Chetter Hummin's
                               Network primer for 
                          Fido Style amateur networks
                
                        From Trantor BBS in Evergreen CO
                            303-670-7947  670-5871

                This is an extremly preliminary draft of this project
                and will be expanded upon and organized as I have time
                you are welcome to call my bbs and leave a message with
                any questions you have about getting setup.

                It is intended that you read all the various files incluced
                in this package, they contain comments about the examples
                they contain and should help immensly.

                It is assumed that you have a basic working knowledge of
                Dos and how to view and edit files, create directories
                move files. etc....

I'm writing this to help sysops that are setting up thier bbs's
for the first time to join a network, these documents will not even try to
cover the more advanced features available but are simply intended to get 
a sysop online with sending and receiving and properly processing echomail
in a FIDO style network, the programs I use and have examples for are 
Front Door and Gecho used with either Remote Access or Renegade BBS,
the general theory will certainly apply to most other bbs packages of course
but there will be minor differences. I don't intend this to replace the 
documents that come with Gecho or FD but think of it as a couple quick 
notes to get started, certainly read the docs that come with the programs
for some of the details also.

The basic theory of a network of this type is that the message areas on your
bbs area shared by other bbs's and the systems regularly update the new 
messages to the other bbs's in the net, usually through one system acting
as the hub, thereby greatly expanding the number of people potentially 
using any given message area.

Involved in this processor are usually a FrontDoor mailer program to send 
and recieve outgoing and incoming messages and files, then a message tosser
that will unpack those received messages and toss each one to the appropriate
area on your bulletin board.

Front Door 2.02 is the version I am using in this example, while this is not
the latest version it is more than adequate for all the functions an amateur
network is likely to require and is also a freeware type of release and so
is available to the public for non commercial use at no charge.

Gecho is a shareware program available on many bulletin board systems.
This is the program that acts as the interface between the mailer and your
bbs. 

The first thing you should do is to make sure the pathnames are setup
properly so that Gecho can find where FD put the received messages or files
and so that FD can find where Gecho puts the out going messages from your
bbs.

Front door is run by a batch file that captures the errorlevels that FD 
exits with, depending on the errorlevel sent, the batch file will either 
load the bulletin board telling it that a caller is already online and it's 
being passed control from FD to the BBS. If FD exits with an errorlevel 
indicating there is new mail received then the batch file will run the 
program, usually another bat file, that will process the incoming mail.

Read all the files included in this package and they will start to make sense
if you know something about dos to begin with.


the file FDNODE.CTL belongs in the nodelist directory under FD
such as C:\FD\NODELIST\FDNODE.CTL.

The file ROUTE.FD goes in your Front door directory.  ie. C:\FD\route.fd

Remember these example files are just examples, they will have to be edited
to fit your particular setup but should give you a good start to getting 
online. Included are 10 screen shots from some of the more important parts
of the setup for both Front Door and Gecho.

I have installed lots of comments in the BAT files to demonstrate what each
part is supposed to be doing.