
ALL CHARGECARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
ALTERNATE DISK DRIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 27
AMENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
ANON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 18, 25, 61, 108
ANSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 18, 28, 40, 41, 51, 53-59, 67, 108
Color Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Escape Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 40
Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Terminal Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
ANSIIXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
ASYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 61, 65, 72
AUTODELETE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 22, 94
AUTOPURGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 18, 23, 94
BACKUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 7, 18, 20, 70, 75, 88
BADPSWRD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 55
BADWORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
BBPARMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101, 105
BBSLOG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
BBSMSGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
BBUTILn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
BELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 25, 92
BELL, Disable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 92
BILLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 45
BOARDS 1, 9-11, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 42, 46, 57, 62, 63, 65, 69, 70,
75, 82, 84, 92, 93, 97, 109
Add . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 17
Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Define . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 17
Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Readonly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
BRACKETS [ ], Use of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
BUFFERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 90, 102, 106
BULLETIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2, 60, 61, 78, 107
CALL BACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 35, 44, 97, 101
115
CENTS-REMAINING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
CHAT . . . . . . . 1, 5-8, 21, 22, 25, 26, 54, 55, 57, 66, 85, 91, 92, 107, 108
CLASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 78
COM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 9, 33, 34, 36, 39, 64, 89, 104
COMMANDS, System
"=" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
"%" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 90
"@" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 67, 86
"E@" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 90
"I" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
"J" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"L" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"N" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"P" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
"S" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
"T" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
"X" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43, 69
^K (local access) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
^O (SYSOP Chat) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
^P (printer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
^Y (disconnect on line user) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
COMMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 61, 67-69, 90, 91, 107, 109
COMMENT, Deleting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
COMPACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 88, 99
CONFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 84
CONFIG.SYS . . . . . . . . . . . 1-4, 10, 28, 40, 64, 89, 90, 94, 102, 104, 105
CONTROL WINDOW . . . . . . . 1, 5-9, 25, 39, 41, 54, 60, 66, 72, 74, 85, 96, 107
CONTROL-N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 66, 91
CONTROL-O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
CONTROL-Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 91
Date Format
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
DEFAULT . . 3, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 24, 26, 27, 37, 41, 43, 67, 75, 78, 79,
96, 101, 103
DESCRIPTION LINES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 92, 108
DIALING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38, 49, 70, 95
DIGIBOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 10, 48, 49
Direct connect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
DIRECTORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 10, 29, 31, 32, 79, 109
DISCLAIM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
DISCONNECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 23, 37, 49, 65, 66, 72, 91
DISCONNECT USER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
DOORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 49
DOS . . . . . . . . . . . 2-4, 19, 48, 49, 64, 66, 89, 91, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105
DOS COMMANDS
Ansi.sys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Config.sys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3
Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Version Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
DOWNHHMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
116
DOWNLOAD . . 1, 3, 4, 14, 17, 21, 23, 28-32, 52, 56, 57, 60, 63, 65, 69, 71, 75,
77-79, 86, 94, 104, 107, 109
ECHO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 13, 14, 68, 77, 84, 87, 99
FILES 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19-21, 23, 25, 28-31, 48, 51-53, 55-60, 62,
64, 65, 77-79, 81, 86-90, 92, 98-102, 104, 105, 107, 109
Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Help (user) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Name (Upload/Download) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Fn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9, 66, 73
FOREIGN LANGUAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 73
FREELOAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
FROMFIDO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
FROMORA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
FUNCTION KEYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
HARDWARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 4, 9, 34, 61, 103
Hardwired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
HELPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPE1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPE2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPE3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPM1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPM2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
HELPO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
HELPW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
INTROXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 56
LAST MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 51, 59
LINE USAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 41, 74
LINES, TELEPHONE
Disable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Local Line, SYSOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 33, 38
Multi-User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 33
Subscribers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
LINK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 68
LOGGING ON, Local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10
LOGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 56, 92
LOGOFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 56, 107
MASSMAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
MEMORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 4, 9, 10, 48, 60, 102, 104-106
MENU 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 27, 29, 30, 33, 36, 41-47, 51, 53, 55-58, 67, 72,
75, 89, 90-94, 97, 107-109
MESSAGES
Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Autopurge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Broadcast message to all users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Carbon Copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 90, 98
Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Reset Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
117
Signon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 92
Special . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 53, 54
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 93
Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
MODEM
Baud Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Control Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
MODEM COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 5, 10, 36, 94, 103
MOTD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 57, 92
MOTDn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 3, 48, 49, 66, 91
MULTIPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 44, 100, 102, 104
NETWORK . . 11, 13, 14, 33, 38, 42-44, 55, 68-70, 72, 77, 82-87, 95, 98-100, 103,
104, 107
Boards, special . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Name - Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
NEWUMSG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 71, 72
NEWUMSGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 71, 72
NEWUSER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
NOMODEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 4, 5, 36, 39, 94
NOTIFY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 56, 101
ORALINK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 22, 85
ORAnnn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3
ORDER ENTRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 55, 58, 80, 82
PAID-TO-DATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 77, 96
PARAMETERS, Change System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
PARENTHESIS ( ), Use of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
PASSWORD 1, 10, 18, 23, 24, 31, 43-45, 55, 65, 75, 76, 78, 83, 84, 99, 102, 108
PASSWORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 44
# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 44
Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Multiple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
SYSOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 45
System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 43
PATH-ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 29-32, 75
PC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-5, 9, 10, 49
PERFORMANCE MONITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
POLL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 108
PRINTER
Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 91
PROMPT0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 58
PROTOCOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 83, 84, 106, 108, 109
PURGE
Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 75
QEMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
QUESTIONNAIRE 1, 13, 24, 44, 58, 59, 62, 63, 75-77, 80-82, 89, 92, 94, 96, 98, 108
Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 80
Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 94
118
QUESTXXX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 80-82
RAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100-102
RAM DRIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100-102
RANDOMN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
READONLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 108
REBUILD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
RENAME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 65, 75, 78, 79, 105
RESERVED WORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
RESET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 47, 69, 74, 77, 78, 89, 94, 101, 105, 107
ROTARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
SEQUENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 11, 13, 16, 36-39, 46, 56, 68
Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 16
SHUT DOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 6-9, 65, 72, 85, 87, 95
Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Power Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
SIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 11, 12, 16, 24, 58, 65, 72, 75, 84, 97
STARGATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
STARTING ORACOMM
Multi-user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5
Single User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
STARTUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 101
STATISTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 8, 47, 72, 74
STATUS INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
SUBINFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
SUBSCRIBER . . . . . . . . 1, 19, 28, 33, 43, 45, 46, 54, 55, 65, 75-77, 89, 96
Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Payment Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
SUPPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 28, 40, 97, 105
TEXT-BRANCHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50, 51
TIME . 2-9, 14, 16-23, 26, 32, 33, 35-38, 43-49, 51, 53-56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66,
67, 70, 71, 72, 74-77, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 91, 95, 96, 103-105, 109
Access Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Inactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 45
Minutes/day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Non-prime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46, 76
Prime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46, 76
TOFIDO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
TOORA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
UPLOAD . . . 17, 18, 23, 28-30, 32, 52, 56, 57, 65, 69, 77-79, 86, 99, 107, 109
USER FLAGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
USERSn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
VDISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 100
VERIFICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 59
VERIFYQU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
VISITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 18, 20, 61
WC DELETE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
WEATHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 61
WELCOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 59
XXYYMMDD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 21, 89
119