By Popular Request 2.0/By Popular Request 2.0 (Arsenal Computer).ISO/acs_cfgs/software.cd

Text File | 1994-03-16 | 11KB | 190 lines

   ▐▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▌▐▄▄▄▄▄▄▌▐▄▄▄▄▄▄▌  Arsenal Computer - Topeka, KS
   ▐██▌ ▐██▌▐██▌    ▐██▌      BBS Ready CD-ROM Specialists
  ▐███▌▐███▌▐██▌    ▐██████▌  1-800-9CD-SALE  Toll Free Order Hotline
  ▐▀▀▌  ▐▀▀▌▐▀▀▌        ▐▀▀▌  1-913-234-4146  Tech Support
  ▐▄▄▌  ▐▄▄▌▐▄▄▄▄▄▄▌▐▄▄▄▄▄▄▌  1-913-234-8528  24 Hour FAX Line
                              1-913-234-9395  10 Line BBS

Running CD-ROM technology with your BBS - the Software side.

There is no single item that can add caller appeal to your BBS like a CD-ROM
can.  In one shot, you can add 600+ Megabytes (sometimes over 700!) to your
board with very little hassle... IF you pick the right disc, and the right
software/hardware to run it.  If you don't do this, you could be in for some
major headaches.

For the purposes of this article, I'm going to assume that you already have
your hardware, and have it operational, otherwise, why would you be looking
at this, right? (smile!)  Now, lets take a look at the software that you are
going to need to support your new toy.

Before I go on, I want to mention that several BBS packages now feature
CD-ROM control in various degrees, ranging from the excellent to the barely
there.  I am not going to point out what BBS software has the best support,
because I do not know.  But I will tell you what you are going to have to
look for in a BBS or door package, in order to support CD-ROM's effectively.

First of all, a few questions:

     [1] How many CD-ROM's do you either have online, or plan to have online?
     If you only have one, and will not be getting any more, then your job is
     much easier than if you have 28 of them online.

     [2] Do you now have, or plan to have, multiline capacity?  If you have
     more than one person online at the same time, then your controller
     software for your CD-ROM has to be more intelligent.

     [3] Are you running any sort of Multitasking?

     [4] Are you running a Local Area Network?  And if so, do you have
     dedicated servers or peer-to-peer setup?

Most BBS's are set up to take a drive and subdirectory, and refer to the files
in that subdirectory as one "file area".  The file listings for that area may
or may not be in that subdirectory, but for most purposes, they are in the
same subdirectory as the files themselves.  Running a CD-ROM the same way
you would a magnetic hard drive in your BBS system is what I refer to as
"running native."  You run a CD-ROM as if it were no different from a regular
file area.

You can do this in a single line BBS, even with multiple discs, but this is
not a good way to do it for several reasons.  First, you have no capacity to
seamlessly go to multiline if you so desire,  Second, your software probably
has a limitation as to how many file areas you have on it, and it's quite
possible to break that if you put a few ROM's online.  Third, and perhaps
most important, not too many BBS ready CD-ROM's are really able to do this
for you, because either they lack file listings in the file sub-directories,
or else they do not have a format that you can use in them.

Here is what you need to intelligently support CD-ROM's on a BBS:

   [1] The ability to store your file listings on you hard drive,
   rather than having to read them from the CD-ROM every time.

   [2] The ability to copy the CD-ROM files to your hard drive before they
   are downloaded by your caller.  Example:  Joe Bloe wants to download the
   file XYZ.ZIP from your "Incredible Meggage" CD-ROM.  After Joe requests
   that the download proceed, the system would then transfer the file
   to a hard drive "holding area" where it would download it from there.

   [3] If you are looking at putting multichangers online, get software that
   supports a "busy flag."  A Busy flag puts up a marker when a caller is
   transferring files to the hard drive that the drive is busy, and if
   another caller comes in, they should get a "drive busy, please wait"
   message instead of causing a drive conflict.  Such a contention
   controller is absolutely necessary for multichangers, and a darn good idea
   even on normal CD-ROM's.

Having control of this nature is absolutely essential if you are running
CD-ROM's on your BBS.  There are several programs out there that will do what
I describe, but I'll let you know about the one that I personally use, the
SFRom/EZRom System.

SFRom was built around the Spitfire BBS system and multichangers, and has a
great number of features about it that make it worthwhile.  EZRom is exactly
the same program, but built to use a standard DOOR.SYS dropfile, rather than
being Spitfire dependant.  The door, in addition to the features that I have
outlined above, has such anemities as multidisc text search, the ability to
act as a shell program (shelling out to other doors at your convenience) and
an upcoming feature is the ability to support "offline" CD-ROM's.

There are provisions in many BBS packages to control CD-ROM's.. but unless you
have all the features listed above, I would suggest that you check out EZRom,
or any other doorware that provides those sort of features.  They can make
your life a lot easier.

And now, to consider the effects of some other ways of operating your BBS:

Do you run your BBS under multitasking?  If so, you are going to get some
headaches with this.  Of course, if you have run your BBS under a multitasker
for any length of time, you are used to this by now, right?  (Smile!)
Lets face the facts... any multitasker commonly used on the market tends to
be a bit "unstable" and if one task goes haywire, it can take down the rest
of them with it.  I have yet to see a truely stable DOS multitasking
platform.  In any case, the real problem that you are going to run into with
a multitasker setup is the fact that CD-ROM's require two very memory hungry
drivers in order to work, and don't count on your being able to load them
high.  I have found machines that simply would NOT allow the CD-ROM drives to
work if the drivers were loaded high.  Even if you can load them high, you
are dealing with drivers that are going to eat up 50+ kbytes of memory!
This can put a major crimp in your uppper memory.  So, I give you this
warning... while it is possible to run a CD-ROM in a multitasking environment,
you are going to have to fiddle with your memory manager before you will get
any sort of real satisfaction out of it.

Another thing to consider with multitasking... if you are running multiple
nodes on one machine, and your CD-ROM is on that same machine, when someone
hits your CD-ROM, all nodes will suffer a tremendous slowdown.  The reason?
CD-ROM's are notorious for pulling machine interrupts down like crazy...
everything basically stops operation until the CD-ROM is done.

If you are multitasking; multiple nodes on one machine, do yourself a favor
and put your CD-ROM's on another machine, then use a Local Area Network,
preferably Lantastic, to connect them.  It will save you a lot of hassle.

Local Area Network considerations.

Local Area Networks are actually one of the most powerful, and easiest to
use solutions for putting CD-ROM's on your BBS.  While you may think that
using a LAN will run up your cost, it's possible to set up a LAN quite
inexpensively, if you pay heed to a few tips.  Tip one, buy only what you
need, tip two, buy Lantastic!  (smile!)

Using a LAN, you can easily set up all of your CD-ROM's on one machine,
making it a "dedicated" CD-ROM server, and vastly improving the efficientcy
of your BBS.  But isn't a dedicated server expensive?  Not in this case.
CD-ROM's are notoriously slow pieces of hardware, why put a machine on them
that vastly overruns their capacity?  Just take any old 286 machine that you
might have available (or can buy dirt cheap), put put a monochrome monitor
on it (why have fancy graphics, it's a workhorse), put your network card in
it, and away you go.  You don't even need to have a hard drive in it, as you
can easily set it up to boot from a floppy drive, load the network, and be
perfectly happy.  As you can see, it doesn't take a major investment to
put a dedicated CD-ROM machine online.

The real beauty of having a dedicated CD-ROM server is that you will NOT be
affecting any other portion of the board when you hit the CD-ROM drives.
If you put your CD-ROM's on hardware that is also servicing your magnetic
hard drives, or worse yet, your nodes, your callers are going to know exactly
when someone is hitting the CD-ROM's, as their node is going to turn to
mush on them.  Putting the drives on a separate machine means that no one has
to suffer for the download appetites of some of your callers.

Lantastic Considerations:

I heartily recommend Lantastic as THE solution for BBS's that want to LAN
their equipment, especially if they have CD-ROM's.  Why?  Lantastic is not
only easy to install and maintain, it has the best CD-ROM support of any
local area network system, period.  With Lantastic, you can very easily
support CD-ROM's on your BBS, while other networks can make you go through
a lot of hoops and/or expenses before they will work for you.

Another neat trick with Lantastic and dedicated servers is that you can easily
use an entire server as a single "drive"... let me explain.  I have two
CD-ROM dedicated servers on my network, both with 14 Drives online.  Under a
conventional setup, that would eat up 28 drive letters... that would be rather
hard, wouldn't it?  (Smile!)  Of course, I also have hard drives to get to,
as well, so something had to be done.  With Lantastic, I refer to each server
as a drive, and the CD-ROM's inside are sub-directories of that drive.  So,
each server, with it's 14 drives, becomes a single drive with 14 subdirectories
on my network.  Neat trick, eh?  (Smile!)

When using Novell or Novell Light, you are looking at more headaches.  I'm not
familiar with Novell, but talking to SysOps that use it, they have a lot more
trouble in setting up CD-ROM's on their BBS.  Because of my lack of experience
with it, I'm not going to cover it in depth here, but let me say that if you
have a Novell System, you are going to have to put more effort into getting
your CD-ROM's to work properly than you would if you had a Lantastic System.

In the end, you are going to have to find a solution that works for both you
and your callers.  Pick something that you like, and stick with it.

If you have any questions or comments about this, please feel free to contact
me at my BBS, Arsenal Computer.  The phone number is 913-234-9395.