ViSiON-X 0.99A by Ryec **********IMPORTANT*********** RUN CONFIG PROGRAM AND CHECK OVER EVERYTHING, AS NEW OPTIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED. IF YOU ARE UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION THEN IT IS VERY POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF THE NEW OPTIONS HAVE GARBAGE IN THEIR PLACE. THIS IS UNAVOIDABLE TO ENSURE UPWARD COMPATIBILITY. MOST OPTIONS ARE USUALLY OBVIOUS THOUGH AND ARE NOT TOO HARD TO FIX. IF YOU'RE UNSURE.. PRESS F1 OVER THE QUESTIONABLE LINE TO RESTORE IT TO IT'S DEFAULT VALUE. ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR CURRENT VERSION BEFORE UPGRADING TO A NEW ONE. ALWAYS!!!! CONVENTIONAL MEMORY = 486k EMS = 420k *** New Commands to add to MENU.MNU *** Menu Name # Letter Description ------------------------------------------------------------------ Voting Sysop Menu [24] 5 M Change Mandatory Status E-Mail Menu [17] 16 > Download E-Mail File Batch Menu [22] 6 A Add old Batch Files File Batch Menu [22] 7 S Save Batch Queue Xamine Accounts Menu [27] 3 L Find Leeches Xamine Accounts Menu [27] 4 E Find Expired (xpiring) Accounts *** Commands Removed from MENU.MNU *** Local Configuration [4] 4 H Now reserved. *** Changes Commands from MENU.MNU *** Menu Name Old/New Command letter/Description ------------------------------------------------------------------ File Change Menu [18] S->S Special Request --> Fake File *** New MCI Codes *** DL - Daily Download Limit (in k) KL - Download K Left for Download KA - Download K Available based on U/D K ratio *** Conflicts (things changed or replaced that need to be fixed by U) STRCFG - Message Menu - page 2 - item 8 RUN.BAT - Error level 5 - Bad Netmail - Be sure to Add it. Changes as of 99A . Replaced old modem routines with newer (and better ones). These routines allow up to 8 COM ports on a single machine (should be DigiBoard compatible since you can program the Com Address, IRQ and Vector). These modem routines provide perfect stability under DesqView (no more ansi garbage) and are generally faster. Furthermore, these modem routines should make it possible for users to have up to 8 com ports on a given machine, providing they configur the addresses/vectors/interrupts etc.. These routines fully implement the 16550A uarts (and other uarts) to improve performance under desqview. With the help of the Silent Assasin, we were able to improve the performance of V-X so that it could run 2 nodes under desqview almost as fast as a single node under DOS! (3% slower to be exact). With the lower memory requirements, users are urged to increase their modem output buffers to 8192 (especially if you don't have a UART) or more. . Fixed bug with Multinode MCI's displaying improperly. . Removed Fading routines while under DesqView since they don't do anything under DV. . Reduced overall memory requirements of ViSiON-X by at least 70k. A rough estimate of required memory is 476k give or take a few k. EMS memory needed is a little under 500k. Also reduced memory requirements for the CONFIG. It's now 324k. . Fixed bug with display of message area in two column format. . Fixed bug with file area display showing wrong numbers when an area is skipped. . Fixed file add color when multiple adding files. . Updated the UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD commands so they use desired protocol. . Fixed bug with global file search prompt popping up even if no file name was provided. . Added an option for testing online status of files during listings. If set to YES, ViSiON-X will attempt to open each file during file listings to determine if a file has gone Offline since the last time the file has been listed. This can really slow things down on slow drives (or opticals), or in those areas that have a lot of files online. If you see the file listings crawl, turn this off for that area. If the files in this area is located on a hard drive and it is extremely sluggish/slow, then it's time your optimized your HD with Norton Speedisk or Defragment. . Hid the NUP from the user for more security. . Fixed bug with the old "File xfer closed until blah blah.." msg showing up at wrong times. . Fixed bug with a new user's file level always being set to 0 when the sysop creates the account. . Fixed bug with tagged files showing up one character too far to the right. . Fixed display bugs when searching for files. . Added a Super Turbo Add to allow prompt-free addition of new files. . Added an option in the Konfig called File Box. If set to YES, the file listings will be surrounded by fixed headers on the top and bottom. If set to NO, the file listings will scroll down the screen, providing more information than the more eloquent boxed list. . Fixed bug with file search not aborting. . Removed line editor in message base, simple user editor from sysop menu and the scrollback. . Added more automation to the batch delete. . Added routines for detecting and preventing duplicate files from being added to the batch. . Fixed bug with ViSiON-X not saving full contents of long messages in QWK packet. There may be a problem with some offline readers who expect messages greater than $1600 (5632) bytes to be saved as seperate msgs (ie. msg 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3). Ya right. Anyways, for those readers, they won't read the whole thing.. just the first "page". But it's all there.. look at it through a text editor if you must. . Added command line help for ViSiON-X (type ViSiON-X /?). . Modified FIDOMAIL.EXE so that it updates the number of new msgs at the WFC, and in the system status (new net msgs only). . Moved the strings from the CONFIG into STRCFG. Be sure to run the STRCFG and SAVE in order to take in the changes. In the CONFIG, the old STRINGS category is now New User Voting and the one under it is Default User Settings. . Fixed bug with adding more files to the batch than allowed fucking up the listing. You now get a message informing you the limit has been exceeded. . Added an option in the CONFIG under MATRIX/PASSWORDS for BETA Sites. These are: Allow matrix Uploads and Allow Matrix Downloads. If set to YES, Allow Dloads will allows users to download ViS-X.APP, VXBETA.APP, and or VXDEMO.ZIP; providing of course that they exist. Matrix uploads allow users to send application forms into the board. In order for these features to be available, a directory called APPS must exist of your main ViSiON-X directory and you must be using the DOS matrix. . Removed the "Trying 14400 baud.. 9600 baud.. " etc.. and replaced it with modem routines that should read it directly from the COM hard- ware. Whether this works or not is yet to be determined. . Fixed bug with the YES/NO hotkey prompts not accepting chain commands from previous input. (i.e. pressing G,Y,N,N from the main menu would now log you off instead of waiting at the first prompt). . Added the file newscan prompt to the STRCFG. Offline files will not be newscanned. The user no longer has a choice (if you were wondering what the "A" in the [Y/N/A] prompt was about, it was to newscan all areas including offline areas (which the Y response would skip over). . Changed it so that new files are added to the file index immediately instead of after the user logs off. Hopefully, it should be rather transparent. . Fixed bug with ViSiON-X giving NUV validated users default main levels, file levels and file points, instead of their NUV equivalents as defined in the config. . Added a new option in the config called Send Msg To All Level. Any users who have a level greater than or equal to this level, will be able to post messages to users which will show up in their msg newscan when they do a "Your mail only" scan. A prompt will appear after the message providing that the "Send to" field is left blank or addressed to "All". Since this is a new field to the message structure, all previous messages will most likely randomly display this nack. That is, old messages may show up in the "your mail only" newscan if they are addressed to ALL, weather they were meant to be or not. . Added a prompt to display users on other nodes (multinode only) during login. . Took the News display outside of the Turbo Login skipped list. . Made it so that the multinode commands have no effect in the matrix. . Added a prompt to display the files in batch before download rather than always displaying it. . Added a range prompt for displaying the batch list, as well as a repetition loop for removing files from the batch without relisting the batch. . Fixed bug with download msg not saving the full scope of the message for long ones and prompt for protocol selection when local. . Added pause before the menu display in non-expert mode. . Added the USERSTAT.ANS to the list of compilable status screens. Should still be compatible with the older 3-screen sets. It will display the internal one if the USERSTAT hasn't been compiled in the current set. . Added an option to reserve the BBS for a user for a specified period of time. This can be set remotely or locally, providing the user has sysop access. The handle of the person to reserve the BBS for and the amount of time to reserve can be set using the /HOLD command from anywhere or Shift-F6 from the WFC. There is a an option in the config that sets the maximum time that can be reserved. Reservations under multinode apply only to the CURRENT NODE. This allows you to reserve the board for multiple people. . Added the ability to download e-mail (sent to a text file if local). Also removed that stupid happy face that shows up at the end of the message. . Fixed problem with ViSiON-X remaining in the WFC if a caller drops during the / transfer (say from a FrontEnd). . Added an option to the KONFIG which allow users to define their quote string. This string can be found under the View/Define Macros section of the KONFIG. . Fixed bug with private messages showing up in the title listings. . Added the last 10 Async errors to the debug list. There is a file called ASYNC.LST which contains the meaning of each error code. If you get errors, write them down and report them. This is for BETA sites only. . Add the ability to type a text file during a oneline chat session. The command is F2 (locally only). . Fixed bug with the file search accepting the first command and always rejecting the second. . Added a "Chatting With SysOp" multinode location message. . Fixed bug with message downloads not sending the right file. . Fixed bug with system status using the total carrier connects as the number of callers for the day, instead of the actual # users who logged on that day. . Fixed bug with multinode chat not redrawing the prompt after exit. Also added a little message to Press ESC to exit chat. . Fixed annoying bug with the CONFIG moving the cursor one line up when you return from issuing the last command on the menu. . Added a switch to specify the nodenumber (for Multinode operation) from the command line. Valid values are from 0-TotalNodes (as set in the config). A special value of zero indicates that it is to be a hidden node (i.e. won't appear in the WHO IS ON command). This will probably be used in conjuction with the /L (local) command line to allow the sysop to login locally through an existing node without having to set up an extra local node. This should work as is, without conflicting with the modem of the original node, or his multinode status. . Fixed problem with the Turbo Login showing "Unknown User at matrix" when the sysop logs into a multinode-BBS node. . Fixed problem with Msg Newscan for "Your Mail ONly" tossing up msgs that were addressed to other people. It will now properly give you the specially marked "To All" msgs. . Added a nifty little speeder-upper that works in conjunction with the user index. The last accessed user name and number will be stored for future reference. If the same name is given, the BBS will no longer need to search through the entire user index for the given handle to determine his user number. It will make just one read to confirm that the handle hasn't been changed and will quickly return the corresponding user number. This will appear most noticeably in the batch download status (when commission points are being given out) and other places that require the BBS to look up a user's number. The majority of these places are in the file section. . Added the ability to list the current file areas when adding a new area and trying to decide where to put it. Also, set it so that the prompt for the Access Level will default to the level set for the Xfer Level for Default Users. . Fixed problem with File Moves prompting for the conference to move it to, even if user only has access to one conference. . Ok very lame here, but it was the best I could do. The problem with the QWK lies in the fact that too many files are open at once and it's trying to open more files. Perhaps TP has some kind of limit to the number of files it can handle in one single program. Fine. No Problem. I close 3 files during the making of the QWK packet and re-open them afterwards. Seems to work fine now. . Fixed problem with the total number of new msgs and new files showing up all fucked up when a user logs in. The problem was that each node kept track of it's own account of the total files and msgs in the system, so depending on which node you logged on, you got varying results. Basically, I moved these totals from the STATUS file (which each node has) to the GLOBAL.DAT file (which each node shares). You may find that the first time each user logs in, they'll get VERY strange values for the two totals; but it should return to normal afterwards. . Fixed bug with vision-x trying to poll even when the board is set as a HUB! . Fixed bug with user editor not accepting numbers greater than 32k (resetting them to zero to be exact). . Added two options in the modem CONFIG: Close/ReInit Modem Routines. If set to YES, ViSiON-X will completely disable it's modem routines (no trace of it left) during DOS Shells. If set to NO, ViSiON-X will disable the interrupts then re-enable them upon shelling (while leaving the kernal and modem status intact). There may be no difference for most systems. However, under some circumstances setting it to YES will provide greater compatibility with door programs, SCAN.EXE (don't know why), etc.. Under DesqView, this should be set to NO unless problems occur with modem response loss. Uart Fifo Level. You can set the degree to which buffering occurs on the UART chip. This affects ViSiON-X only if you have a 16550 or 16550A UART Chip installed on the current COM Port. Valid levels are 0, 4, 8, and 14. The higher the level, the greater the degree of buffering (and the more overhead I believe). Experiment with this, if you get low CPS under DesqView, raise it to 14. An average level would be 8. Zero may disable it, but I can't say for sure. . Added built in support for random external files. That is, if you have a file called GOODBYE.ANS (displayed upon logoff), it will be displayed to the user as usual. If however, you have GOODBYE.1, GOODBYE.2, ... etc.. (you must have at least a .1 file), V-X will randomly display one of those files. You don't even have to specify how many files there are to choose from. They don't even have to be in sequential order. V-X will automatically detect which ones are available. Essentially, you can use this numbering system for ALL external files described in the ViSiON-X documentation, EXCEPT for files that end in something other than .ANS (such as .BBS, .LST, etc..). Note that some ANSi's were given the .BBS extension to make their position clear. Read the updated list in the dox. You can even have random menus appear now.. MAINM.1, MAINM.2, etc.. . Fixed bug with feedback at matrix. . Replaced the 3D VGA screen saver with a smaller VGA star field. Not the greatest, but it'll do till i can work it so that V-X will display a user's .FLI file as the screen saver. . Forced a prompt to redisplay after the "Please respond you have 2 minutes" message. . Fixed bug with the random .1, .2, ANSi display not displaying the .ANS only formats. . Added an option to always save the files that were in a batch after the download that were not downloaded during that session. That way if you call back later (or another day), you may resume the download where you left off. It's a new command in the File Batch Menu (A to Add). By selecting that command, ViSiON-X will automatically add those files to your batch list (checking to see that the files have not changed (i.e. area has been renumbered or resorted, file removed, etc..). Such inconsisties will result in the file being added (then removed). Why add it if it's not the right file?? Speed issues. No sense in reading the file information twice, first to find out if it's the right file, then to load in it's stats and determine file size, when we can find that out after it's been added with a quick check. . Replaced the unusued "Special Request" file flag to "Fake File". If it's set, the file will appear as a "Fake" in the file listings and not be available for download. The menu number for toggling the special request (now the fake file flag) is still the same, but the command letter has been changed. . Added an option in the config under FILE/MSG that controls the daily download limit (in k) each user will get. A value of 0 disables this value. The internal editor has been modified to allow the sysop to change both the download limit and the current download K left for the day. Note that both these values may be screwed up for all existing users. Use the external user editor's global mode to change them to the correct values. . Upgraded the USEREDIT.EXE to handle the new Download Limit/Left plus all ten msg/file conferences. . Fixed problems with ratio interpretation.. not letting users download even if they've uploaded lots and downloaded nothing. This may have been fixed earlier actually, but I double-fixed it. . Added a new feature to the Xamine Accounts Menu that allows the sysop to search for users who abuse the file system by specifying a U/D ratio and U/D K Ratio. Users with ratios lower (or equal) to any of those two ratios will be displayed in the list. Also modified some of the other Xamine Accounts options so that the sysop can View/Edit them instead of just delete them. Mind ya, he can still delete the user. However, the sysop should use the prompt for deleting users to delete them and NOT the user editor. Nothing bad will happen if the user is deleted inside the user editor, BUT the Xamine Accounts list will show the user as NOT deleted. . Added another new feature to the Xamine Accounts Menu for finding expired accounts (or accounts about to expire). It will display the expiry date and the number of days it has been expired (or in how many days it will expire.. depending on the Maximum # of days before expiry). . Added a prompt that will ask the user the Penalty Factor when a file is deleted and the uploader's credit is being removed. . Fixed bug with Multinode where it was necessary to keep the original NODE.DAT and CHAT.DAT files in the directory at all times or the 2nd node to be loaded with hang. This appeared if the NODEDAT was a RAMDISK and those two files had to be created all the time. There was a slight bug on my part that was responsible for the hanging. Should be ok now. . Fixed bug with the chaining and the YES/NO prompts. If you put "+35," as your input during a file newscan, it should add the 35th file to your batch and press a carriage return at the "Redraw Screen" prompt. Unfortunately, if the last character of the input string is a "," it is lost. This problem has been fixed so now that sort of input will function properly. . Finally finished the work on the pre-liminary version of this great new feature. Basically, it allows a node occupied by a sysop to view/control another node remotely! I.e. my cosysop can log into node 2 and view exactly what node 1 is doing, without node one suspecting anything. Everything node 1 sees and does, node 2 will see. And, node 2 can even provide input for node 1 (such as /O to hang up on the sucker!). . Added support for .LHA files. They will be treated EXACTLY as LZH files are. In some cases, there may be incompatibilities between the two versions and archive viewing may not work properly for those weird LHA files. . Added new option in the config under MULTINODE that controls the frequency of disk polls for determining incoming msgs, pages, port monitors, etc.. The higher the number, the less time wasted reading the node file to determine if a change in one of the prior states has occured. A higher number also means it's less responsive to input from a remote monitor, but that the node itself will run faster (having less time wasted on DISK i/o). A fair number will be in the low hundreds. . Fixed bug with Avatar prompt being asked twice. . Added a new field to each file area. You can now set the level required to list the files in the given area. This way, you can set-up an area that users can upload to without being able to see the files inside. . Adjusted size of description box so that it shows the proper number of columns (40) for the multi-line descriptions. . Fixed bug with file range deleting prompting to physically delete a file, even if it doesn't exist. . Added the Edit Description to the file listings and file newscans part. Also fixed it so that the edit description no longer requires to edit each line of the description individually. You will now see a full description box in which you can scroll around, edit lines, delete lines, change lines, etc... . Fixed bug with the user defined QuoteString keeping the |MR (msg receiver) as an MCI code inside the message instead of replacing it with the message receiver's name right there and then. This cause nested quotes to be displayed incorrectly (i.e. the quoted names would be the same). . Changed all the color selections (in the konfig, and when applying) to a cursor controlled selection box. . Added an option in the CONFIG under INFOFORM SETUP called Require Access Feedback. If it's set to YES, feedback must be left when new users apply or their account will be automatically deleted. Someone requested this one.. don't much see the use in it.. but oh well. And why is it under INFOFORM SETUP?? Beats the hell out of me.. couldn't find anyplace else to put it. . Fixed bug with remote cursoring. . Modified FILE_ID.DIZ so that it doesn't stop after the first blank line it encounters. . Remade look of the input series for Group, Password, and Private For after the batch upload. . fixed it so that the download status (ie. amount of K available for download) shows up when first entering the file section, before a single download and after a single/batch upload. Also made it so that this is not displayed if user is exempt. . Added new option in the CONFIG that allows the sysop to configure the node numbers and speeds of each node. This is used in the WHO IS ON (/WHO) displaying the speed of each node and (for later on) when a user will be restricted to certain nodes, it will display the nodes and their information which the user CAN call. . Updated the /Help command so that it displays the normal help cmds as well as the multinode commands and any special sysop commands to the sysops. . Fixed bugs with newscan and file searches not showing the last file in the scan (sometimes). Also fixed bug with Redrawing the screen displaying one file too many during such sessions. . Fixed bug with users being able to abort the login screen ansi. . Added an option that sets the level required to post a message in each area. Also, you can specify the individual net name for each area. Leaving this field blank will use the one provided in the config. . Fixed bugs with batch file edit/change fucking up. . Fixed bug with newscan/search listing the last file twice. . Fixed bug with the /HOLD and the password thing not changing. . Fixed bug with batch uploads fucking up the SendTo, Password and Group name if user hangs up. . Added another field to the DEFINE NODE INFO in the CONFIG. You can now set an access flag to the node which the user must have to be able to logon to that particular node. If the user does not have this access flag (the same ones used by the file/msg areas), then he will be given a list of numbers he can call (your other nodes) to which he has access. . Added personalized ANSi greetings. Right after the WELCOME.ANS, if there exists a file called .ANS then it will be shown to the user. You can have random ones for that user as well. I.e., for user #3, you could have 3.ANS, 3.1, 3.2, etc.. . Made it possible to turn off the Fading routines. Simply turn Use VGA WFC off. . Modified the Remove All Infoforms command so that it allows you to remove them from a single user instead of all of them. . Updated FIDOMAIL.EXE so that when it exports messages, it converts the |01, |02.. |15 pipe codes into their equivalent ANSi escape codes. . Modified the Chat and Login configs so that they ask the path to the ASC files. . Fixed it so that the file list compilation doesn't check if the files are still physically online and bases it on the stored file information. . Restored the ^P and ^R functionality when editing descriptions so that the previous and old inputs could be used at a touch of a key. . Added a Capture mode to the one line chat. F3 to toggle. . Added an error level of 5 which ViSiON-X will use if the netmail fails. . Fixed bug with remove files from batch aborting if the ?/list option is selected. . Removed the Modem Hangup string from the MODEM CONFIG since V-X turns the modem off to drop carrier and has NEVER as long as I can remember used this option. . Added global FLAG modifying and expiry date modifying into the external user editor. . Added the default file sender/date color to the CONFIG under the COLORS section. . Fixed it so that incomming netmail messages are not counted as posts in the status. . Fixed bug with inaccurate calculation of GIF colors. . Fixed is so that FILE_ID.DIZ's with blank lines at the top are saved without the blank line(s). Also changed it so that you can edit all 10 lines. . Fixed is so that the local sysop can NOW change his level higher.