Running your BBS under DesqView
By Ice Nine
The Kitchen Sink BBS
If you are the proud owner of a 386 or 386SX, you may want to take
advantage of the DesqView environment. Telegard seems to run fine on my system,
and I myself like the convienience of running my BBS and still do whatever I
want in other applications. To set up Telegard in a window, First, it would be
a good idea to turn off the option in your System Configuration that allows
your overlay to be loaded into EMS if you have 2 megs of RAM or less. The
option to use the bios screen writes may also be turned off. Desqview does not
require that you turn off this mode when running it in a window. Here's what
the configuration for my BBS looks like:
Add a Program
Program Name............: Your BBS Name Here
Keys to Use on Open Menu: BB Memory Size (in K): 384
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Program...: bbs.bat
Parameters:
Directory.: \bbs
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Options:
Writes text directly to screen.......: [N]
Displays graphics information........: [N]
Virtualize text/graphics (Y,N,T).....: [Y]
Uses serial ports (Y,N,1,2)..........: [N]
Requires floppy diskette.............: [N]
Press F1 for advanced options Press ─┘ when you are DONE
The option "Uses Serial Ports (Y,N,1,2)" should be set to "N" (No), because
Desqview seems to want to monitor the serial port itself with it's own
routines, thus creating transfer errors with your protocols (Mostly timeouts).
These are the normal options that I have set for my BBS. The Advanced options
are as follows:
Add a Program Advanced Options
System Memory (in K).......: 0 Maximum Program Memory Size (in K)..: 500
Script Buffer Size.......: 1000 Maximum Expanded Memory Size (in K):
Text Pages: 1 Graphics Pages: 0 Initial Mode: Interrupts: 00 to FF
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Window Position:
Maximum Height: 25 Starting Height: 23 Starting Row...: 2
Maximum Width.: 80 Starting Width.: 78 Starting Column: 1
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Shared Program
Pathname..:
Data......:
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Close on exit (Y,N,blank)......: [Y] Uses its own colors..............: [Y]
Allow Close Window command.....: [Y] Runs in background (Y,N,blank)...: [Y]
Uses math coprocessor..........: [Y] Keyboard conflict (0-F)..........: [0]
Share CPU when foreground......: [Y] Share EGA when foreground/zoomed.: [Y]
Can be swapped out (Y,N,blank).: [N] Protection level (0-3)...........: [0]
Press F1 for standard options Press ─┘ when you are DONE
These are the optimal settings for running Telegard in a DesqView window. The
BAT file that loads the BBS (BBS.BAT) is as follows:
C: <--Change this to the drive your BBS is located.
CD\BBS <--Change this to the directory your BBS lives in.
DVANSI <--This loads the resident ANSI driver for this window.
BBS <--Loads up Telegard itself.
This file must be located in the main BBS directory.
I have had absolutely no problems running Telegard under these circumstances,
and have few or no problems most of the time with transfer protocols, even with
my 9600 HST in use, running a Big Dos window, and TheDraw at the same time. I
even tried running the BBS in the background and playing LHX at the same time.
The hardware this system is running on is:
80386SX with 2 Megs of RAM
28 ms SCSI Hard Drives
VGA 80x50 lines
9600 HST
If you have comparable hardware, you should have no problem. The SCSI drives
are moderately fast drives, and on my system do not pose a problem. But slow
hardware does slow down or stop some multitasking functions in Desqview. The
one most frequently noticed is the floppy drive. Floppy drives SLOW
applications to a crawl! Avoid using the floppy drives while a user is online
on your system. It will slow him down so much that he will probably think
something is wrong and log off. Hard drives do not pose any problems, although
their transfer rates and access times also slow considerably. The way the
window is set up takes up the whole screen in 80x25 mode. You can change the
size to 80x50 on EGA/VGA to fit more on the Desqview screen without any
problems.
Now for the plug:
The Kitchen Sink
12/24/9600 HST
170 Megs online!
!NPNC Alpha Hub!
(914)692-0785