SPACE 1/SPACE - Library 1 - Volume 1.iso/telecomm/517/st_keep/bbs.doc

Text File | 1991-09-23 | 16KB | 328 lines

ST-Keep Bulletin Board System
Copyright 1991 by Andrew P. Studer
Pandamonium Software
21 April 1991

Thank you for your interest in this software.  I have been working on
ST-Keep since February of 1990 in order to have a bulletin board
system that was directly under my control.  I have been running our
local ST Users Group (Sacramento ST Users Group) BBS off of ST-Keep
for a year and we continue to look forward to a future with ST-Keep
along with any changes necessary to support our users interests.  I am
the sole programmer, however, I often ask and accept suggestions or
comments from users in order to make ST-Keep more reliable and
attractive for everyone.

All programs, files, and documentation included with the ST-Keep BBS
package are Copyright 1991 by Andrew P. Studer.  You may make as many
copies of these programs for your personal use as you wish.  You may
distribute as many copies of the original STKEEP.LZH file which
contains the complete bulletin board system as long as you keep it in
its original form including all files and documentation.  The original
archived files are STK_PRG.LZH (the initialization and BBS program),
STK_BLB.LZH (menus and message blurbs), and STK_HLP.LZH (help files).

ST-Keep BBS is shareware.  I request that you send a registration fee
of $25.00 along with some information to me which will give you
on-line support, bug fixes, and upgrades (for a small handling fee,
usually disk and postage costs, or free if you download them directly
from ST-Keep BBS).  You are not required to send this fee, but the
registration and support may come in handy.  I strongly believe in
the versatility of this program, and therefore wish to see as many
people using it as possible.  Making a profit is not my motive, as I
have spent hundreds of hours working on the source code and don't
expect to be fully awarded for such.  This is my hobby and my reward
is the satisfaction of the users, hopefully it can help someone else
out.  If you wish to send the shareware fee or an amount you deem
appropriate, send a letter and check to:

          ATTN:  ANDREW P. STUDER
          PANDAMONIUM SOFTWARE
          7432 CONVAIR WAY
          CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA 95621

          Please include your name, address, BBS and voice phone
          numbers so that I can keep records of registered users.
          State in your letter that you are registering ST-Keep
          BBS.

This document file along with any other *.DOC files should
be printed out for easy access, especially the various files that
explain the system commands in detail.

Introduction
------------

At first, ST-Keep appears to be a Citadel (room based) type
bulletin board system.  However, once you begin working with it,
you will notice that it takes on a very unique appearance of its
own along with adding a great many features not found in Citadel
programs.  You may even recognize some functions or features
resembling ATKeep, which was an Atari 8-bit Citadel BBS my friend
Brent Barrett and I wrote many years ago for our Atari 800XL's.
My love for that program and the lack of any 'professional'
Citadel prompted me to create ST-Keep for the ST's while Brent
went on to the IBM to create Novucivitas.

System Requirements
-------------------

ST-Keep will run with only 512K RAM in your system, but a hard
drive is strongly suggested.  A RAM disk would be OK, but unreliable
unless you made frequent backups.  A typical system will need just
under 1 Megabyte of drive storage for it's system files, but still
runs on less than 300K RAM. Monochrome and Color are supported, along
with 14.4K baud modems. If you don't have much free RAM after
installing the system, chances are you won't be able to run on-line
games or doors, so keep this in mind, 1 Megabyte of RAM would be ideal
for a system including games and other doors.  Hopefully these minimum
requirements won't change very much in future upgrades.

ST-Keep
-------

You may put ST-Keep and all of its support files anywhere on your hard
drive.  When you are ready to install your board, run BBS_INIT.TOS
from the drive and folder where you plan on running BBS.PRG (ST-Keep)
from.  If you want ST-Keep to run from D:\STK\, initially you will
need to run BBS_INIT.PRG from that same folder to insure that the
system files are in the correct area.  Run BBS_INIT.PRG, you will see
a menu of options with defaults.  When you choose each option, you'll
be given description of the meaning, and then you are asked to make
your configuration choice.  You may have up to 32000 user accounts,
32000 topic rooms or SIG's, 32000 messages per room, 15 groups, and
15 floors.  You will need to configure your system for your needs.
Obviously these large numbers would tend to degrade a systems
throughput, so a standard setup might be as per the defaults in your
menu options (200 users, 150 rooms, 75 messages per room, and 15
floors).

All messages are stored in one 'circular' file that is
referenced by pointers for each message in the rooms.  This file
is usually created at 512K, but if you anticipate greater than
average message activity 750K or 1024K would be fine.  I have seen
very active boards with only a 300K message file, and messages stick
around long enough for regular callers.  If your system is configured
to allow 50 messages per room, with 100 rooms, and a 512K message
base, you would expect around 500 to 2000 messages active on your
system at any time.  When you enter the size of your message base,
enter it in kilobytes.  That is, if you want 512000 bytes for your
message base, just type in 512.  Our users group has a 500K message
base, 75 rooms, and 50 messages per room with around 100 users.  I
don't suggest using more than 100 messages per room or your new users
would get very tired reading all the messages in each topic.  Messages
are deleted based on 3 criteria; first is when the message base file
fills up, the pointers start back at the beginning of the file and
start deleting the oldest messages in the system; second is when a
user enters the maximum message number allowed in the room, the oldest
message in that room is deleted; and third is when the aide command is
used to delete a message.

Once you finish changing all the options to suit your needs, use
[S]ave and the program will begin initializing your system files.
Note:  These system files must always be in this directory, along
with BBS.PRG.  When it is finished, run BBS.PRG and your system is
ready to accept the first caller or local logon.

You must include XYZ.TTP in the folder you create for the file
transfer shell option or in the system directory if you don't change
it.  Alan Hamilton has the best protocol features and these are what
ST-Keep uses for file transfers.  By the way, you should also use
XYZ.TTP for your Zmodem transfers from your telecommunications
programs.  Please send him a shareware donation if your system uses
file transfers.

LZH11316.TTP should be in this directory also if you are using
archival backups.

Conventions
-----------

Throughout these documentations and throughout the BBS program itself,
you will see brackets surrounding single or multiple letters.  All
this means is that to obtain a particular command, press the key(s)
inside the bracket(s).  If you see "[T] Terminate Connection," it
means to press the "T" key on your keyboard (upper or lowercase) to
logoff the BBS.  If you see "[.][E][R] Create Room," press "." "E" and
"R" one after another, and the system will respond with ".Enter Room:
" and allow you to type in the room name you wish to create.

At most any time while text or messages are being displayed while on
ST-Keep, just type [CONTROL-S] or [P] to pause the display, then type
any key to resume.  If you would like to abort or stop the display,
press [CONTROL-C] or [S].  Some users will need to have this explained
to them as well, obviously [P] and [S] are easier to use than the
CONTROL options.

Voting Option
-------------

ST-Keep allows the sysop to configure an unlimited number of voter
polls for use on the system.  If you wish to have votes on your
system, you MUST create a folder named VOTE in your BBS system
directory.  Two files are required to be created with a text editor by
the sysop before each vote will be enabled.  VOTENAME.VOT contains the
vote question and the choices, the first 8 characters can be your
choice, but the extension must be "VOT".  VOTEANSW.ANS contains the
number of answers to each choice, the first 8 characters must match
the corresponding vote filename, and the extension must be "ANS".

The first line in each *.VOT file contains the number of the room you
wish the vote results to be posted in.  If you do not have a "Vote"
room, you should set this room number to equal either the aide/sysop
room (3 or 4) or "0" and no message will be written to record each
users vote.  Ideally, you should have a "Vote" room in order to
discuss the topic and therefore the first line in your file should be
equal to that room's number (i.e. if youre "Vote" room is #23, the
first line in your quesion file will be 23.  To find a room number,
either use [R]ead [I]nformation, [J]umpto [RETURN], or [L]ist Rooms
[RETURN] from any room prompt.  After the room number, you should
enter a number for the amount of choices in this particular vote.
Following that line, enter the actual vote question next.  This
can only be one line of data, but its length can be up to 255
characters, therefore you can not have any specially width formatting
in the actual message, ST-Keep will format this line to the users
screen width setting.  The following lines are the choices in the
vote.  I strongly suggest always including an "Other" and "No Opinion"
answer for obvious reasons (you can only have up to 26 choices in your
vote including these two).  Here is a sample vote question file
(VOTE1.VOT):

23
6
What telecommunications program do you use on your ST?
Flash
Interlink
Uniterm
STalker
Other
No Opinion

The answer file (VOTE1.ANS) should contain a "0" on separate lines
for each of your choices.  Since our vote has 6 choices, this is what
the file would look like:

0
0
0
0
0
0

Doors
-----

Doors allow an external program (game, utility, etc...) to be run
from withing ST-Keep while in a logon session from either a remote
user or the sysop.  If a remote user is running the program, the
external program must redirect IO to the modem itself, as ST-Keep
doesn't do this.  Most all on-line games nowadays do this, so you
shouldn't have to worry about it.  Otherwise, any GEM programs or
programs that don't re-direct the IO can only be executed from a local
logon.  Also, your FREE RAM must be high enough to support both
ST-Keep and this external program.  A RESERVE error in ST-Keep will
occur if you do not have enough free RAM to run a door.  Doors can be
added via the co-sysop command [.][C][M]. Follow the menu commands to
add or kill doors .  Keep in mind that if you want group access for
different doors, that those won't appear on the menu for a normal
user unless they are a member of that group.  If you do not wish to
use this option, you can install or delete your own doors with any
text editor.  Each door has 5 fields, all on separate lines, although
the file begins with one line stating the total number of doors you
have installed.  This is how the file (STK_DOOR.SYS) would look with
two doors installed:

2
1
Axolotl Football League
c:\afl\afl.tos
UNUSED
c:\afl\player.dat
15
Flash
c:\flash\flash.prg
UNUSED
UNUSED

The first line tells ST-Keep how many doors you have installed, be
sure to change this number if you delete or add doors without
using the built in door editor.  The second line contains the group
number of the AFL door, remember, if users are not members of group 2
they can not get in this door.  Line 2 holds the door name, line 3 the
path/filename where this program can be found.  The 4th line is UNUSED
(all caps) at this time.  The 5th line is only used if you need to
pass the players name to a specific filename, use UNUSED if it isn't
necessary.  As you can see, those 5 fields are repeated for my Flash
door.

If the doors don't work correctly, you're probably just setting the
path/filenames incorrectly or you don't have enough RAM.

Function Keys
-------------

[F1] Press this key to get a menu of the functions available.

[F2] Go into chat mode with the current user, if you use this key
     while you are on-line locally, it will go into terminal mode.

[F3] Disable chat call.  This will send a note to the users from
     NOCHAT.BLB which should basically state that the sysop is not
     around so leave mail or try again later.  Chat Mode: On/Off will
     be seen in the status line.

[F4] This will send a bunch of line noise over the modem, usefull to
     terrorize your friends or just before using [F5].

[F5] Will drop DTR, hang up on the modem instantly.

[F6] Userboot # - enter a number from 0 through 9 after pressing this
     function key, the user will be sent the textfile called
     USERBOOT.X in your system directory.  X = the userboot number you
     chose.  You can create such textfiles as "Your time has
     expired!" or "Sorry, the sysop needs the system, please call back
     later."  After each userboot file is printed to the callers
     screen, the modem will drop carrier on them so you can have the
     system.

[F7] Allows access to the aide commands no matter who is online, be
     careful not to show the user anything you don't want them to see.

[F8] Allows access to the co-sysop/sysop commands, otherwise same as
     [F7].

[F9] Access to file commands.

[F10] Status line toggel, if it's on, this will turn it off and give
      access to the full screen for the session.  If it is on, it
      holds 4 lines of information on the users account.  It is
      automatically turned on when a user calls, but is not turned on
      when anyone logs on from the console.

Backups
-------

ST-Keep will automatically backup your system files after midnight
when the first caller logs off if you have this function enabled
([.][c][b]).  Just make sure the correct pathname is on your hard
drive, and the files will be copied over there.  You should put the
backup files on a partition other than the same one you're using for
the BBS, just in case that partition fails you have the old files
elsewhere.  If you need to restore from a backup, you MUST copy ALL
of the backup files to your BBS directory, you can not pick and
choose from various files.  So if you lose just one or a few of your
SYS files, you will still need to copy all of the backup files over.
Almost all the system files are tied in together, especially the
room.sys, userlog.sys, and msg.sys files and they can't operate
correctly if they aren't all from the same backup.  The backup
feature doesn't check for enough free space on your backup partition,
so you should periodically check your backup drive to make sure it
has enough free space when you first start.  Once one backup is
complete, ST-Keep will just overwrite those same files so the amount
of backup space required shouldn't change.  In the [.][c][o] menu
you'll find a backup files toggle.  This will toggle from copying
each file individually for the backup, or LZHing them into one file
with the date of the backup for space constraints.  You must have
LZH11316.TTP in your system directory for the archive backup to
operate.