ÄÄÄÍÍÍð) Telegard Tips (ðÍÍÍÄÄÄ Setting Up and Configuring Telegard 2.7 for Novices and Experienced SysOps with tips, tricks and helpful security measures to help you run a better BBS! Updated March 13, 1993 Edited and Compiled by: John Kristoff The Crossroads BBS in Chicago (312) 587-8756 FidoNet 1:115/743 Ä[Welcome!]Ä Are you setting up a new Telegard BBS? Are you considering setting one up? Maybe you've been running a Telegard BBS and are looking for ways to customize it or learn some more about the ins and outs of what can be done with this powerful program. Whatever your intentions are (less of hacking it), this document can be a powerful reference tool in running Telegard or even any other BBS program. We recommend that you print out a copy of this document so that you will have a hard copy to refer to when working with your setup. It will be much easier if it is on paper when trying something new. Ä[Background]Ä This file was written to help the great number of wannabe SysOps and also the vast number of current sysops with some of the tips, tricks and lessons that I have come across in my SysOp lifetime. I've been SysOping since July of 1991 and have been in and out of the computer world since 1983 when I wrote my first BASIC program on a TRS-80 in grade school. Much of the information presented here is directly from my experience over the past couple years and from the messages and text files written by other SysOps that are trying to make your life easier, because I remember very clearly what it was like to start out knowing very little. I've tried very hard to provide a accurate and extensive collection of information for your disposal. Do with it as you wish, but please be careful when trying something new and take every precaution to protect yourself and your system. I apologize for any ommisions to the sources of this information but it is seemingly impossible to recollect and track where all of it came from. As far as I'm concerned, all information presented here is public domain and you can do with it what you please but just don't hold me responsible if your copy of this file is altered or inaccurate in any way. This document will perhaps never be in a final, complete form. It can probably always use another tip, or get more basic for certain users. I may have left out a great deal of information that could have or should have been included. For those reading this, I would appreciate any feedback as to how you perceived this file and if it helped you or not. Much of the basic tasks that are covered in Telegard's own documentation has sometimes been clarified here and sometimes it has not. I assume some level of intelligence for all that can at least read. However, if you find anything that should have been included, the only way it'll probably make it in this document is if you let me know that it should be. ** Please note ** When you see a pair of brackets such as [...] this indicates additional information is forthcoming or as a reminder to myself that I need to add something. The TGTips file has been created from scratch almost entirely on my own except for some screen captures and saved messages I stumbled on from various locations. I used SLED.COM by Sam Wilmott for all the text editing work. A editor that has surpassed the test of time. I have considered creating this document using a HyperText or similiar program for an easy presentation to it's users, however, with my own nitpickiness and my lack of wanting to pay a registration fee to distribute it in such a form, it will stay in the ASCII text format as long as I am on the project. If others wish to interface it with a HyperText or similiar program, contact me if there's anything I can do to make your job easier. The structure of this document is in two parts. The first part will cover all the editorial notes and dicussions about Telegard how-to kinds of things. The second part will provide you with examples to all the various solutions you need that include but are not limited to batch files, modem setups, and program configurations. If you have the time, please read through the first part completely. You may read about something interesting that you would have otherwise missed. The second part can be used as a reference to the problems you have as you encounter them. My enduring thanks to the SysOps of the world who really understand what BBSing is all about and to you this file is dedicated. I'm also indebted to all the Telegard SysOps who have either directly or indirectly helped with this document's creation. Without you this document would never be. [...Modem reference, Status.Dat, Color codes...] [...SysOp level gets 2 minutes online, arj/zip backup...] [...Echomail, networks, mailers, modems, etc...] [...guest accounts, co-sysops...] [...programming & utils ideas...] [...quick login, selectable menus..] I. Ä[Getting Started]Ä For the Telegard BBS, you must obtain these files as the bare minimum. These will help you to evaluate the program and take your first look to judge if this is what you really want to do and if so, with this particular program. As of this writing, version 2.7 is the most current release of Telegard. The main package for 2.7 is usually found in an archive named TG27.*. However, the full documentation is not usually included in this archive so you'll need to also get a copy of the latest documentation as if well if it's not included. As of this writing, there is a full documentation file for version 2.5i and a upgrade document for version 2.7. Make sure you have both of these. Version 2.5i's documentation can sometimes be found with the archive name TGBBSDOC.*. The 2.7 upgrade document should be included with TG27.*. For version 2.7 and for many BBS programs, you will need to install a FOSSIL driver on your system. A FOSSIL driver is a device driver or TSR usually loaded in your CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT file at startup that interfaces your BBS program and some door programs with the serial communications of your system. Some FOSSIL programs are listed at the end of this document. For more information on what a FOSSIL driver is and how it works, refer to the FOSSIL driver's documentation. For a complete listing of the required files with descriptions and comments, send Appendix [....] at the end of this file. Recommended or helpful files to be used with your BBS will also be listed as well. [... BNU170.ZIP - David Nugent's BNU FOSSIL driver* ...] [... DSZ1109.ZIP - Chuck Forsberg's Zmodem protocol ...] [... Recommended files before installation ...] [... TGU_140.ZIP TGSEC17.ZIP TGPROT6A.ZIP TGPROT6B.ZIP ...] Ä[Paging SysOp! Help!]Ä Too often new SysOps will run to their nearest BBS where the SysOp chatted with them once, or answered one question for them, in attempt to ask a million questions that could be found with the new SysOp's own resourcefullness if he/she took the time to do so. Most SysOps don't mind helping out others when they have problems, but it is rather boring to have to explain every little thing about a program or how something works when it can be found in the manual. Try to keep in mind that although the SysOps are a great resource to beg and bother for help, try to go to them only after you've exhausted your own means of finding the answer by yourself. You can benefit by participating in message bases that directly or indirectly support your program and deal with ins and outs of your software, always double check the program's documentation, 50% of the time, the solution to your problem is there. Lastly, try to show some patience. Is it really a life or death situation that you can't figure out how get a certain game online running? Don't page your neighborly SysOps for these small problems, leaving a message is just as easy and may even be better so the 'neighborly' SysOp can look up some info about your specific problem if need be. Ä[What to learn and how]Ä One of the best ways to learn about something in this modeming world of ours is to read up on it. If you are having trouble making your modem work, check out the text files or education file base of a good BBS and see if there are any tutorials on modems. Browse your nearest bookstore for a 'hardware bible' to learn in the ins and outs of your computer, take up C or Pascal so you can learn how programs work from an author's perspective or just to make your own utilities, participate in any user groups or online conferences that sound interesting and helpful to the topic at hand, and lastly, when you've accumulated all this vast knowledge about a subject, write about it and pass it around to your friends like this document. Some topics you may want to investigate or think about as you get into SysOping might include modems, protocols, FidoNet, echomail, serial ports, hard drive technologies, UART chips, popular communication programs, compression, security, back ups, CD-ROMs, operating systems, viruses and so on. Ä[System Requirements]Ä Your uses of your system more or less determine your actual requirements in hardware. There are a couple of general guidelines that you can follow. First, have your own dedicated phone line. In some people's eyes, a part time BBS isn't really a serious place to visit. Not too many people want to worry about what time of day they're making their call or whether they have to call on a weekend or not. A part time BBS can be a good introduction into the hobby to see if it's something you want to invest your time and money on, but for an extended period, you should really move to a full time system if you want to get the most out of the BBS experience. How fast should your modem be? Can you afford to buy a fast quality modem? If your answer is yes, then do so right away. One of the biggest attractions of any BBS is if it supports high speeds. Prices of modems are continuing to come down as the speeds increase. Some companies offer a SysOp discount of up to half off the regular price of some of their top models. 2400 bps BBSs are slowly becoming ancient history as prices fall and user demands increase. [...SysOp price list...] Can you dedicate your computer full time to your BBS? If your answer is no, then your BBS will be seriously limited. You can however invest in some multitasking products if your hardware can handle it. The BBS computer doesn't have to be a 486/50, ATs still make fine systems considering what they are coupled with. The two components that make the biggest difference are the modems and the storage space. We just talked about modems, so let's mention hard drive space now. Your hard drive capacity should reflect your needs or wants of having files online. Do you want to have thousands of files online? Are you going to carry large sized files such as adult graphics or music files? Do you want to be known as the place to go to find anything? If so, then too much hard drive space will never be enough. Here's a very rough formula for determing your hard drive space requirements. I tried to generalize for a general setup as much as possible, the results could vary greatly from system to system. It tries to predict how much space you may require for your BBS. [...fix...] BBS: 10 Utils: 5 < 100 files: 20 < 1000 files: 50 > 1000 files: 60 meg per 1000 files FidoNet: 10 < 5 echomail: 2 < 25: 10 < 50: 20 OS/2 or Win: 35 Doors: 300K per door You might want to consider what I call the 15/15 rule. This rule says that you should have either 15 megs or 15% of you total hard drive space free at all times, whichever is greater. This is in case of some unexpected heavy traffic such as someone uploading a large collection of files. Make a habit of cleaning up your hard drive regularly. Purge all your unused or outdated files that you will not need. Back up anything that you are not sure about onto tape or floppy. Use one of the popular archive compression programs to save space on your hard drive if you must keep them there. You can unarchive them when you need them. Invest in a hard drive utility such as Stacker to compress all your files on your hard drive. Keep in mind however, that the more compressed files you already have on your hard drive, the less a program like Stacker will be able to help you. Invest in a CD-ROM drive if you want to make a lot of files available for download to free up your hard drive space. Invest in a tape backup which can be used to automatically restore files nightly by a door program that allows your user's to request offline files. Ä[System Maintenance]Ä If you haven't already caught on, operating and maintaning a BBS system is a lot of hard work and usually expensive. To keep your system running smoothly, efficiently and at peak performance, investing in quality software and hardware is a must. That's not to say you need to buy the latest version of every commercial utility on the market. Hardly that is the case. Often enough, some of the best written and most widely used programs are shareware, freeware, or public domain. Any of the compression programs serve as an example. Possibly the hardest working piece of equipment on your system, and maybe the one most prone to errors in many ways will be your hard drive. For most practical purposes what you use to handle the chores of maintaining your hard drive is up to you. Find something that you can work with easily and quickly if you haven't already. Some of the key operations that you will want to do on your hard drive follows. Degrament your hard drive on a regular basis. As time goes on, files become scattered all over your hard disk which makes the reading and writing of files on your hard drive slower because of the time it takes to move to the next location on the drive. Check your hard drive for errors. This step can and should be done along with the defragmentation step. Occasionally files will become cross-linked or lost due to software errors, power outages, system crashes and so on. Backup all your BBS related files on a regular basis. This is one of the safest forms of protecton against all drastic situations. Employ virus protection for your system. This can range from simple virus scanners to TSR protection. Keep in mind you can never be too cautious. Ask any SysOp who has ever suffered a major hard drive crash, virus infection or other drastic situation. No matter how good you think your equipment is, it's never 100% reliable in all shapes and sizes. Ä[When problems arise]Ä Sometimes no matter how hard you try, your system will fail. Such is life. Sometimes the only thing you can do is start over. If your crash is so severe that you cannot bring your BBS up within a few hours but rather a few days or even weeks, make an effort to get the word out to other bulletin boards in the area so that your users will know what happened. They like to be kept informed. People may laugh at you because of it, but it's a honest and sensible solution to keep them in the know and when they can expect you to be back up. Some of your local SysOps will usually even help you out in case you lost a lot of files. Many a times they will give you unlimited downloads to get back your 'stash' and provide you with configuration setups in case you lost or forget yours. Ä[Before Install.Exe]Ä Anxious to get started yet? What do you mean you already started and went through the installation process? Jeez are you ever impatient. Well, for those that didn't, or in case you think you might have to do it again, please read on. Ä[SysOp Checklist]Ä Get out a notebook and a pen, we're going to take down some information on your system. This part is very important. It takes very little effort but can provide you with a wealth of information and you'll be surprised at how valuable it will be later on. Store the info in a safe place so you don't lose it. You can even keep a copy of it online in a database program too, but you should have at least one hard copy if you do. Computer Model: Gateway 2000 CPU: i386/33MHz Hard Drive: Conner 210 megs Modem Model: US Robotics Dual Standard 16.8Kbps Modem speed: 16,800 bps Modem COM port: COM1 Internal modem: Yes/No UART chip: NS16550AFN BIOS: AMI 1988 v1.10 RAM: 5 Vendor: Gateway Vendor voice: (312) 555-5555 Vendor BBS: (312) 555-1212 Monitor model: Song Multisync Display Adapter: SVGA Game port: No Keyboard: 101 extended OS: DOS 5.0 CMOS Info: etc. Ä[Directory structure]Ä A key security protection method before you even accept your first caller is right here in the beginning of this file. The generic BBS documentation usually gives an example to install your BBS in a subdirectory such as C:\BBS but if you are reading this, then you will know that using the default directory structure can be a grave mistake. You may be wondering how something as silly as where you put your BBS files on your hard drive can make any kind of difference as to how your BBS is run. That is a good question, let me give you the following scenario. Someone asks you how you setup your BBS and you tell them exactly what you did and even give them examples to your startup files saying "I switch to my C:\BBS directory and..." It really doesn't matter how they find out what your directory structure looks like, the important thing is, if they know it, they can use the information against you and your system. Now the person that knows your how your BBS is setup decides to upload a really neat game for you to play. You appreciate the upload and even give it a try. You run the program and it all seems just great, thanks for the upload you think to yourself. Now consider this, before the game actually began play, it went into your C:\BBS directory and copied a couple of your data files over some of your download files. For example, the program ran without you knowing this command: Copy C:\Bbs\Status.Dat C:\Bbs\Dl\Games\Game.Zip Now the next person that goes to download Game.Zip will have a copy of a vital data file. Think of the possibilities. If this doesn't scare you, wait til you read more about the security issues up and coming in this file. Don't run away yet though, there are plenty of things you can do to protect yourself. The first and foremost decision you should make is a name for your main BBS directory. Please do not name it C:\BBS or C:\TELEGARD, that is much too easy for a hacker to guess. Come up with something that nobody could guess on the first million tries. If this means that you ran Install.Exe in C:\BBS already, you should consider a re-install or a change in configuration. Whichever is easier of course. Just as much as you should have a map handy when taking a cross country road trip, you should be mapping out your directory structure and plans for the BBS. Try to document everything you can to avoid pitfalls later. You will also need directories for downloads, uploads, various utilities, door programs and games, protocols and a host of other files. Keeping them well organized and known to only the SysOp is very important. Ä[Start-up files]Ä Before your BBS will actually work, you will need to make sure that you have some of the necessary boot up information for your system installed and configured. In your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, add this line (or compatible): SET DSZLOG=C:\BBS\DSZTEMP.LOG This sets the protocol program DSZ's log location to the file and directory you specify. In your CONFIG.SYS file add these lines (or compatible): FILES=30 BUFFERS=40 DEVICE=C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS The first line specifies that a total of 30 files may be open at one time. Telegard holds many data files and log files open during a session and this is the minimum recommended. The second line BUFFERS=40 tells DOS to reserve buffer space sort of like how a cache works. 40 is the recommended minimum. ANSI.SYS is a device driver that comes with the DOS operating system and is required in order to see all the pretty colors and graphic capabilities of Telegard. Other ANSI drivers are available and should be used instead of DOS's default ANSI.SYS. For those alternatives, please see the appendix [...] In order for Telegard to interface with the modem and com port you'll need to obtain and install a FOSSIL driver. These programs allow for Telegard to interface with the modem and communications port via the FOSSIL driver. You'll find common FOSSIL drivers to use and example setups in the appendix [...] In a later section covering advanced Telegard setups, we will discuss alternative start ups, utilities, and so on. For the beginners, the above will work just fine until you are ready to optimize your system. Ä[Lock Ups]Ä Have you ever had your computer just lock up on you? Then you'll know the danger of it happening to your BBS when you least expect it. Especially right after you leave for that 2 week vacation to the Bahamas. There are what I call two kinds of hung systems. The first one can be easily cured. I call it the Warm Hang. All that is required is that you press and you're back in business. Then there is the worst of the two, the Cold Hang. The Cold Hang requires that you cold boot the machine, I mean power down and power back on to get it running again. You can protect yourself against the Warm Hang by the installation of a "reboot manager". These handy utilities will monitor your COM port for phone rings or a carrier and force your computer to reboot under certain circumstances such as no incoming rings for more than 8 hours. [...Use, which ones, etc...] [... of them now. I've seen WATCHDOG, WATCHKIT, DVGAUARD, ABOOT, PHONEV4 and so on. Most of them have proven to have limited ...] Ä[Multitasking]Ä Using a multitasker on your BBS computer can greatly improve your effectiveness as a SysOp. Many SysOps use one because it's the only computer they have and they need to get some non-BBS work done. Instead of taking the phone off-hook and disallowing callers, a multitasker keeps the BBS online and open. [...also good if you do have a second computer to do maintenance while user is online...] Depending on the multitasker, the system requirements can vary. Following are some discussions of the three most popular multitasking platforms for PCs. Ä[DESQview]Ä DESQview is one of the more popular multitaskers for SysOps running DOS based systems because it does such a good job of multitasking DOS applications especially with high speed modems. One of the problems of other multitaskers is that they can sometimes be a lot of trouble with high speed modems. The system requirements for DESQview are probably less than for any other current multitasking system. I have a 386/33 with 4 Megs of RAM and that is more than enough for DESQview. Of course more RAM and a faster machine never hurt because it's nice to have things like RAM drives and caches to help improve your system performance, but overall, a setup similiar to that is great. [...setups...] Ä[Windows]Ä I know of very few SysOps who run their BBS under Windows. From my experience, which with Windows is not extensive, tells me that DESQview, plain 'ole DOS or even OS/2 would be a wiser choice for your operating system. To be one the technical side for a moment, Windows uses a multitasking method known as cooperative multitasking. This means that each individual application in Windows tells the operating system (in this case Windows) when it can pass on the CPU for other applications to use. This is in contrast to pre-emptive multitasking in which the operating system (in these cases OS/2 and DESQview) will handle when a application gets to use the CPU, also known as time-slicing. You tell the operating system how long each program should get the CPU under these conditions. Cooperative multitasking then leads to some problems. One could be that the programmer demands a lot of CPU time for his programs and thus takes away from others. Another is that DOS programs do not usually have Windows-aware routines built in. With the current release of Windows 3.1, multitasking with a high speed modem is next to impossible. A computer chip found on the motherboard, serial card or in some internal modems called the UART is the backbone of your asynchronous communications. When you multitask at high speeds, you need a UART chip that can store the fast moving data coming in from your modem when your system may be busy with another application. The current UART chip for this is the NS16550AFN. Many computer systems come with the 16450 now-a-days. However, situations as we are mentioning, the 16550 is in most cases needed because it provides a 16 byte buffer to store incoming data or it may be lost causing CRC or other errors which will cut your cps rate down substantially. If the above comments where above your ahead or you had some trouble understanding any of it, I recommend finding some text files on the subject or join a communications or technical conference on your favorite BBS and ask for help. Because of Windows methods, there is little support for either BBS programs or communications programs using it. This isn't to say people aren't using Windows. Almost anything is possible and people will find ways to do things that seem to break the laws of nature as long as there are computers, however, the mainstream seems to prefer other operating systems. [...setting up with Windows...] Ä[OS/2]Ä I know very few SysOps who run their systems under OS/2 but the numbers are slowly climbing. I don't know of any Telegard SysOp during so as of yet, but I believe it is possible. [...] Ä[Using 4DOS]Ä 4DOS is a COMMAND.COM replacement which adds a lot of commands and improvements over existing MS-DOS commands and batch files. Many SysOps find 4DOS an invaluable utility along side their BBS system. Some of the stengths of 4DOS are invaluable to SysOps because SysOps spend so much time dealing with DOS and batch files. The one drawback to 4DOS is of course the registration of it. If you are perfectly comfortable and content running plain DOS there may be no reason to use it simply because it may be a unnecessary expense. However, I do recommend you at least take a look at it and see what it has to offer. It can provide you with a lot of unique ways to improving and customizing your system with things that you normally wouldn't be able to do as easily. [...4dos setup and example stuff...] Ä[Front End Mailers]Ä Front end mailers are programs that will handle the answering of the phone to deal with BBS networking. You can install a front end mailer even if you don't join a network, but it may be useless to carry the weight of the mailer's files on your hard drive space if you don't really need it. On the other hand, many front mailers are as powerful or more so than Telegard when it comes to interfacing with the modem and when setting up events. If however you plan on joining a network like FidoNet, it would be to your benefit to try to setup FrontDoor at the start so you'll have gained the experience in using it by the time you join a network. Examples and help for the mailer program is located in Appendix [...] II. Ä[Installation]Ä So now you've created a totally ridiculous name for your BBS directory, and are ready to get things up and running. The Upgrade.Doc file explains how to install Telegard easy enough, so there is no reason I should have to repeat it here. One thing to keep in mind, is to change the location of your Download Directory to something like C:\Files or similiar. Put it off your root directory. When you start the install program, first check the path names (1) and change them to suit your needs. You probably shouldn't change any of them except (0) base directory, (4) system/chat logs..., (7) temporary files, (9) download directory. The others may be needed to stay directly off the main BBS directory with their associated names as many TG utilities will have to find files in these directores and they may not be smart enough to know they aren't the default subdirectories off the bbs root directory. Goto the Configure BBS Options (2) and put in your name and all the personal info, making sure you select the proper COM port for you modem and highest bps rate you support. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be reading this or attempting to run a BBS yet. Then when you are absolutely sure you have everything setup properly and the way you want, go ahead and Start the install by pressing 3 from the install main menu. You're off! Recreating your STATUS.DAT will be explained later, so don't delete your install.exe file when the install process is done. [...] Don't worry if you screwed up any of the directories or info about who you are, your network (if any), BBS name, etc. You can change that in TG as you will see later. To start up Telegard, be in the main BBS directory and just type 'Telegard -k' without the single quotes. The -k tells the BBS to ignore the modem for now. We will configure the modem later. Normally you would just enter 'Telegard' without the single quotes to start, and Telegard would try to initialize the modem. Since setting up the modem is usually the trickiest part for most new SysOps, we'll attack that later in this file. Well how do you like the way Telegard looks? If you don't, don't worry you can change that screen, but that's for another day. Most importantly is that you start configuring your BBS so it can start taking calls right away, right? Well sort of, we need to make sure everything works, and is setup the way you need it to be, so don't get impatient in the next few lessons. You can logon to your BBS now as a local user. As it says in the Waiting For Caller screen (WFC screen) you just hit the spacebar. Take your time, you don't want to miss anything. It'll prompt you Y/N/F which stands for Yes I want to logon, No I don't want to logon, or Fast logon (which skips all the opening screens and formal introductions that the normal user sees. You'll need your personal password and the system password to logon when answering Yes from the Waiting For Caller screen (WFC screen). Unless you've already changed it, your password should be SYSOP and the system password is also SYSOP and you'll need the last four digits of the phone number, unless you've changed that one, it'll be 0000. We'll change these shortly. You should press Y to logon normally. Assuming you have ANSI.SYS or compatible driver loader you can go ahead through the welcome and introductions. Read your mail from the Telegard team, and configure your account when it asks. Now take some time to look around the BBS, Don't mess with too many of the commands yet, especially if you're not familiar with them. Just browse through the menus so you can see how it looks. Pretty generic looking huh? Well we'll change that later. For now, just be psyched that you are the first user of your own BBS! Ä[Configuration Basics]Ä Let's take care of a few things right off the bat, after you've logged off your BBS, let's add some pertinent info that will be needed. First let's enter in the User Editor who you are. From the Waiting For Caller screen (WFC screen) hit 'U'. You will now see a pile of information for a guy named SYSOP. Hey that's you! Well let's make it a little more personable and tell him your real name, and other information, oh yeah, most importantly, change your password!! If you leave it at SYSOP you're asking for trouble. You can hit '?' without the single quotes at the User Editor prompt for help. For starters just get your basic information (address, name, handle, password, phone number, date of birth, etc.) you can learn what the all the other stuff does by re-reading Main.Doc at a later time. The user editor in Telegard isn't very attractive and it'll take some time to remember all those commands, you might want to learn a couple of the basics before you begin. One more place we want to configure really quick is where Telegard specifies the system password. From the WFC screen hit 'P' for System Configuration. From the System Configuration menu hit 'B' for File Paths & BBS Configuration. You'll be at another menu and command prompt. Now hit 'F' for BBS passwords. You'll see three choices (A, B, and C). The most important for now is A. Select it and change it to a new password that only you will know. When finished, you can Quit (pressing Q) until you get back to the WFC screen. I hope you're remembering or writing these passwords down. The first one we changed was your personal password, the second one was a system password. There is a difference. Ä[Modem Configuration]Ä Welcome to (probably) the most difficult part of configuring Telegard. If you can setup up the modem properly without too much hassle, consider yourself lucky. But if this part takes you longer than you had hoped, with lots of frustration, you aren't alone, most SysOps experienced your same pain and disappointment. If you don't know much about modems and the AT command set you will start learning. This is probably going to be as hard to write as it is to setup for each individual. Remember, patience is key. If you read through this, all the modem manuals you have, the MAIN.DOC, UPGRADE.DOC, your Archie comics and still have no clue why it isn't working then try to find a fellow TG sysop (a friendly one, many hate to be bothered with the new-starts) or find a TG board that carries the ITCnet which supports Telegard or a TG beta site that carries the private Telegard Support area linked directly to the author Martin Pollard. It may take you awhile before you get everything to work properly, so please don't start posting all kinds of ANSI ads after you installed TG. Get a couple people you know who are willing to try calling dozens of times to connect to your system over and over. They'll also have to test out all your door programs, protocols and whatever else you're doing. So make sure everything works before opening shop. Any BBS that doesn't have Zmodem working because the sysop hasn't figured it out yet gets me to say goodbye faster than logging onto the PIRATES RULE BBS. First let's make a basic check. You have installed a FOSSIL driver in your Autoexec.Bat, Config.Sys, etc., whichever applies. You may need to reboot your system for the FOSSIL to activate if you haven't already. You also have a modem installed and working (You had better not be reading this if you don't ). Have your modem manual, Main.Doc and your rabbit's foot handy. If you have a standard 2400 hayes compatible modem, try starting Telegard normaily by entering Telegard from the main BBS directory and seeing if the modem initializes properly. If you see that a string of about 30 characters doesn't go away after a short while, chances are you have some work to do. If it does, you probably still have some work to do, but it shouldn't be too bad. The modem setup in Telegard is accessed through P - Sysetm Configuration from the WFC screen. Then from there, it's selection A - Modem Configuration. This is where the fun begins. Learn this screen well. If you feel a little uncomfortable with this screen, take time to scan through your modem manual taking in all the jargon. You'll want to make sure of a couple of things right off the bat. Where is your modem located? If it's not COM1 then find out which port it is if you don't know. Another option you need to know is the maximum bps rate of your modem. 2400 is usually the standard for most SysOps and it was for me when I started. Telegard needs for the modem to return numeric codes instead of verbose codes. When you call a BBS it usually will say CONNECT 2400 or similiar, that is a verbose code. A numeric code is just a numeric number representing that same response. The AT command for numeric codes is V0 which is already set in the default modem initialzation string of TG. Another AT command to keep in mind is the Echo command. Use E0 in the initialization string to turn the echo off. If you're reading this and saying 'AT commands? What are those?', then you're in trouble. But if you're a glutton for punishment and you still want to go on, they are commands sent to your modem telling it how to act. In a nutshell. Here's a list of common registers that you will want to check and setup accordingly. Double check with your modem manual that these are the same for your modem. S0=0 usually the standard setting, this says, set the amount of times the phone rings before picking up. S7=60 sets the amount of time that the modem waits for a connection, this says 60 seconds. Settings from 30 to 60 are common. And some command command settings: E0 sets the echo of modem commands to off M0 sets the modem speaker off V0 sets result codes to numeric (used for Telegard, when using a front end mailer, this may be need to be V1) Ä[Common Modem Tips]Ä If you have a 2400 with MNP or v.42bis, you may want to disable both protocols (MNP and v.42bis) because most of your files that you transfer to/from users will be in compressed format and will be actually be slower in transfer speeds using those protocols. MNP 5 is a compression protocol that will try to compress whatever is being sent. If you are downloading GAME.ZIP for instance, MNP will try to compress your .ZIP file further. However, ZIP and other archive utilities are far better at compressing than MNP 5, hence you'll be losing out, actually increasing your transfer time because MNP is providing more overhead by trying to compress something it can't. Same with v.42bis but v.42bis is smarter in that if it realizes it can't compress something, it won't try. There is still however a minute overhead with this protocol, but may be worth it to use anyways. If you have a high speed modem 9600+ you should lock your COM port at the highest port speed supported. Dual Standard 16.8Ks can use 38,400 and the DS 14.4 can use 19,200. Keep studying that modem manual. If you are still having problems with Telegard and your modem, contact your closest Telegard support for further help. Don't give up to easily. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with different initialization codes. Just write down each one and note the effect it had so you can learn from what you're doing. Once you conquer this part of Telegard, everything else will fall into place. I have included many examples of modem configurations from other SysOps in this file. Hopefully one will pertain to yours or be somewhat simliar. I cannot vouch for the completeness and accuracy of each because I have no possible way to test them. All that is known is that they seem to work for those who submitted them. Check the modem setup appendix [...] III. Preparing for your first caller You finally got your modem to initialize, you're had your friend call your BBS to see if it would answer the phone and it did. Now, you have other problems and things to worry about. What now you say? Well how about all the different protocols, beefing up security and creating the access levels to assign to your users, putting up online programs, getting files online, creating message areas and all kinds of other fun stuff. Ä[Protocols]Ä When you first starting calling BBSs, what were you looking to get out of the experience? Most likely it was files, and lots of them. Ok, so now you need to install your protocols so your users can get some of your files you have leeched from other BBSs. Did you get TGPROTA and TGPROT6B like I suggested? If yes, then fine, you can install that, if not, that's ok too because you don't need it. Remember to get a copy of DSZ? Good, you'll need it. Go through your DSZ manual and become basically familiar with how it works and some basic commands introduction (Also, please consider registering this program in the future, you'll use it, so you should be paying for it.) If you install the TGPROT package or you just look at all the default protocols that are setup in Telegard, you might be wondering if you need all these. This depends on you and your users, I currently only have about 4 or 5 protocols. Zmodem, Ymodem, Xmodem, and HS/Link. I haven't had any complaints as to where all my protocols are because the others are rarely used. It's up to you if you want to keep them or delete them now. I can almost guarantee that they probably all don't work on the first shot. For most, they hardly ever do. I only have XModem, YModem, ZModem and HS/Link as my protocols, and I have gotten zero complaints or questions to install others. You may want to toggle the ones you're not sure of as inactive in the Protocol setup menu. That way you can go back and put them in if you so desire. Before moving any further with protocols, you might consider using GSZ.EXE instead of DSZ.EXE. Why, and what is it? GSZ is basically the same as DSZ with a few small differences. The most notable difference is the graphical interface. GSZ displays a bar graph of the transfer on your end so you can see how far along the tranfser is coming. It also has MobyTurbo which provides a little bit of enhanced performance and is compatible with DSZ in every respect. For more information, locate a copy of it as GSZxxxx.ZIP on your favorite BBS. Before you start allowing file transfers, setup your batch protocols as speciifed in the TGSEC17 file. This is important for the secuirty of your BBS. The rest of your protocols should be working fine as long as you have installed DSZ properly and, if you wish to install the TGPROT package, it should install everything for you as well. For further help in setting up your basic protocols, contact a Telegard support site. Don't forget to have a little patience, read the docs, and give it a few tries before bothering the other SysOps. A llttle bit on HS/Link and Bi-Modem will be discussed later. Ä[Access Levels]Ä Telegard assigns a security level setting to every user and you can customize how it is set for each person. You should figure out what kind of security levels you want for your users. Take this time now to review the Main.Doc file for a discussion on security levels (i.e. SL). Once you have the basic understanding of what a security level is you'll want to define your security levels for your system. There are two main security levels for your users. These are called a validated user security level, and a unvalidated user security level. A validated user is a user that you have verified (by whatever definition that means for your standards) and have given a default 'normal' user access level. A unvalidated user is one who is usually on for the first or whom you haven't approved for full 'normal' user access as of yet. Security levels can go from 0 to 255 with 255 being the sysop (you). Only one person should have 255 and when first opening your BBS, don't give anyone a access level of 100 or more until you know what you're doing. Again, plan out what kind of general access levels you would like to have on your board. How many different levels of access do you want? As a start you use the two basic validated and unvalidated to start. You can define other higher levels for special users (such as visiting SysOps) later. Now what should you allow unvalidated and validated users access to you? Well it is up to you, but I suggest for now, you should only allow minimal access to unvalidated users. This is in case a hacker has discovered you as a new SysOp and tries to take advantage of you. Later when you have your board under control you can allow more access to new users if you'd like. I allow access to everyone on my board (just about) to new users. (fyi) Above are the basics of security levels. With Telegard you can change your security levels as much as you want and even make unvalidated users have the same access as validated users. When you start to learn about AR flags you can do even more. The possibilities are endless. If I can ramble for a quick second... I don't like the sysops who force me to call just to leave a application letter and not be able to look around. I have to wait for verification to see if I want to call your BBS? No thanks. I guess my thinking leans more to the old timers of allowing open systems for people to explore. Especially if someone has to call long distance just to apply to a BBS. Come on guys, this is a hobby, let us have fun with it. I know your reasons for doing it, you'll get all kinds of bad users on your system taking advantage of you. Big deal, if you make it so they can't harm your system (or close to impossible at least), you'll be just as well off and have a nicer reputation then the guy who scrutinizes every user right down to their birth date. If you're just starting out, ignore this paragraph because it may make a whole lot of sense for you to restrict access to first time callers. I don't want you to become a victim from a security hole that you have not patched up yet. Now how do you allow access to various functions, menus and commands? Well I don't have to go into this, it's all in the Main.Doc that comes with Telegard. Please refer to this on how to use them. Keep in mind that there are different places you can allow access to certain things. For instance you can define a command to allow access to anyone with a security level of 20, let's say the command to leave e-mail. You can also restrict this command for each individual user in the User Editor. Search around the board and you'll discover all the various ways of using these types of things. Take the time to look over the TGSEC17 file for setting up the security levels. You can get fancy and as complicated as you wish, check out the TG support echoes mentioned earlier for help in customizing your system. I tend to give access to file downloading/uploading to new users. Most of my door games and only the local message bases. I have not yet had a cracker crash or hack this setup (but it still may be possible, all hacker and crasher types, please try to hack my system, I enjoy a good game of who is smarter). I figure I should not let unvalidated users access networked and personal mail for the main reason that they could put all kinds of unwanted junk in them before I get a chance to stop them from going out. Say a user posts 10 messages of juvenille foul language in the Communications echo on FidoNet, well that is gonna make my BBS look pretty bad if it's echoed out all over the world. Just be smart people. Don't give them a chance to make you look stupid, on the other hand, people don't like to waste a call to a system that is closed so tight they can't do anything but leave you a comment and logoff. Oh, and if you're wondering why I allow new users to post in my local bases, well you'd have to see my regular users to see why it wouldn't bother them no matter what people posted. The more rank material for them, the better. Ä[Security]Ä One thing about Telegard (or any BBS system for that matter) is that security can be a problem. There are a lot of ways a cracker can crash or get into your operating system with a generic Telegard BBS setup that hasn't been fixed or secured from abuse. But all (that I know of at this time) ways of a cracker trying to wreck havoc on your system can be overcome just by tweaking things a tad bit and using common sense which is the most important of all. This includes nothing fancy, just some common sense. Sometimes even a little imagination. You really need to take every precaution in protecting your BBS. The most important file to help you in this situation is to read and use TGSEC17. You should have obtained a good copy of this file already. It includes a alternative ANSI driver that will prevent ANSI bombs (that is when ANSI commands change the screen colors to black on black for example, which is not good if you want to see what's going on, or ANSI commands can also redefine keys so hitting may actually be sending a /G to Telegard. not good, it doesn't hurt anything, but it sure can be frustrating). It also includes a directory file that you should put in your GFILES directory, and add to your files bases with only you the SysOp having access. It will help prevent uploads of certain filenames that could crash your system (don't forget to toggle Search for Duplicate File in the setup). Just some other tips from my experience with security that are not included in TGSEC: 1. In the message base editor from the WFC screen, type 'B' and change the minimum security levels for email. The reason for this is simple. One problem with the current release of Telegard 2.7 is that if a new user has access to personal mail, he can delete his own new user application. This may not cause a problem for you, but why would you want him to do that. You can still allow them access to post personal mail, but not read it. They wouldn't have any to read anyways. If you're out of town for a few days and your nightly events pack the message bases, his letter will be gone for ever. Then perhaps he would send another letter asking why you haven't validated him yet and being a great SysOp that I know you, you rush to validate him and apologize that you must have forgotten. 2. Be very careful when you recieve uploaded files. The only way you can totally protect yourself from a virus infection or malicious file is to not run it. I personally use very few files that are uploaded to me for a couple of reasons. Mainly because I have obtained all the files I want or need on my own. But to be safe there are a few precautions you can take. You can setup a program that will test and check all you uploaded files for integrity or viruses (more on this later). Keep in mind, that whatever method you use, you should make sure the upload verifier is accessing your archive utilities and scanners from a pre- defined directory. This is because if the user uploads SCAN.EXE in one of his archives and it contains a virus, the upload verifier could run the SCAN.EXE that's infected if it doesn't run it from a specified directory. [...upload checker not recommended...] You can also not validate files until you manually inspect them. If they look at all suspicious, you can just delete them. If you feel guilty, you can still give your user upload credit, but it doesn't mean you have to keep the file. Someone tried uploading a virus to me once, and that was a mistake. What I usually do is first see who uploaded the file, I never validate a file based on who uploaded however, just because they may be your best friend, doesn't mean their files aren't infected. But if you know who uploaded the file personally, at least you have someone you can hold accountable. Next, unarchive the file in it's own directory, unless it's an executable file, I don't touch it, I usually delete them saying .EXE, .COM or other similiar extension is not an allowed upload. Some programs do come as .EXE but you can get those on your own so you can protect yourself. Scan the file for viruses, set your archiver to scan all files not just certain extensions such as .EXE, .COM, .OVR. That way, if someone created a file with a virus and renamed it with a different extension in order for a install program to rename it back to a executable, you'll protect yourself even further. [...use more than 1 scanner...] [...check for pklited files...] Next, I use a utility that dumps all text of the .EXE or .COM file. This takes all readable text and I can examine it to look for strings which may indicate a virus, hacked program or similiar occurence. This is how I located a trojan program that SCAN.EXE didn't detect. It contained some nice swear words and it told me how dumb I was. Good thing the uploader was dumber than I was. That reminds me, you probably don't want to rely on one virus scanner. The good thing about SCAN.EXE is that it is good, but not perfect, it's hard to be perfect in the virus game. For sysops, you don't have to register it, McAfee's way of saying thank you. Too bad all software wasn't that way. :) Keep current on the virus protectant software as well. Next, if you've gotten this far, I would check the file's documentation, if it doesn't have any, I throw it away. Not too many programs (if any) come without documentation. This may indicate a pirated version of some commercial program. I may inspect it a little further, but if it passes all that I usually validate it if it's a worthwhile file to take up my hard drive space. That's a lot of work to go through to validate files, but so far I've been completely safe and have had only one file that was really considered dangerous uploaded. Sometimes hacks get through, but that's life. I catch them eventually. Since I take so long to validate files because of this process, my users joke with me about it, but I don't run mainly a file board so it's no big deal. [...] If this is too anal for you, a good upload verifier should be ok for your needs. Just be extremely careful when you run any program that a user uploads. [...PRN in .ZIP archives...] Here's another tip. You may want to load a TSR program that logs all disk read/write activity. I've seen one called SYSLOG. This may help you if you think you have something writing to your disk like that phony upload I was discussing earlier. 3. Install a reboot manager. This is a program that will watch monitor your phone line, and if your phone rings more times than it is supposed to, your computer will reboot. You should have your BBS to start up automatically when you reboot. [...Autoexec/startbbs.bat if not errorlevel 255 goto dobbs...] 4. Carefully look at each new user's application and new user information. Examine their Personal Info and make sure they didn't enter anything stupid in the application that suggests a loser who does nothing but bother sysops. Make sure they are here for the usual BBS purposes. Any misleading or anal behavior shouldn't be tolerated. You can optionally verify every user by giving him/her a voice call to make sure they entered the phone number correctly. Many SysOps do this, many do not, it's up to you if you would like this extra sense of protection. 5. Use a external chat program. Telegard's chat has has a major security leak for the unaware SysOp. When you are in Telegard's chat, you can type '/' without the single quotes followed by a few different commands. One will type out any file to the screen. So if a user created a macro that you were unaware of, and suddenly you chat with him, and he runs the macro to display one of your files that contains secret information, he could grab a lot of passwords (as an example). To be on the safe side, only use Telegard's chat with someone you really trust. How to install another chat program is included later in this document. 6. More advanced tips and explanations later. This was to give the new SysOp a basic introduction of security and what types of things you will need to deal with. Ä[Beta Testing]Ä Now for Beta testing. Find someone that is willing to call your BBS and see if it is working. I recommend not bothering a local SysOp to call your BBS right off the bat. First, they probably have better things to do than to laugh at your new setup. Another user that you have befriended is a much better approach for the first few tests. Second, you get the user's perspective. SysOps are born arrogant and they have biased opinions. Including myself as if you couldn't already tell. Third, the user will find the simple problems with your BBS first. Such as a door game doesn't work, a protocol is slow, a command is missing, etc. This is sort of like a estimate on the damage. Once you recognize the problems with the user, you can then fix them, or get help elsewhere when you know what's wrong but can't fix them. After this stage, then see if you can get a friendly SysOp to call and suggest more advanced things. If you have a second computer with a modem, you can do much of the testing yourself. If you've installed your FOSSIL driver, your ANSI driver, and setup your modem and the modem commands properly, Telegard should pick up the phone and accept the caller. If you're having problems with users connecting or your modem picking up the phone, re-read your modem manual and keep in mind the things that your modem should be doing in the initialization string mentioned earlier and in the Main.Doc file. A good thing to have on hand at this time is a copy of the SysOp function keys. These are the keys that you can use when someone is online. They are useful for many things as you will read. For now, F10 is to chat, F1 is to modify some basic information, and you can use ALT-J to shell to DOS if you need to. If the user is welcomed with a Shuttle Login Menu (that you forgot about) then he will only be able to apply for access, he will not be able to access the BBS without the proper password. The default is MATRIX which you should change later if you plan on using the shuttle logon menu. You can also auto validate the user when he/she is online with ALT-V. You will probably do this for your friend because you know them already. The shuttle login is not discussed in this documenation because in my opinion it's absolutely a threat to open systems ideas which I subscribe to. Anyone who makes you call their system to apply for access without even being able to look around at all is just too anal in my book. I really don't think it's necessary, but if you feel the need to use, it isn't hard and is covered fully in TG's documentation. The only case I see the shuttle logon menu a good idea is for those new SysOps who are still uncomfortable with their system security. It is a good method for screening out the trash callers. However, once you have things under control, take it out and let the world come on in. When you have enough experience and know-how, make backups, and are a nice guy, you won't have much to worry about. Have your friend look around the BBS, trying out different features and commands, when you're ready, have them upload or download a file if you think you're ready. You should have this all setup now. If there are any commands that don't work, take note of what they are so you can correct them later. For now, it's important that the system is basically useable. The rest of the basic configuration of your BBS will not be included. You should be able to complete this yourself. This is to encourage you to learn your system rather than me walking you through every little step of Telegard. Just take it slow before you start advertising your BBS to others. Get all the basic things working and functional. Take out all the commands you don't need or are only there for examples (such as the online menu choices). Most new users will get turned off by a BBS that is poorly run, and at first yours will most likely be poorly run. So have pa.... and work hard to get things rolling along. IV. Up and Running Ok, you've finally got your board up and running with everything online working. Things are still a little generic looking and it's not fully customized, but you're ready to start getting people to use your system. You want to see files uploaded, messages posted, games played, etc. Well continue reading and I'll help you to get and keep those new users. Ä[Getting Users]Ä One of the most popular ways of getting new callers, is to call the BBSs that you call and tell people you have a new BBS. If you make it sound interesting enough, they just might call. Make sure you tell people some basic information: BBS name SysOp Name Software (Telegard 2.7) Phone number Highest modem speed supported if it's 300 baud, you probably won't want to mention it. Specialty, uniqueness or features of your board basically tell them why they should call, if it's just that you need new users to make a great board, that's fine. If it's free downloads that's ok too. Just make sure you have something that users want. People rarely call a new BBS just because you said so. And if they do, they will only call once if they are bored by an empty board. Ä[Advertising]Ä Before you do start posting your ad on every BBS in N. America, and posting in every single message base, ten times each, you should ask the SysOp if it all right to post a message about your BBS on his BBS. He might already have a special message section for that purpose only, then put it there. If he/she has a BBS list, then for god sakes put it there. Most SysOps will welcome your ad in a general message type area as long as you are polite and post just one message. There's nothing more annoying then seeing 7 ads for the same BBS in the Sports message section, and worse, those who upload 10 ANSI ads in the message base. 2400 callers and Offline mail people don't appreciate it. Ä[Keeping Users]Ä For the first few months, you are going to question your BBS. You probably are getting hardly any callers per day, or maybe they just logon for a quick second and see what you have for files then logoff. Have pati.... It usually takes a BBS a few months to get any regular callers. You have to pay your dues and prove to the BBS callers of your community that you are not only here to stay but that your BBS is the one to call. [...replies to new user app...] [...online BBS news...] Ä[SysOp Networking]Ä Try to get to be good friends with a few of your local sysops. Possibly form some kind of group that you can all share information, tips with, recommend to users the other's BBS. Don't be too jealous to recommend another BBS. Hardly any user alive will call only one BBS, so why not make it a group of BBSs which will support you the same way. You might form a network of local sysops and compile newsletters, make simple logoff screens telling users to call these 'other' great BBSs (that's how I started finding other BBSs to call). Don't think you can provide your users with everything. They need other BBSs, so give your users at least one reason to use yours. Ä[Become an Active SysOp]Ä The best BBSs that I have ever seen are the ones where the SysOp is not just a SysOp but also a user. The SysOp should (time considering) join in the message bases and encourage conversations, join in some of the online games, and chat with the users when you have the time. I have found these three things to be the success of my BBS. Of course files are important, but if the users see a real person on the other end of the line, it really gives them a sense of belonging. Ä[Reward vs Force]Ä There are so many BBSs that force users to upload 1 file for every so many files, post a message for so many call, etc. No user likes these ratios. But sometimes limits do have to be set. Especially for files. Usually the BBSs that enforce a post/call ratio are very boring BBSs. The SysOps have to force the users to enter messages for each call. Usually this degrades the board because the messages will look like this: "HI, SysOp here, this is the Sports base, so how about them Cubs. By the way, why don't you guys post?" "I'm just posting this message because I have to. -Joe user" Look familiar? Compare it with this: "Hi, welcome to the Sports message area. Did you see that Cubs game last night? Holy Cow! Andre has really been playing bad lately. I don't think he should make the All Star team this year. I missed the last 2 innings, did anyone happen to catch them so you can fill me in?" -SysOp "Hey SysOp, yeah I saw the game, it was a close one. Andre ended up hitting a homer in the 9th. So I guess that kinda blows your All Star team theory. By the way, do you have any sports related software online? Or maybe a sports online game? - Joe User" Notice the difference? Of course it won't go perfectly like that everyday of the week, but it'll catch on if you encourage it. Ä[Comments, Suggestions and Feedback]Ä One thing that I like to make clear on my BBS is that comments and suggestions are welcome. Even criticism. That's usually the best way to make your BBS better. You learn what pisses the users off ('hey how why do I have to donate $50 to download 1 file?'). You probably shouldn't listen too carefully either ('Hey why do you even have a download/upload ratio?'). Use your best judgement when making those type of decisions. Just remain available and helpful to the users and they'll keep calling. Ä[Nightly Events]Ä You'll want to setup at least one nightly event to be run every night that will handle special maintenance functions of your BBS. Nightly events is one of the most powerful and if used properly, a great asset to the inner workings of any BBS. You can do almost anything you can dream up in the nightly events, but mostly it is used for simple maitenance of statistical bulletins, online game maintenance, Telegard data file maintenance and so on. You can setup events to be run at any time of the day and for any time of the week or month. If you're using a front end mailer, you will use it's events scheduler. For a complete discussion of events, see the MAIN.DOC. I can only recommend that you check out a bunch of TG utilities to see what is possible to run at the nightly event. One problem with Telegard's nightly events is that if takes less than 1 minute to perform, it will be repeated until 1 minute has gone by since the event started. I once had a event that just automatically posted a message to the users once a week on the rules of the BBS. Too my surprise after the first run, I woke up the next morning and saw 6 copies of the message posted to everyone. You can overcome this with a very small and simple utility that you can create right now. It's called WAIT.COM which will pause your batch file for a number of seconds that you specify. Save this script as WAIT.SCR (only what's between the lines) and type: DEBUG < WAIT.SCR Do not save the dotted lines, only the space between the dotted lines. You will have WAIT.COM, syntax is WAIT --------------------------------------------- N WAIT.COM E 0100 BF 5B 00 33 C0 33 C9 33 D2 BE 82 00 38 4C FE 74 E 0110 2D AC 3C 0D 74 16 2C 30 72 F7 3C 09 77 F3 8B DA E 0120 D1 E2 D1 E2 03 D3 D1 E2 03 D0 EB E5 0B D2 74 0E E 0130 B8 B6 00 F7 E2 33 D2 BB 0A 00 F7 F3 8B F8 B8 40 E 0140 00 8E D8 BB 6C 00 8B 77 02 03 3F 13 F1 8B 07 8B E 0150 57 02 38 4F 04 74 03 83 C2 18 3B D6 72 06 77 0E E 0160 3B C7 73 0A B2 FF B4 06 CD 21 74 E1 FE C1 8A C1 E 0170 B4 4C CD 21 RCX 0074 W Q --------------------------------------------- All TG sysops should have the Telegard Utilities package. The latest is version 1.40. If you don't have it, you can download it as TGU_140.ZIP on most any Telegard BBS. In your nightly events you should run these 3 utilities in this order: Zerouser.Exe Namefix.Exe Delemail.Exe That's it. Pretty simple. This will help clean your TG records data files, and orphaned messages. Read the TG Utils documentation for these files, which are found in TGU_140 for more information on what they do exactly. A small sample description of my nightly events to help you with ideas is as follows: CHECK ALL UPLOADS DO ONLINE GAMES MAINTENANCE CREATE USERS' AGE DISTRIBUTION BULLETIN LOG USAGE OF ONLINE GAMES FOR BULLETIN CLEAN UP FILE DESCRIPTIONS CREATE A PRETTY USER LISTING CREATE A TOP FILES DOWNLOADED LISTING CHECK FOR DUPLICATE ACCOUNTS DELETE INACTIVE USERS PACK MESSAGE BASES RUN ZEROUSER RUN NAMEFIX RUN DELEMAIL CREATE ALLFILES LISTING CREATE BBS ACTIVITY GRAPH CREATE TOP USERS BULLETIN SCAN FOR VIRUSES ....etc. If some of that doesn't look familiar, it's just that I'm running some sort of utility to perform certain functions. V. Advanced Telegard This section is for SysOps who already have Telegard up and running for a short while, or when you are comfortable with your Telegard knowledge and now you want to really get into the more advanced features and fun things of SysOping. Ä[WFCMENU.ANS]Ä This is actually very easy. If you're into customiznig the heck out of Telegard, change your WFC screen. Just load up the WFC ansi screen in TheDraw and edit it to your liking. Pay careful attention to how it is setup, the stats at the bottom need to be pretty much in the same spot so you can read everything. [...change computer types, infoforms at login...] Ä[Problem Users]Ä Experienced SysOps know what I'm talking about here w/o even mentioning anything. The problem is, what can we do about those users that just keep bugging us and try try aggravate our life. First tip is, don't get too hung up over those users. They log on as new, they don't give you any information in the new user app except 'l;akad;dfjadkfj, bye.' There are many solutions, not really perfect. The first, is to restrict access to all new users. This is a simple quick fix by either installing the shuttle logon menu or limiting commands, or even as extreme as not allowing new users. Here's some of the other common problems I see and what I try to do to slow them down. Ä[Finding Duplicate Accounts]Ä A user who continuously logs in under different aliases is frustrating. A smart user might not ever caught get if the SysOp doesn't voice validate his/her users. There is a utility designed to warn you of possible duplicate accounts (DUPCHECK.ZIP) which you can get from a good Telegard BBS. I try to examine carefully each new user and if I find any of the information misleading, I don't allow access to that account and write a letter to the user explaining what I and he both did. If I know it's a duplicate account, I will delete it immediately unless it's a just forgetfulness on the user's part, I will delete all other accounts and lock them out of the BBS or degrade their access until they defend themselves if they do. Usually they'll just leave because it's not worth it to them if you're the kind of SysOp who runs a tight board. There's many boards out there with lack security and SysOps who doesn't care what comes through. Ä[Jerks]Ä Telegard SysOps have had their problems with jerk users as well as any other type. One problem with Telegard is that is widely used for pirating. (You might even be running that board now). The problem with this is that a lot of the people who like to call Telegard boards are in the 13-17 age group. So some of these d00dz are still having a problem with maturity. "where's the elite stuff stuff??" is a question I get asked often enough. It usually doesn't bother me, and I usually don't have anyone telling me my board sucks, but I did when I was first starting. Best thing I can say is to ignore it. But it probably does suck if you're just starting out. Don't worry, it'll get better with time. Just watch what other SysOps do with their boards, use their ideas and add enough of your own to make it different. Ä[Cracks & Crashers]Ä I don't know why, but there are people out there who just want to do you no good. Maybe you were an ass to them, who knows. But they are out there. Not many of them, but enough that you should be mildly concerned. If you're a fairly good guy all around, you probably won't have as many problems as the SysOp who is rude and a ass on other people's BBSs. Follow the security tips I have outlined in this document and always remember that it probably isn't perfect all the time. You will probably always have little breaches of security, but if you make backups and keep an eye out, you should be able to prevent and cure any of them. Ä[Auto-Validation Hack]Ä There is a lot of security that can be breached on a ignorant SysOp. But now that you are reading this, you will be a little less ignorant than before (I hope). The following is a list of security tips and suggestions for you to implenent, some are not really needed at all, but they are nice to know if you ever need them, here they are: TG Hack for auto-validation. There was a small text file that was going around some of the elite boards about a way to get auto-validated on Telegard boards. It was a sad attempt by some kiddies thinking there were some big time crackers. When a user logs in as a new user they will go through the new user application process. What they put for their handle or real name is irrelevant. When it comes time to select the country, they choose option 3 which is other. As in the example: 1. United States 2. Canada 3. Other <---- pick this one! When prompted for the address, and other information as shown below exactly as typed: Address: Western Hemisphere N. American City : Planet Earth State : Sol Solar System Zip : GALMILKWAY Phone : 7777777777 When Telegard asks which type of computer you are using, no matter what the SysOp has it setup for, they pick #10. In the "poor excuse for a hacker" document they recommended putting such as this in the new user application: "Hey how's it going, haven't called in while, maybe next time we can chat..." Now what does all this do? Well if you use the Telegard internal message packer to pack your message bases, they will be validated. How do you stop this? For god sake, anyone still using Telegard's internal message packer after reading this document ought to be shot. Never use it for reasons explained later. Make sure you always check your new user's info before validating him to make sure they didn't try this "idiots 'r' us" crack. Ä[E-Mail Hack]Ä You must look out for this (especially since I'm telling the general BBS public now). I came across this security breach in a hacker type magazine, and most of the usual pirates don't read it, so they probably don't know about it yet. Well here it is. Let's say my username is JIMMY on XYZ BBS. If HACK LOSER on another board wants to see what JIMMY on XYZ BBS is up to, he can logon on as new to the XYZ BBS and use the username JIMMY2 and guess what. He will be able to read JIMMY's personal email. [...describe...] So now you have something to look out for. (I'm hoping this will prompt someone to write a utility to scan the user list for this occurence) Again, as mentioned before, don't allow new users access to read personal mail. Before you validate anyone, you should be sure that they are not trying this hack. It will not mean much for most boards, but if someone does send private email with some rather personal information it could be a big downfall for someone. Ä[Chat Hacking]Ä Telegard's internal chat program. Many new SysOps and even older ones do not know of a great risk they can be taking by using Telegard's built in chat program. You might wonder what kind of harm could that have to you BBS and I will answer plenty if you're not careful. You can even still use it after you read this, but you should know about it's problems. First off, the danger area. TG's chat program is unique because the user can actually use some commands there were built into it. One such command it similiar to DOS's TYPE command. Whereby the user or SysOp can enter /TYPE from Telegard's chat program in the first column (similiar to how the message editor works) and then a space followed by the file name with optional path. Think of this scenario. Your user has created a macro that executes this command. /type c:\autoexec.bat /type c:\config.sys /type status.dat /cls You'll also notice the /CLS command. It does exactly what you think it does, clears the chat screen. Now if a user was to run this macro while you were in chat with him, and maybe you left to go answer the door bell, he grabs some very powerful information because your BBS path will most likely show up in your config.sys and autoexec.bat file, plus he'll grab some info from your status.dat file that even holds your password. So be careful when using TG's chat. If anyone ever tries anything suspicious, just hit F5 to hangup on user immediately. To find out the other commands, in chat type /? in the first column and it will display them for you. The only one to worry about is /type. Ä[Helpful Utilities]Ä The following is a partial listing with description of files and programs that I have found to be generally helpful to Telegard SysOps. For a complete list of files that I have available, please call The Crossroads BBS and download Filelist.Zip for free or if you're on FidoNet you can FREQ FILES at 1:115/743. There may be other boards that carry more TG utils, so don't limit yourself to my board for leeching (please!), but most of the ones I have online do provide some use. A lot of TG utils can be shabby, poorly written, or require some ridiculous registration fee for it's continued use. Editorial time again. I'm so sick and tired of all your programmers who want to charge other SysOps for a small, but useful utility. There are so many SysOps out there that do not know how to program. BBSing for most SysOps is too expensive as it is. SysOps don't need to be paying $25 for a voting booth program or a quote door. Please write more freeware and public domain. There are just too many greedy programmers out there in the commercial world as it is. Ä[Telegard Utilities]Ä These files may be out of date and are not guaranteed to be found on my BBS so if you try a FREQ and come up empty handed, don't say I didn't warn you. AGE27.ZIP Age distribution graph generates a color graph of your users broken up into age groups. ANS-FIX.ZIP ANSI for Telegard 2.7 message bases. Converts your ANSI drawings so they can be uploaded to Telegard 2.7 message bases correctly. BW270_TG.ZIP Bluewave Mail Door program, allows users to upload and download messages and request files along with them. CHCKUL10.ZIP Checks "Uploaded by" user in the file bases and replaces with a name you choose if he/she doesn't exist. COLCU101.ZIP Rewrites USER.LST to change all user's color setup so everyone's is the same. DUPCHECK.ZIP Scans user list for possible duplicate accounts. HS-TG1B5.ZIP HS/Link interface for Telegard. MDATE200.ZIP Deletes Messages older than a certain date. MFILE300.ZIP Listing of files available online generator. MGSUD151..ZIP Purge inactive user accounts MLHELP14.ZIP Help in setting up FrontDoor with Telegard MMAIL101.ZIP Adds mass e-mail back into Telegard 2.7 MSGTK101.ZIP Tracks message use by area NETGIVE.ZIP Gives netmail credits to uses PASS271.ZIP Forces users to periodically change their passwords. PKEY_100.ZIP Global pause key reset for all users PWFILE27.ZIP User to user password protected file transfer door. QUOTEITB.ZIP Leave a quote to next caller utility. TFM26.ZIP Telegard file base manager. TG-M13.ZIP How to setup Telegard multi-node. TGAR101.ZIP AR flag modifier utility. TGFBCLNR.ZIP Capitalizes the first letter in every file description. TGM101.ZIP Telegard external menu editor. TGNEWS22.ZIP News manager/displayer for Telegard TGRSET16.ZIP Automatically update and initialize data and log files during a nightly event. TMAIL151.ZIP Network mail interface for Telegard. TOPFLS21.ZIP Generates most popular files bulletin. TUSERS15.ZIP Generates over 7 statistical bulletins. UMV2.ZIP External user editor. URWRD11.* Awards users with file points when someone downloads a file they uploaded. YINFO*.* Creates a custom looking (Y)our Info screen to display user's info. (freeware!) Ä[DoorMaster]Ä Once you start looking and trying to install a number of door games, you'll find out how frustrating it can be. This program can make things a little simpler. What it does is convert a door information file of one type to another. For example, a door program written exclusivly for PCBoard requires the information file PCBOARD.SYS (I hate that!). Unfortunately, Telegard does't create that door file but the good news is you can convert one that Telegard does create to a PCBOARD.SYS. There might be a lot of doors you'll need to convert information files for. So if you have had trouble installing a door, get this utility. There are other ones out there, but this one seems to be the most complete. Another one to consider though is QuikDoor because it does create a couple information files that DoorMaster does not. DMxx.* & QKDOORxx.* available at a BBS near you. Ä[QUIKDOOR]Ä Another door info file conversion program. This particular program converts some extra files that DoorMaster currently does not. If you find you need a certain file created or converted like EXITINFO.BBS for example, try QUIKDOOR before giving up. Ä[Doorway]Ä Another popular door program utility is this one. It can be a hard fix at some doors that you just can't get to run, or to use another program as a door program, that was never intended to be a door program. This is for more advanced SysOps and access might need to be granted to trusted users only. Overall a very nice utility. Ä[BBS Information Door]Ä A nice little program that I have found that helps very new bbs users to the world of BBSing and modeming. You can probably find it anywhere as BIDxxx.ZIP. It is a simple door program that contains short text files that you can edit or create, ability to download files from within the door and is very use for any user to use. It comes setup to explain some basic BBS concepts, lingo and manners. It is good for the most inexperienced users (the 55 year old types usually :) ) Ä[Generic Chat]Ä I currently use this external chat program rather than Telegard's for two reasons. One the security problem with Telegard's chat interface discussed elsewhere in this document and because it is simply better. It is a fast ANSI split screen chat that is DESQview aware and it is freeware. The current version I am using lacks a paging feature but I just use Telegard's internal pager or FX-Chat's and use a GLOBATx.BAT file to access it. The GLOBATx.BAT is a batch file with the x equaling a number from 0 to 9. In the batch file you but whatever commands you want for whatever purpose and anytime when Telegard is up and running you just press ALT-x where x is the number in the batch file name and the batch file will be run. The good thing about using this chat program this way, is that it doesn't take time away from the users when chatting such as other external chat programs do. I have found this to be the nicest ANSI split chat so far. Others are Fx-Chat and Chat34.* [...Want Ads, BBS List, ANSI viewer, Wishlist...] Ä[Installing another BBS as a door]Ä This Can be quit tricky. Depending on the BBS program. You might be able to run it with the D- command or using a drop file. It all depends. On the other hand, there are special utilities that will load up before your bbs and have a menu for which BBS/program to load, and it will come back to that menu when done. I've never done any of this, so any info from others that have, please forward it to me. [...mezzanine, more info needed] Ä[Door Games]Ä At the time of this writing the following is a list of door programs that I use and are very popular. You can get them all from my BBS if you would like a copy. Land of Devastation, Global War, Solar Realms Elite, The Pit, TradeWars 2002, and Barren Realms Elite. There's tons of doors out there, find a bbs where you can leech for days and try them out. The above 5 or 6 are a good place to start are usually very popular on most systems. See what the users in your area like. Don't forget other non-game doors such as a better voting program than TG's, or a Quote door, etc. Ä[Doors Installation]Ä I get asked a lot for help with setting up doors. It is sometimes difficult for new SysOps to install certain doors. This usually passes with some experience but if you are having any trouble, check here first, experiment, then experiment some more, then ask a local SysOp for help. Telegard 2.7 does not create the entire DOOR.SYS file if you haven't yet noticed. It is missing a couple of lines I believe and this will cause some door programs not to run. You can't use DoorMaster to create from a Telegard DOOR.SYS either. What I have found to be the best drop file to use is DORINFO1.DEF. Use this one whenever you can. It seems to be the most compatible and DoorMaster even recently changed Telegard's default from DOOR.SYS to DORINFO1.DEF. DOOR.SYS will still work with some doors but with fewer than it should. If you still have problems using a DORINFO1.DEF file it's most likely 1 of 3 things. You're not calling the program correctly (i.e. the batch file doesn't change to the door's directory and execute from there or you are just making some simple error in the way it is called), 2, the DORINFO1.DEF will not work because the door program requires a RBBS DORINFO1.DEF which is a little bit different than what Telegard creates (a QuickBBS style), thirdly you are missing some other drop files such as a EXITINFO.BBS file which Telegard does not create. For that, you'll need QKDOOR29.ZIP. Those in my experience are the most common problems for why a door program will not run. Another problem you may have in running doors is that you cannot run it locally but remote users can. I have seen this in a couple of doors but not very many. If they don't like to run locally or have an option for local use, then write to the author and ask him if he'll add it. When you're having trouble gettng a door program to run, try some of these steps: - Read the MENU.??? file from TGBBSDOC.ZIP to find out about the different drop files TG creates and which ones you may try to use. - Read the documentation for the door game. This sounds stupid, but if more beginning SysOps actually read the docs, they would have 1/3 less problems. - Check that you are copying the proper door info file into the door program directory. - Sometimes the drop files Telegard creates aren't compatible with what the door program required. Try another drop file. - Make sure you are executing the door program from the door program's directory. CD to the proper directory before executing it in your batch file. - Make sure you have the proper command line options specified. Some doors reguire you specify a configuration file on the command line (for example DOOR.EXE C:\DOORGAME\DOOR.CFG). - Make sure you have enough memory, if not you can swap to disk or extended memory by specifying this in TG's setup. - Check to make sure you created the configuration file for the door game properly if it requires one. - If the door program doesn't support a door info file that Telegard creates, you can use a program like DoorMaster to create one by conversion. - It just simply might not work with Telegard. I believe there are some door programs that just will not work with Telegard. If you know of a BBS that uses the door program, ask him for help, or contact the author. You can probably get most any door program to work minimally with Telegard even if you have to use DoorWay as a last resort but it might not be worth the trouble. One thing I found is that some door programs actually screw up the local ANSI color on my computer. I believe it is Solar Realms Elite that has done it to mine but others may not reset it properly either. If you are noticing any ANSI problems such as blinking ANSI not blinking, put the command MODE CO80 at the end of the batch file that calls the door program. (For Color monitors of course, refer to your DOS manual for more information) Ä[One batch file does all]Ä Something I've recently done to help me maintain my doors batch files is to just create one door batch file. The way this is done is instead of calling a seperate batch file for each door (i.e. SRE.BAT for Solar Realms Elite, TWAR.BAT for TradeWars) you create one batch file and when you call the batch file, you specify the name of the door as a parameter. For example, When I call Solar Realms Elite, I would specify this on the Telegard CMD line: "DOOR.BAT SRE" Then in my Door.Bat file, I would simply say: Goto %1 Rem Put commands here :SRE Rem Commands to call Solar Realms Elite Goto End :GAME2 Rem commands... :End MODE CO80 CLS Rem whatever other global commands you want This saves a minimum of disk space, but most of all, makes your door game batch files a lot easier to maintain and standardize. If you find it really difficult to run a door this way, you can of course create it the old way with it's own batch file, but you usually shouldn't have to do this. XX. File base Area Ä[Organizing Uploads]Ä Ever notice those Telegard boards that have their unvalidated uploads scattered in all different directores? Well there's a simple cure for that problem. You want your users to put the uploads in one directory right? All you have to do, is put a command that is executed just before they upload a file. You can do this by adding another 'U' command and make it execute first before to force the user to switch to the proper file base. Put this command in the Upload command in the batch menu as well. If you're using the TG utils that helps to use HS/Link, then you'll want to do that for Download in the batch menu as well. If you want to limit certain types of files or you need to say anything to users before they upload, put in a command with U for upload before the regular command and have it display a line of text (-L) or a file (-F). You can tell your users to upload only certain files with flashing ANSI, you could create a question saying, you are about to upload, do you agree to the above? Get creative. Here's an example of moving the user to the upload file base when uploading: 1. Long descript : 2. Short descript: 3. Cmd letters :U 4. ACS required :"s10" 5. Cmdkeys :FA 6. MString :1 Flags :(H)idden Q. Quit It's that simple. Make sure you put this command just before your Upload command, so it'll get executed first. Now everytime someone types U to upload, they are first moved to your Uploads directory. Assuming here it file area 1. Ä[Depth Directories]Ä I've noticed that, in Telegard 2.5, there was a Depth flag you could toggle on or off for file directories. Since the feature had not yet been implemented, nothing further came of it. I was eagerly waiting for its developoment and release in 2.7. Alas, to no avail. I've successfully added a "depth" feature to my file bases by using conferences. If you have a lot of file areas (as most good boards do) then you'll notice that a lot of them are unnecessary. I.E.: Telegard Utilities Nature GIF's Hard Drive Utilities Star Trek GIF's Floppy Utilities Commercial GIF's Misc. Utilities Cartoon GIF's Adventure Games Keyboard Utilities BBS Games Pascal Programs C Programming Basic Programs << etc >> A user gets bogged down with a file area list longer than some board's file lists! Problem solved. Organize the Telegard file areas into a "Dos-like" system. For example, /Utilities /GIF's /BBS Stuff /Programming /Games Sound Blaster ANSI Art The '/' in front of the file areas above mean that they have "depth" to them. Once a user enters that file area, they are greeted with yet another set of file areas to choose from. For example, entering /GIF's would give: Nature GIF's Commercial GIF's Cartoon GIF's or whatever. You can even have more depth directories branching off from here! How do you do it? No problem. Most boards I've noticed do not use all the conferences to their advantage. Assign a unique conference to each of the depth directories (i.e. /Utilities would be conference "U"). When a user enters the depth file area, turn on the conference flag. This will then show all the file areas available for that depth dir. Make sure all file areas that are above the depth directory have an ACRstring of 'c@' so they are only accessible from the main conference. Include a file area which will return to the previous level. It will actually flag off the previous flag, and flag on the @ flag. Anyways, it's really easy to do. Ä[Wish List]Ä Do your users seldom put messages in your message bases asking if anyone has such-an-such a file? Maybe you are looking for a special Telegard utility or game? What some have done is to install a file wish list door or text file. For example from the files menu, your user enters a 'W' and it brings up a list or program that users can enter file requests in. This may be good if you want only particular files uploaded to the BBS. Users will usually try try to upload something that the SysOp wants to please the SysOp. You can use a -F command and display a text file or you can use an external door program. You can find one on your favorite BBS most likely. I've begun work and semi-completed one of my own for now. Ä[Protocols]Ä Ä[HS/Link]Ä HS/Link is a bi-directional protocol that allows uploading and downloading at the same time. All this while achieving the speeds of a regular Zmodem transfer. HS/Link is fastly becoming a standard in protocols. It is very fast and the author support is excellent. I highly recommend that you install this protocol. To do so though, you'll need a special utility for Telegard. HS-TG1B5.ZIP is the the interface program that is currently out. You can find it at the Crossroads BBS (312) 587-8756 or any good Telegard BBS. Get a copy of HS/Link (HS112.ZIP), read the docs for both programs, then install it. It's fairly easy and will be a huge benefit to both you and your users. Ä[Bi-Modem]Ä At this time, I cannot recommend using Bi-Modem for your bi-directional protocol, because their may be a security leak that could be very damaging to your system. I haven't verified it extensively so until then I do not recommend using it. There is a utility for Telegard that will allow you to use it however, and the current BiModem release is v1.24 if you still are not scared. If anyone has more recent info please drop me a line. Ä[SZModem]Ä SZmodem is a Zmodem compatible protocol written by Scott Baker, the same author who brings you Land of Devastation. I am not a user of SZmodem but I have tried it and didn't really need its features. I'm not sure at this time if there are any security problems in using SZmodem but there may be. I do need to find some more info on this, so again if anyone can spread some light on this subject, please drop me a line so I can let others know for sure. Ä[Other Protocols]Ä At this time, there aren't really any other protocols besides Zmodem, HS/Link and Ymodem-G that I would use. There are all kinds that claim to be faster and better than Zmodem, but since very few users actually support these protocols, I don't bother. Ä[Delete unused protocols]Ä How many of your users are using Puma, ASCII, or whatever other ridiculous protocols are on your protocol menu? Probably none if any. Go to the protocol menu from the WFC screen and just delete those stupid things once and for all. The only ones I'm currently using are Zmodem, Ymodem, Xmodem and HS/Link. You might want to ask your users for suggestions as to which ones they use. Ä[Free downloads]Ä It is to your benefit and the users if you setup at least one file base that won't take file points or download credit away from them. You can put files such as your files list, or maybe a help file or things that will help them with BBSing. Here's a partial list of one of my free downloads base: HS112.ZIP HS/Link protocol, to encourage users to upload while they download. BWAVE211.ZIP Bluewave Offline Mail Reader to encorage users to use this and participate in the message bases. BBSLIST.ZIP A local BBS listing CLEAN99.ZIP Virus disinfectant utility. FILELIST.ZIP Complete list of all my files online GTERM330.ZIP Term program for users to get instant graphics for online game LOD PKZ110.EXE PKWare's popular compression program SCAN99.ZIP Virus detection utility XX. Message base area Ä[Bluewave]Ä If you run Telegard, you should install the Bluewave Mail Door. Unless you don't have a message base (how boring). Offline mail is one of the greatest advances in the world of BBSing. It saves all the users time, encourages them to participate more, and makes your BBS available more hours of the day for other activities. Bluewave is an especially well written offline mail door (also the reader, a seperate program to read/write/reply to messages is available) that you will want to use. You can even use it as a local sysop. You don't have to logon to the BBS and use Telegard's message editors, yuck. You can use the text editor of your choice, which is great because the text editors will be much nicer to use than Telegard's internal editor. There are a lot of other features you will discover later with Bluewave. Sometimes conversations start up over taglines. It's just a big convience and a must have for a good BBS. Encourage and help your users to use it. I provide it as a free download, have a bulletin online explaining the basic installation, answer any questions and have spent time chatting with users just to get their copy working right if they had problems. [...provide Bwave help file...] Installing a bi-directional protocol within Blue Wave! Thanks go to Dave Murphy for providing me with this info on how to install bi-directional protocols with the Blue Wave mail door. Ä[HS/Link and Bluewave]Ä How it works? If you need an explanation of HS/Link then don't bother trying this yet. Your users need to change their protocol to use HS/Link, and instead of having to do both the download and upload of messages seperatly, they just do the download and send the uploaded messages at the same time, when the door quits back to the BBS, it tests for the existence of a .NEW packet and if one exists, it is processed. First you'll need to modify your door command that calls Blue Wave. Pass @R to the batch file that calls Blue Wave. @R is the user number of the person online. The Bwave.Bat file will run the door as it normally would, but before exiting to the BBS, it checks for a .NEW file in the New directory which would have been put there by someone using the bi-directional transfer capability. If it finds one, it processes the mail door as if it was in local mode just before exiting. Take a look at the batch file and you can see how this works. Here's an example of the menu command: Long Description : (/B)Blue Wave Offline Mail Door program Short Description: (/B)BlueWave Command Keys : /B ACS Required : s20 Command String : DG MsString : Bwave.Bat @R Flags : ----- Create another subdirectory of your Blue Wave mail door directory, I'll use C:\BBS\BWAVE\NEW as an example here. Now setup a new protocol definition in the Bluewave door that looks something like this: Protocol HotKey : H Default: No Protocol Title : Hslink Batch? : No Send CommandLine: hslink -p%P -b38400 -e%B -u C:\Bbs\bwave\New %F Receive CmdLine : hslink -p%P -b34000 -e%B -u%F -p specifies the com port -b specifies the bps rate (put locked rate if any here) -e specifies user's bps rate -u specifies the upload file or diretory to receive You may also want to not even bother defining the receive line in case your users are clue-less . Now here's a sample batch file when running the Blue Wave door: @Echo Off Cd\Bbs\Bwave Bwmail If Not Exist C:\Bbs\Bwave\New\Yourbbs.New Goto End Type C:\Bbs\Bwave\Wait.Ans > Com1 Copy \Bbs\Bwave\New\Yourbbs.New \Bbs\Bwave\New Bwmail /k%1 /u Del \Bbs\Bwave\New\Yourbbs.New :End That's it. It seems to work pretty well on my system and hopefully will for yours too. The time savings for your users may be minimal but it does help if your users upload a lot of mail. Don't forget to create a Wait.Ans that gets sent to the user while the local Bluewave upload is being done so he'll know what's going on. I guess you could also echo the bwmail command but that is not recommended. Here's the protocol definition for Hydra, a recently developed bi-directional freeware protocol. I have not used this one yet so I don't know if will work as is or not. You can probably figure it out easily enough and the batch file given above is the same for this protocol anyways. Here it is: Protocol HotKey : Y Default: No Protocol Title : Hydra Batch? : No Send CommandLine: HYDRACOM port %P line %B rec f:\bwave\new send %F Receive CmdLine : HYDRACOM port %P speed 38400 line %B get %F Thanks again David! Ä[Purging mail]Ä When you start having lots of users, the personal mail message area can get quite large just with new user apps alone. One way you can save space and to force users to delete their mail after reading it is to put the M restrict flag on in each of your user's accounts. This forces the user to read their personal mail and delete it before moving on at the logon process. Ä[Making Messaging Easier]Ä A small but helpful tip is to change the message prompt to something a little more useful. You can do this when defining the menu itself. This is what the standard message prompt will look like: [1:20] Read (1-35) ?=help Too make it more useful and help to user's I've changed my string to say: [1 of 20] (R)eply (D)elete =Next (?)=Help Now the problem is to get user's to quote the message they are replying to. There isn't a real easy way to help users to do this, but you can do a few things. Possibly in the two lines that are displayed above the message editor you could tell them to quote. Better yet, get them to use Blue Wave. Ä[Full screen editors]Ä I do not use a full screen editor for my BBS because I don't think it would be used much. So I won't be able to help here much. TopEd is suppposedly the one to use. With the advent of offline mail, urge your users to use Blue Wave. These are the basic commands to call TopEd and QuickEd. TOPED10Q.ZIP (for Toped) TG cmd line: 1 @P @B @T 300 QED120.ZIP (for Quicked) TG cmd line: @P @B @T 180 Ä[Additional Setup Tips]Ä Want to get some personal data from the user? Why not add additional new user questions? It's easy, just read the Main.Doc file on InfoForms (it's near the end of the file). I've seen people ask if they're a SysOp of another board, and if they are it'll branch to another question and ask for the BBS name and number. You can ask for the user to enter his best joke, then you can post it in the message area (good way to get people involved) for all to read. There's a lot of flexibilty in the InfoForm system, try to see what you can come up with. Want more ideas? Think them up yourself. j/k How about contests, make up a donations policy, a special access level to loyal users, come on get creative. I can't do all the thinking. Ä[Short-Cut commands]Ä In the Main.Doc file you'll find reference to short- cut commands, but since so many people hardly ever read documentation, you might not know about them. Basically they are short-cut SysOp commands for people with SysOp security levels. You enter them in this format: //\\* with the command letter followed after the *. For example to shell to DOS from your main menu, you would enter: //\\*D and you'd be in DOS as if you did it from the SysOp menu. To stop Co-SysOp access user's from using short-cut commands to do something like drop to DOS, you should but these dummy commands in every single menu you have. Long Description : (//)Dummy Command Short Description: (//)Dummy Command Command Keys : // ACS Required : Command Thing : -L MsString : Flags : -!-H- Ä[Originality & Creativity]Ä What's the secret to a succesful BBS? I don't know, but I can tell you this, originality sure doesn't hurt. Try coming up with something nobody has done before, even if it sounds crazy, it might lead to different ideas or improvements in the way the board operates or presents itself. I have stumbled upon a couple small improvements just by fooling around with various features and just trying crazy things. Chances are you can too. Think of ways to make the BBS more fun, easier to use, etc. One thing I'd like to do is to eliminate the batch menu and just have the ability to keep adding files automatically, well enough of that... That's another project, if you figure it out, let me know. Is your BBS like all the rest? Same old files, same old games, same old stuff as the other 2500 boards out there? You need a niche market. Create a speciality. It can be anything, even if it's simple such as being a game bbs, or a SysOp's BBS, or a Science flavored BBS, usually some of the best boards have an edge. Does yours? Ä[Fx-Chat]Ä Put Fx-Chat.Exe and the Config file in your main BBS directory. You can put the log file and sound file wherever you want by telling the setup program where it is. Next for the Command: Fx-chat.Exe /A@G /P@P /S@B /N@N! Ä[ANSI Screens]Ä Sometimes the appearance of your BBS makes all the difference. You may notice some BBSs that colorize their boards with all kinds of fancy ANSI graphics. This can be both good and bad. It's good in moderation, remember not everyone cares to see how good of an artist you are, and not everyone has a fast modem. It takes a lot longer to display a ANSI picture over a 2400 modem than at 9600 baud. But some ANSI should be on the board to make it look nice. I'm not gonna give a course in ANSI because I'm not the person to do it. I can suggest a few things, that's about it. The most popular and probably the best ANSI drawing program available at this publication is TDRAW460.ZIP. It's a full powered ANSI drawing program for those who are serious about creating nice artwork. When you design a screen to be used with Telegard, save it in 79 line mode. Look at other's ANSI artwork, or download some ANSI pictures to help you get started in designing your own. Remember, SysOps borrow from each other, so if you steal someone's design technique, don't worry about it, they probably did too, but it might be nice if you at least gave credit to those that influenced you. If you can find a professional ANSI artist (that doesn't sound like a nice life, but hey..) see if they'll create some menus or BBS ads for you. Remember, don't have full screen ANSI's wherever the users go, just enough to make the board look nice such as a full screen welcome ANSI, logoff ANSI, and nice looking, easy to read menus. I don't recommend creating full screen ANSIs with the pretty blue background for your menus. You'll lose a lot of users who are impatient while waiting for the screen to paint. You might notice that a LOGOFF.xxx screen isn't completely displayed when someone logs off. The simple fix for this is to create a logoff.bat file with just a @echo off in it, set your swapping to EMS to active and make sure that Telegard executes batch files, it will have to wait until your logoff screen is displayed before swapping to EMS and execute the batch file. XX. Telegard Downsides & Bugs Ä[MCI Codes]Ä Telegard can use the MCI codes almost everywhere in the system. This is a real pain the the message bases and new users will get scared of their use. I've had threats from new users who thought their password and real address was being displayed to everyone because of it. I recommend discouraging their use entirely. Ä[Midnite Timeout]Ä Midnite Chat Timeout. If you haven't heard or experienced this bug, let me tell you briefly about it. When you are chatting with a user near midnite, and your system time hits 12:00 midnite and you're in chat with him or her, the user will get kicked off with a message that displays the timeout display. This is just a bug in Telegard that was never fixed. So if you're chatting late night, exit out for midnite so they don't get logged off. [...not just in chat...] Ä[File Area Manager]Ä File Area, Manager, dl/ul, etc. I don't especially like the way Telegard handles it file areas, uploads, downloads, etc. I always felt it was very awkward. I guess this is why most of all the big file boards are usually using PC-Board. Telegard's user interface just isn't as nice. If you've used other BBS programs as a user or SysOp then you can probably think of a couple things right off the bat. One of the major things I find a fault with in Telegard right off the bat, is all the commands. Who needs all those commands? They can be very confusing. When downloading a file, you have to be in the right file directory (area) to download it or else will say file not found. What a pain in the ass. Also, no file tagging when listing files. That would be nice. Probably my biggest peave is the way it handles the batch transfers. Yuck! you have to select each file one at a time, select the batch protocol, then goto to the batch menu, select upload or download, then your batch protocol such as Zmodem from there. How completely clumsy and foolish. Oh well, that's just one of the drawbacks to using Telegard. If you really hate it that much you can probably install a external file area/manager door program. I've been considering this move as well, but not sure if it'll work all that well. Someone let me know if they have done this with some success. Ä[Pause Bug]Ä I have not tested to see if this is a actual bug or not, but I read a message by someone claiming it to be one. If you have the "pause on screen" option set to on, and while reading messages, hit "=" to continuously read messages, after it gets done reading, the "pause on screen" option is set to no automatically. Ä[Internal Message Packing]Ä Internal message packer. Don't use it basically. You can pack (purge) messages of all or selected bases in Telegard while logged on. (Message menu) But you should not be using this function. Get MSGPACK.EXE that comes with TGU_140.ZIP (read some more docs) and use that one. You can delete the internal message pack command from your menus. XX. Undocumented features Ä[Message Packing]Ä There are a couple of ways to purge messages in Telegard. The best way is to use the MSGPACK.EXE in the TGU_140.ZIP archive and run it during your nightly events. Two other ways involve using Telegard's internal message packer, but I'll tell you right now, please don't use this function. Use the external one. The internal one is not very friendly and it can cause problems. Just for your information, if you press 'K' from the WFC screen, you'll be able to pack the message bases with the internal message packer. But again, that is just for your information, do not use it. Ä[Version Info]Ä Unless you have a command with the Cmdkey of '|' it will display a short message about Telegard. It is really useless, but it is there. Logon on to Telegard and see for yourself. To play with the users who know about this, make a command that uses the same key and have it display a message such as 'your hacker activity has been logged and when the SysOp finds out, you will be deleted from this BBS.' Mean and cruel, yes. [...display time, date... ctrl-t?...] Ä[Moving forward - Life w/o TG]Ä In the last 6 to 9 months, everyone and his uncle has been telling Telegard SysOps that they should switch to a different BBS program, For reasons that I don't need to go into. My philosophy is this, sure suggest to me, make comments, even argue, but don't get pissed if I disagree or do things differently. My advice for you is, when you're unhappy with Telegard, look for something else that is better. Don't make your decision too quickly, use good judgement, and don't let one person make your choices for you. If I did that, I might be running Qmodem Host :) Ä[Other Recommended BBS Programs]Ä Remote Access Maximus T.A.G. SBBS Ä[Nite's Last Word]Ä I have been using Telegard for about 1 1/2 years now, as of 3/93 and I am happy with it's performance. There are a lot of drawbacks when using any one package but with Telegard and my BBS requirements, the benefits greatly out-weigh them. I'm not a pirate, cracker, or other type such as those, but I have BBSed along side of many of them. That is one reason for knowing a lot about how they try to crash our boards. Of course, maybe now someone else knows it and will use it against the SysOp who didn't read this, but oh well. Freedom of information I say. I hope I wrote this document with as much accuracy as possible. I'm sure this can be used by somebody. I wish I had more documents like these when I was first starting out. If anything in this file was inaccurate, misleading, destructive, sexual, or nasty, too bad, unless you or someone writes me to fix it, it won't be fixed. So pass it around, send in your suggestions and if I keep adding and improving it, I'll give you some extra downloads if you help me produce this again. Give me a call or send some netmail with whatever feedback you have. Even nasty feedback, we can always use a new guy to rank on my board. :) -Niteline Appendix A Current Telegard Support Sites as of July 1992 These are the current Beta testers for the last release of Telegard v2.7 They should all have Telegard utilities and be able to provide you with expert help. Some better than others, so don't limit yourself to one site, utilities and opinions are scattered can vary. Paul Dyer Eclipse! 916-725-0674 V.32 Bob Eden K9 Academy BBS 604-856-7118 V.32 Brent Johnson Guardian's Gateway 510-830-4616 HST/V.32bis Perry Lowell The SKATEboard BBS 508-788-1603 HST/V.32 David Luckie The Intrepid BBS 205-479-2327 HST/V.32bis Scott Malin Death's Domain 203-749-6103 HST/V.32 Jeff Martin Martin's Domain 512-396-0252 HST Michael Randolph The Q Continuum BBS 316-721-8466 HST/V.32bis Carol Shenkenberger Shenk's Express 619-697-8873 V.32 Tim Strike Forbidden Knights 416-820-7273 HST Tim Thompson The Underground BBS 619-460-0863 HST Kevin Watkins The U.S.S. Light Speed ][ 617-925-8508 HST/V.32 Dan Winsor Death Vale BBS 313-646-5632 HST Michael Yadron Lighthouse BBS 219-464-0411 HST These people are also supporters of Telegard and provide useful help with Telegard 2.7. They are members of the ITCnet network. Spring of Life Alan Bingham CA (805) 296-7817 805/103 14.4-B The Dawg House Scott Irwin UT (801) 544-9705 822/105 9600-C Twin Data Inc. Tom Kavanagh NJ (908) 359-7859 862/0 14.4-A The Chop Shop John Reed OK (405) 787-6052 846/106 2400 Buckwheats Pleasure Dome Craig Landgraf TX (713) 855-1701 841/803 2400 The Alpha State Doug Welzel NJ (609) 751-7446 862/400 14.4-B Alternate Reality Sujeet Patel NJ (609) 778-3103 862/403 2400 The Dark Side Dwight Johnson AZ (602) 661-1256 823/132 2400 The Winter Palace Linda McCarthy MA (413) 535-1063 858/201 14.4-A Utility City Eric Kimminau MI (313) 299-5854 871/112 14.4-A The Madhouse Society Bob Shields AZ (602) 649-3894 823/101 2400 Miami Links BBS Carlos AvelianetFL (305) 258-9809 881/100 9600-C The Wishing Well BBS Rozey Strohi MI (313) 759-2128 871/103 9600-C APFL-The BBS Tom Kane NJ (201) 567-6994 862/300 9600-C Castle Roogna BBS Jeff Young IL (309) 662-2058 837/203 9600-C Something Wicked!! Robert Carter OK (405) 737-0640 846/116 2400 The Castle BBS Jack Schofield TX (214) 988-1053 841/100 14.4-A The Abyss BBS Robert Paller NJ (609) 882-6058 862/402 14.4-A The Hood BBS John Scalise MA (413) 786-4827 858/205 2400 Starfleet Command Chris Ewing CT (203) 749-0532 861/1701 16.8 Northwest Hickory BBS Toby Wellborn NC (704) 326-7051 886/203 14.4-C Fatal Error BBS Neil Hoener CO (719) 282-9419 824/202 14.4-A Zentraedi Control BBS Andrew Hardison NM (505) 897-1318 825/100 9600-C Wizard's Palace Jon Plax KS (913) 491-5518 847/200 14.4-A The Hot Spot! Pat Butler TX (409) 589-3312 841/703 2400 The Night Shift BBS David Anderson GA (912) 673-6549 880/1001 2400 SW Cemetery of Psychos Michael Jones KY (502) 366-2349 888/108 2400 The Adventure's Guild Kevin Kuphal IL (815) 748-4031 837/300 14.4-B Appendix B Modem Examples and Help for specific modem types Here are some examples from others in setting up other modems. If you find your modem here, it should work with their settings. Good luck. USRobotics Courier 14400 HST Dual Standard NRAM Settings... DIAL=TONE B0 F1 M0 X7 BAUD=19200 PARITY=N WORDLEN=8 &A3 &B1 &G0 &H1 &I0 &K3 &L0 &M4 &N0 &P0 &R2 &S1 &T5 &X0 &Y1 %R0 S02=255 S03=013 S04=010 S05=008 S06=002 S07=060 S08=002 S09=006 S10=007 S11=070 S12=050 S13=000 S15=008 S19=005 S21=010 S22=017 S23=019 S24=150 S26=001 S27=128 S28=004 S29=020 S32=006 S33=000 S34=000 S35=000 S36=000 S37=000 S38=000 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I would try s27=1 first, and if your software cannot detect a CONNECT 14400, then change it to s27=128 as that will give a CONNECT 9600 for all 9600 and above connections. Dip switch settings are (U=up, D=down): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 u u d u d u u d d u Protocols: 5. L command: "dsz port %P ha on estimate 0 %B pV1 rz -m %F" L command: "dsz port %P ha on estimate 0 %B pV1 sz -m %F" USR 16.8k Settings for FrontDoor ATI4 USRobotics Courier 16800 HST Dual Standard Fax Settings... B1 C1 E1 F1 M0 Q0 V1 X7 BAUD=38400 PARITY=N WORDLEN=8 DIAL=PULSE ON HOOK TIMER &A3 &B1 &C1 &D2 &G0 &H1 &I0 &K3 &L0 &M4 &N0 &P0 &R2 &S1 &T5 &X0 &Y1 %R0 S00=000 S01=000 S02=043 S03=013 S04=010 S05=008 S06=002 S07=060 S08=002 S09=006 S10=007 S11=040 S12=050 S13=000 S14=000 S15=008 S16=000 S17=000 S18=000 S19=000 S20=000 S21=010 S22=017 S23=019 S24=150 S25=005 S26=001 S27=000 S28=004 S29=020 S30=000 S31=000 S32=008 S33=000 S34=000 S35=000 S36=000 S37=000 S38=000 S39=000 S40=000 S41=000 S42=126 S43=200 S44=015 LAST DIALED #: OK ati5 USRobotics Courier 16800 HST Dual Standard Fax NVRAM Settings... DIAL=PULSE B1 F1 M0 X7 BAUD=38400 PARITY=N WORDLEN=8 &A3 &B1 &G0 &H1 &I0 &K3 &L0 &M4 &N0 &P0 &R2 &S1 &T5 &X0 &Y1 %R0 S02=043 S03=013 S04=010 S05=008 S06=002 S07=060 S08=002 S09=006 S10=007 S11=040 S12=050 S13=000 S15=008 S19=000 S21=010 S22=017 S23=019 S24=150 S25=005 S26=001 S27=000 S28=004 S29=020 S32=008 S33=000 S34=000 S35=000 S36=000 S37=000 S38=000 S41=000 S42=126 S43=200 S44=015 STORED PHONE #0: #1: #2: #3: Obviously more are needed, please send you modem setups if you are reading this and have figured out your setup for optimal performance. New sysops could benefit with your examples greatly! FrontDoor w/ USR 16.8k File Global Mailer Editor Terminal Modem Printer Manager ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ Hardware ¸³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Modem port 1 ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Maximum baud rate 38400 ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Lock port Yes ³¾±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Reset modem to connect speed No ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Lower DTR when busy No ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Lower DTR to terminate call No ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Toggle DTR before dialing No ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± FrontDoo³ Carrier detect mask (CDMASK) 128 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Inbound buffer size 0 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±± Copyright 1989-1991³ Outbound buffer size 0 ³eserved ±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ;±±±±±±±±±±±±±± File Global Mailer Editor Terminal Modem Printer Manager ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ Messages ¸³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 300 CONNECT| ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 1200 CONNECT 1200/ ³³±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 1275 CONNECT 1275 ³¾±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 2400 CONNECT 2400 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 4800 CONNECT 4800 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 9600 CONNECT 9600 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ 19200 CONNECT 16800 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± FrontDoor; SETUP³ 38400 CONNECT 38400 ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Error ERROR ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±± Copyright 1989-1991 Advance³ Busy BUSY ³eserved ±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ No Carrier NO CARRIER ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Ok OK ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Ring RING| ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ No Dialtone NO DIALTONE ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ No Answer NO ANSWER ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Voice VOICE ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ;±±±±±±±±±±±±±± File Global Mailer Editor Terminal Modem Printer Manager ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ±±±±±±±±±ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ Command strings ¸±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Escape code +++ ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Return on-line ~ATO| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Onhook ATH0| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Offhook ~ATM0H1| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Dial AT ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ ÃÄPrefix DT, ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ ÀÄSuffix | ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Delay 3 ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Init-1 ATZ| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±± Co³ Init-2 ³rved ±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Init-3 ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Down ATM0H1| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ Reset AT| ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±±±±±±±±± ±±±±±±±±±ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ;±±±±±±±±±±± File Global Mailer Editor Terminal Modem Printer Manager ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ Answer control ¸±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Manual answer Yes ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Force answer ATB0A| ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Answer delay 2 ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Limited hours No ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Starting time 00:00 ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ Ending time 00:00 ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±³ ³±±±± ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ;±±±± ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ Modem control ¸ ³ # String to match String to send ³ ³ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄij ³ 1 HST ATB1| ³ [...more example for modems, mailers, squish, etc...] Appendix D FOSSIL drivers Bnu.Com /L0:38400 /T:1024 /R:1024 /M- /F+ /L0:38400 locks the port rate to 38,400 on COM1 /T:1024 sets the transmit buffer to 1k /R:1024 sets the receive buffer to 1k /M- turns of the display messages /F+ enables fast ANSI writes The transmit and receive buffers may differ a little from what you want to use. A lower buffer is good for those low speed callers so they can abort TG's screens quicker. [...Also put in BNU.SYS, X00.SYS as well...] Appendix X(roads) About the Crossroads BBS and Niteline I first opened the Crossroads BBS in July 1991. Too bad I was the only one who knew it. It took quite a while to really get the board going. I think when I really starting liking my own BBS was about 6 to 8 months later. I started using Telegard 2.5i right from the start. I looked at a couple other programs but Telegard was really the easiest to understand and install. I started off knowing very little about running a BBS and I certainly jumped into it a little premature. I didn't know any modem AT commands or what a FOSSIL driver was used for. All I knew was the hobby was one I wanted to be a part off and with a lot of patience and practice (even now) the board has been very successful. The Crossroads BBS, Chicago, IL 312-587-8756 1:115/743