SYSTEM REQUIREMENTSSYSTEM REQUIREMENTSSYSTEM REQUIREMENTS_________________________________________________________
1) 64Kb of RAM on startup. (Normal amount required by a COM file).
2) ONLY 800 BYTES of RAM (plus whatever your BBS needs) when spawning.
3) Version 3 or higher of MSDOS or PCDOS.
4) An IBM or compatible PC. (Who uses real IBM's anyway...)
5) A Hayes command set compatible modem which returns verbal responses.
6) A version 5 compatible FOSSIL. (BTD was fully tested with BNU and BTF.)
7) An installed and working BBS (might help a bit...)
Although BTD has been thoroughly and successfully tested on a number of XT, AT,
386, desktop and portable PC systems at baud rates from 300 to 9600, this is not
offered as a guarantee that it will work on your system.
SIMILAR SOFTWARESIMILAR SOFTWARESIMILAR SOFTWARE________________________________________________
There are many similar programs, but only one other program that I know of has
been written in assembler and that is MAMM by Dan Thomson of Canada. While BTD's
code owes nothing to that of MAMM's, some of its capabilities were influenced by
it. For this reason, BTD is configuration file compatible with MAMM version
1.00. However, no program I know of offers as many capabilities as BTD.
BTD started life as GG.EXE (Garden Gate) and was written in Turbo C v1.5 then
v2. GG was intended for private use by myself, friends and colleagues, although
it did find its way onto a couple of BBS's!
Work on the first BTD version of GG began in early August 1990 and was released
in November 90. The current version of BTD was started in July 91 and continued
in fits and starts as new facilities were added and as time and wife permitted.
Version 3.00 of BTD is the FIRST public release.
IMPORTANT NOTES FOR GG.EXE USERS UPGRADING TO BTDIMPORTANT NOTES FOR GG.EXE USERS UPGRADING TO BTDIMPORTANT NOTES FOR GG.EXE USERS UPGRADING TO BTD___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
One of the biggest difference between BTD and GG is the size of the executable
file. GG v2.10 was a massive 27618 bytes and yet had few extra functions. Our
targets for BTD v3 were 1024 bytes when spawning and 8192 bytes in total. We did
it, both on time and with room to spare.
If you were using GG, please see UPGRADE.GG for the changes you'll need to make.
(GG is no longer available.) Some of the most important changes you should make
to your configuration file are reproduced here.
1) The /C (Callback) switch is not supported by BTD and is ignored if found on
the command line. (Only 1 registered GG user employed it anyway!)
2) The H (hourly) event type prefix is no longer supported. BTD's new method of
setting event times means that it is no longer required.
3) Modem and text strings are no longer surrounded by quotes. The modem strings
are longer but the banner strings are now only one line.
4) The modem delay and DTR control characters ('"v^, etc) are no longer needed
and will now be sent to the modem as they are not translated.
5) The @ file identifier for banners etc is not currently supported.