Monster Media 1994 #1

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ROMDOOR v3.1X ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── CD-ROM Door for WildCat v3.x and PcBoard 14.5 Systems Copyright (C) 1993 by Advanced Software Concepts Inc. Programmed by Jeff Bisson TABLE OF CONTENTS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Setting up RomDoor ............................... 2 - 11 Extra notes about use with WildCat 3.5x .......... 11 Extra notes about use with PcBoard 14.5 .......... 11 Adding comments to ZIP files ..................... 11 Using the extra features of RomDoor .............. 11 - 13 Changing paths to display files .................. 13 Optimizing RomDoor ............................... 13 - 17 Using RomDoor with multi-disk CD-ROM changers .... 17 Configuring RomDoor if nodes have dif drive ltrs . 18 Configuring the main menu ........................ 18 - 19 Setting up groups ................................ 19 Configuring and maintaining the request feature .. 19 - 20 Common Asked Questions ........................... 20 Command Line parameters .......................... 21 Registration ..................................... 21 Special Thanks ................................... 22 Problems, comments, and future versions .......... 22 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── [Page 2, RomDoor v3.00] SETTING UP ROMDOOR ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── RomDoor is quite easy to set up, although it may be a bit confusing and will take some time to do everything correctly. The process is not hard, but it is sometimes repetitive. Over all it is worth the trouble. STEP #1 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Take a deep breath. STEP #2 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Make a NEW directory for RomDoor. Usually ?:\ROMDOOR. ■ Extract the RomDoor archive into this new directory. ■ At this time you might want to print out these instructions for future reference. STEP #3 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Go to the RomDoor directory and type MAKEROM then press ENTER. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters." ■ Press ENTER on "Edit General Parameters." You should be presented with a menu that shows the following options: BBS Software: Defaults to WildCat! Press the Space Bar if you are running PcBoard. Network: Defaults to NONET. If you are running multi-node, change this to either SHARE or NOVELL, this should be the same as in MAKEWILD. Flow Control: Here are some guidelines on choosing flow control: If you are running a high speed modem, or an error correcting modem, then choose "Hardware Flow Control, (CTS/RTS)." If you have a standard 2400 or an (ouch) 1200 bps modem, then choose "No Flow Control." Other options are available, such as "Software Flow Control, (Xon/Xoff)" as well as "Both Hardware and Software flow control," but they are rarely used. BBS Home Dir: Path to the main directory for your BBS program. For example (C:\WC30 for WildCat! systems) and (C:\PCB for PcBoard systems). [Page 3, RomDoor v3.00] Default Extension: This is the default file extension that will be used when a download is requested, provided a file without an extension is not located. ZIP and GIF are the two most common selections. External Protocols: This reads in the external protocols that you have specified in MakeWild and allows you to select which ones will be offered from RomDoor. Note: Don't offer BiModem or HsLink since RomDoor does not check for uploaded files. Note: For PcBoard systems, Zmodem is filtered out because it is offered as an internal protocol in RomDoor. Copy Files To HD: This option controls how RomDoor will handle the files when it is sending the files to the user. There are three different settings for this option: Don't copy: Downloads directly from the CD-ROM disk, without copying the files to the hard drive. Copy files individually: When RomDoor starts the download it will start the transfer and then copy first file to the hard drive. The only drawback to this feature is if you have a slow CD-ROM or have a system with a lot of activity then there might be a substantial delay before the user sees the file downloading. Note: This is how RomDoor v2.xx worked when it copied the files to the hard drive. Copy files all at once: When RomDoor starts the download it will copy all the files into the queued list before it starts the transfer. RomDoor displays to the user what file it is on, so they won't think that the system is frozen. Note: When RomDoor copies files to the hard drive it places them in the NODE WORK DIRECTORY. Note: RomDoor is smart and will not attempt to copy the file if there is not enough disk space. If this happens, RomDoor will continue to allow downloads directly off the CD-ROM as if this field was set to "Don't Copy." [Page 4, RomDoor v3.00] Write to WC! Logs: Set this to "YES" if you want RomDoor to "log" to the WildCat! activity logs. If this option is set to "NO," RomDoor will maintain its own activity logs in the RomDoor directory. Note: PcBoard SysOps should set this to "NO" since it will look for ACTIVITY.XXX. Later versions will support the PcBoard activity logs. Link with BBS: Set this to "NO" if you want to keep the security level information separate from your BBS's. For example if you want the user to have a 1:1 download ratio in RomDoor, but a 2:1 download ratio in your BBS, you would have to set this to "NO". If this is set to "YES" the file ratio and daily limit information is matched with your BBS settings when your press ALT-U from the "Edit Security Level Information". More on this in Step 7. ■ **** !!!! Now hit F10 to save your options !!!! **** ■ The features in the "Edit Extra Features" are disabled in the unregistered version of RomDoor. For now leave the parameters in "Edit Drive Assignments" and "Edit Display File Paths" alone. Information on these features can be found in the "Setting up the advanced features". ■ Press ESC or F10 to return to the main menu. STEP #4 (Still in MakeRom) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Now you are ready to start setting up your first CD-ROM. ■ Find the text files that list the files that are on your CD-ROM and place those somewhere on your hard drive. You will need them later so remember where you put them. Note: After installation into RomDoor you can delete the files since RomDoor will not need to access them. ■ Before you start importing the text files into the RomDoor database you have to tell RomDoor the format of the text file i.e. location of the filename, date, and description. Note: A common misconception is that you have to configure the text files for each area on the CD-ROM. 99.99% of the time this is not true. As long as all the text files that you will be importing have the same format (Same location of the filename, date, and description), then you will only need to configure the text files for one of the areas. [Page 5, RomDoor v3.00] ■ To configure the text files press ENTER on "Configure Text File Definitions". ■ Press INS to Add a New Record. ■ Type in the file name of one of the text files which came with the CD-ROM. This is the file that contains all the file names, sizes dates, and descriptions. ■ You will then be prompted with a question asking you what name you want to identify the record with, for ease of remembering type in the CD-ROM's name. ■ You will be presented with the first 6 lines from that text file, if there is a header you may move up and down in the text file by using the up and down arrow keys. ■ You will notice the file name arrow which spans columns 1 to 12, if the location is incorrect move it using your arrow keys. Use the TAB key to move from arrow to arrow. ■ If the text file has a file size field in it, then press INS and select "Size", a new arrow will appear which you may move. Place it directly under the file size field in the text file. If there is a date field then press INS again and move the date arrow to the date field. Similarly do this with the "Description" arrow. Make sure the "Description" arrow starts at the beginning of the description field and ends at the end of the field. You may move the arrows to 128 columns maximum. If you have a RBBS-IN-A-BOX style file listing there should be a area field, insert and move the "Area" arrow to the correct position. Note: RomDoor doesn't support RBBS-IN-A-BOX because of its unorthodox filing system. ■ Press F10 to save what you have done. ■ Press ESC or F10 to return to MakeRom main menu. STEP #5 (Still in MakeRom) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Now you are ready to enter the CD-ROM information for the disk that you are adding. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit CD-ROM information". ■ You will be presented with a menu listing the CD-ROM disks that you have configured. If you haven't configured any CD-ROMs then the names will be blank. Press ENTER on the CD-ROM that you want to configure. Note: The unregistered version of RomDoor only will show the user the CD-ROM disk in the \ROM01 directory. [Page 6, RomDoor v3.00] ■ The first time you press ENTER on a CD-ROM number you will be presented with a screen that tells you that it created a directory called ROMxx, which is located directly off your RomDoor directory. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit CD-ROM Info". You will presented with a screen which allows you to configure the: Name of disk: Enter the name of the CD-ROM disk that you are adding. Volume label: If the CD-ROM disk has a volume label then you will want to enter it here. It is ESSENTIAL that you type in the volume label EXACTLY as it is one the CD-ROM disk. To find out the volume name of the CD-ROM disk you are adding and if it has a volume label - go to DOS and type VOL ?: ─┘. ? being the drive letter where the CD-ROM disk is located. File to look for: If the CD-ROM disk that you are adding doesn't have a volume label then you will want to use this field so RomDoor can tell if the CD-ROM disk is "Online". You will want to enter a file name that is UNIQUE to that CD-ROM disk. It can be ANY file that is on the CD-ROM. You will need to include the full path to the file so for example if you where going to use FILENAME.EXT which is located in the root directory of the drive you would enter: \FILENAME.EXT Instead of just FILENAME.EXT. Note: Leave out the drive letter in this field since RomDoor will search for the disk when it enters. If you have multiple CD-ROM drives then this allows you to move your disks between the drives without re-configuring RomDoor. Checked w/RomEdit: Read the "Optimizing RomDoor" in the "Using RomEdit to speed up marking" section, for more information on what this means. Note: This field is not changable from this screen. ■ Press F10 to save you changes. [Page 7, RomDoor v3.00] STEP #6 (Still in MakeRom) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ The next thing to do is "Edit Areas". This is where you will configure each of the file areas that is on the CD-ROM disk. You will be asked how many file areas you want to have for that CD-ROM disk. You can set this number from 1-1000, usually this is set to the number of file areas that are on the CD-ROM. You can change the number by "Setting Max Areas For CD" from the previous menu. ■ Select the area to edit with your cursor and press ENTER. ■ This window has three different fields: Area Name: This is the name of the area. Groups: The groups that the file area belongs to. If you are not planning on using the grouping feature then just disregard this option. If you want to configure groups then please read the section "Setting up groups". Area Paths [1..6]: The next six fields pertain to the paths for the areas. ■ Since RomDoor will get the drive letter at run-time leave the drive letter out when you type in the path. For example \GIF\NATURE instead of I:\GIF\NATURE. If you have multiple CD-ROM drives then this allows you to move your disks between the drives without re-configuring RomDoor. ■ RomDoor allows up to six paths for one file area, if you need more than that you may separate the paths using semi-colons ';'. For example: \GIFS\NATURE;\GIFS\GRAPHICS;\GIFS\PICTURES This can be useful if files for a particular file area aren't in one location on disk. ■ Hopefully your CD-ROM disk came with a text file that lists the area names and paths, you will use that as a reference to enter the correct information in the file areas. Go through the file areas entering the name, paths, and groups joined for every file area. ■ Before going onto the next step make sure that all the file areas have names and that the paths are correct. [Page 8, RomDoor v3.00] STEP #7 (Still in MakeRom) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ The next step is to configure the security levels. ■ To do this press ENTER on "Edit Security Level Information" from the main menu in MakeRom, you will be presented a list of the security levels that you have defined in MakeWild, or for PcBoard sysops in PCBSETUP. ■ Press ENTER on the security level to configure, you will presented with a screen where you can configure the certain options that pertain to security levels. Access To Areas: If you press F2 on this field you will be presented with a list of the CD-ROM disks that you have configured in MakeRom. Press ENTER on the CD-ROM disk that you want to change the access to. To toggle access to individual areas press the spacebar. If you want to give the security level access to all of the areas on this CD-ROM disk simply press ALT-S to select all of the areas. If you want to clear the all of the areas press ALT-C. Press F10 when you are finished. Type of Access: If you press F2 on this field you will be presented with a list of the CD-ROM disks that you have configured in MakeRom. Press ENTER on the CD-ROM disk that you want to change the type of access to. The options for this feature are: View/Download: This is the default and how you will leave most security levels. This allows the users to view and download from the CD-ROM disk. List only: This allows you setup a disk as "look but don't touch". This is useful for pay systems so you can show your un-paying users what they are missing. Max Ratio: Controls the ratio of downloads to uploads that must be met. For example, if a ratio is set to 10, a user could download 10 files without uploading any. Starting with the 11th download the user would be advised that the download/upload ratio has been exceeded. Max Daily Downloads: Limits the amount of files that a user can download during one day. Max Daily DL K-Bytes: Limits the total kilobytes (1024 bytes) that a user can download during one day. [Page 9, RomDoor v3.00] DL Warning Action: Determines how RomDoor will react when a user goes over their download ratio. The options are "Ignore", "Warn", and "Disable". The last two will send a message explaining that they are over their ratio, and disable will not allow them to mark or download the file. Ext Protocols Access: If set to "NO" then the user's will not have access to the external protocols. Max Requested Files: Sets the maximum amount of files that a user can request at any give time. For more information on the request feature please read the section "Configuring and maintaining the request feature." Max Requested K-Bytes: Sets the maximum amount of K-Bytes a user can request at any give time. ■ Press F10 to save changes. Note: If you have Link Sec Levels in "RomDoor's Main Settings" set to "YES" then ALT-U will correlate to your BBS settings for that particular security level. And if you ever change your BBS's security levels than you must press ALT-U to update RomDoor's security level file. STEP #8 (Still in MakeRom) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Now you are ready to start importing file names and descriptions into the RomDoor documentation. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit CD-ROM information". Select the CD-ROM that you are adding. Then press ENTER on "Edit Areas". ■ Place your cursor on the file area you are going to import into and press ALT-I. ■ Enter the name of the text file that contains the file information for that area or multiple areas as discussed below. ■ Note: If the text file that you are importing has multiple areas then MakeRom will increment the area number once it encounters a blank line in the text file. IMPORTANT: Since MakeRom will go from one area to the next when it detects a blank line, you must: ■ Be sure that the text file listing is in the same order by area as you defined the file areas in MakeRom (Step #6). ■ Insure that there are no additional blank lines in the text listing other than the ones that separate the file areas. [Page 10, RomDoor v3.00] ■ You will then be asked for the Directory Setup Number, which is the number of the text file definition that you entered in the "Text File Definition" (Step #4). At this point you can press F2 to get a pick list of the directory setup numbers. ■ Press "Y"es if you are importing a multi-area text file. ■ Press "Y"es if the information in the box is correct. ■ Now MakeRom should be importing the files into the RomDoor database. If the description is longer than 40 characters it will word wrap it and add it to the next line. Up to 10 lines of description are imported per file. Repeat this step for all of the file areas on this disk. ■ If you make a mistake you can press ALT-R with your cursor on a file area to remove the entries in that area. STEP #9 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Repeat steps 3-8 for every CD-ROM that you are importing into RomDoor. *** IMPORTANT *** Back up the RomDoor databases all the files in the ROMxx directories. After importing EACH CD-ROM just in case you run into a problem. STEP #10 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Exit the configuration program and setup your door batch file. ■ An example is included in the file SAMPLE.BAT. ■ It should look something like this: C:\ROMDOOR\ROMDOOR ■ It's that simple! STEP #11 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Configure WildCat! or PcBoard for the new door. ■ You will need to load MakeWild or PCBSETUP make sure there is a door number available. ■ (* NOTE TO WILDCAT SYSOPS *) RomDoor will also run from a DOS HOOK from any of the menus, i.e. from the file menu the batch file would be FILE1.BAT or FILE2.BAT. [Page 11, RomDoor v3.00] STEP #12 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── You may now exhale, you are done! Give RomDoor a test drive to make sure everything is working correctly. This can be done by logging on locally to your BBS or executing RomDoor from the command line by typing ROMDOOR LOCAL. EXTRA NOTES ABOUT USE WITH WILDCAT 3.5x ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── RomDoor v3.00 works perfectly with WC! 3.5x. And requires no extra configuration. EXTRA NOTES ABOUT USE WITH PCBOARD 14.5 and 15.0 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── RomDoor v3.00 works great with PcBoard 14.5 and 15.0. Inside PCBSETUP make sure that you have said that RomDoor uses the DOOR.SYS, other than that it requires no extra configuration with PcBoard. Note: That the message writing feature of the requests does not work with PcBoard systems. ADDING COMMENTS TO ZIPS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── To add a comment to a ZIP file, such as an ad for your BBS. Create a text file named ROMDOOR.CMT in your RomDoor directory. This file should be a text file, and the first two lines should be blank for it to look right when the user unzips it. For this function to work you need to have the option COPY FILES TO HD set in MakeRom. This is done by entering MakeRom and pressing ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters" then moving to the "Copy Files To HD" field and setting it to "Yes". USING THE EXTRA FEATURES OF ROMDOOR ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The extra features of RomDoor are only enabled if you have the registered version. To configure them: ■ Load up MakeRom. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters". [Page 12, RomDoor v3.00] ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Extra Features". You should be presented with a menu that shows the following options: BBS ID: Enter the eight (or less) most significant letters of your boards name. I.E. For Illusions you would enter in ILLUSION. This is for the naming of the area listings that the user creates when they make a list to download from within RomDoor. Note: This feature is disabled if you leave this field blank. Use Group Names: Set to "YES" if you want to group your file areas together I.E. Games, GIFs, Adult. This is extremely useful for the user if you have a multi-CD-ROM-drive-system, because users don't have to wade through all the file areas each time the want to look for a specific type of file. Read "Setting up Groups" for more information on groups. Max markable files: Limits the user's maximum files they can queue up in a mark list at on time. In versions prior to v3.00 this option was hard-coded to 30. Now RomDoor defaults to 30, but allows the sysop to configure it. Allow requests: Set this to "YES" if you want to use the Request feature. If you are interested in setting up the request feature please read the section "Configuring and maintaining the request feature". Days to keep requests: Sets the maximum number of days a requested file will be kept after the sysop has made it available to the user. Write msg on reqs: This option determines if RomDoor will automatically leave messages telling the user or the sysop about the status of requested files. This option has four settings: Don't write messages: Don't have RomDoor leave messages. Write sysop: RomDoor will leave a message to the sysop when a user requests files from an offline CD-ROM disk. Write user: RomDoor will leave a message to the user when the sysop makes the requested files available. Write sysop & user: Combines the above two options. Note: Message writing only works with Wildcat! 3.x BBS systems. [Page 13, RomDoor v3.00] Conference for msgs: If RomDoor has been set to leave messages then this is the conference that it will leave them in. CHANGING PATHS TO DISPLAY FILES ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── There are four different display files that are configurable in RomDoor. They are: a intro screen that is shown instead of the "RomDoor is loading please be patient" message, the RomDoor main menu, a screen that is sent before the options for selecting a protocol, and a screen that is sent when the user logs off the system from RomDoor. The file names for these screens are: RDINTRO, ROMDOOR, PREDOWN, and GOODBYE, respectively. RomDoor will by default look for these files inside the RomDoor directory. If you decide that you want to have RomDoor look for the files in a different location. Then: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters". ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Display File Paths". ■ When you enter in a path make sure that you don't include an extension. For example if you wanted to have RomDoor look for your goodbye screen in C:\WC30\DISP you would put C:\WC30\DISP\GOODBYE and leave off the .SCR or .BBS. That way RomDoor will send the .BBS to the non-color users and .SCR to the ANSI color users. Note: For unregistered users RomDoor won't send the main menu screen instead it sends it's generic screen. OPTIMIZING ROMDOOR ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Version 3.00 of RomDoor introduces various techniques to improve the performance of RomDoor. SPEEDING UP THE TEXT SEARCH ─────────────────────────── One of the slowest features in RomDoor is the text search, if you have more than three or four disks, your users begin to get impatient. If you have some extra disk space you can make QuickSearch databases for RomDoor. These are simply text files which contain the area number the file name and the description for all the files on that CD-ROM disk. After you have created the QuickSearch databases for all the CD-ROM disks then your text searches should be about 16 times faster. There are two negatives to this feature, the databases are usually about half the size of the ROMFILES.DAT file in your ROMxx directory, and secondly if you change the descriptions or add files into your database then the QuickSearch database will remain unchanged. So if you ever change the data in your RomDoor database, not including dates and sizes, you will need to recreate the database for that CD-ROM disk. To create the databases: [Page 14, RomDoor v3.00] ■ Make sure that you are in the RomDoor directory and type QUICKEXP. It should tell you the parameters for the program. But for example if you wanted to create QuickSearch databases for CD-ROMs 1-5 then you would type: QUICKEXP 1-5 When it is done it will have created a ROMSRCH.DAT in the ROM01, ROM02, ROM03, ROM04, and ROM05 directories. Now when RomDoor is asked to perform a text search it will use the ROMSRCH.DAT files instead of searching through the regular database. Note: If you decide that you want the hard drive space back then you can simply delete the ROMSRCH.DAT files. This will not harm RomDoor at all since it checks for these files at run-time and will only use them if they exist. SPEEDING UP ROMDOOR'S LOADUP ──────────────────────────── Many sysops have complained that RomDoor insists on searching all the drives every time it loads up. There are two ways to speed the time it takes to load up RomDoor. ■ The most dramatic speed up is attained by telling RomDoor not to search for the online disks when it loads up. When this option is set, RomDoor will look for the existence of a file called PREVON.DAT. If it doesn't exist it will scan the drives for the online disks and then create the file so that next time it loads it can simply get the online disks from this file. The only draw back to this method is that if and when you change your CD-ROM disks you must either delete the PREVON.DAT or run GETON.EXE. To disable the scanning process when RomDoor loads: Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters". Then press ENTER on "Edit Extra Features". Then turn the option "Scan disks on entry" to "NO". Press F10 three times to exit MakeRom. ■ If you change your disks too often to make the above suggestion plausible then you have one more way of improving the speed, but this is much less dramatic depending on your setup. CHANGING THE DRIVES ROMDOOR SCANS ───────────────────────────────── RomDoor v3.00 changed the logic in how it scans for the CD-ROM disks. Previously RomDoor would simply scan drives C: to your last drive. This worked fine but wasn't flexible. Instead RomDoor v3.00 now lets you choose which drives to scan. For example if you have your CD-ROM disks on your CD-ROM disks on your G: and H: drives. Then you can tell RomDoor to simply scan those two drive and not scan any other drives. [Page 15, RomDoor v3.00] There are a couple of reasons this is useful. SPEED: If you have slow drives (optical or network) on your computer. So if you have drive letters up to Z: you will probably notice a little speed up. CD-ROMS WHICH WERE PUT ON THE HARD DRIVE or CD-ROM DRIVES MAPPED TO THE SAME DRIVE LETTER: You can even put a drive and path instead of just a drive letter, that means if you have plenty of hard drive space and copied one or more of your CD-ROM disks on to your hard drive then you can use this feature to make your live easier. For example if you copied the CD-ROM to the C: drive in to a directory called CDROM1 off of the root directory while duplicating the paths exactly as they were on the CD-ROM disk. Now to save you the trouble of going adding the \CDROM1\ to each of your area paths you can setup RomDoor to scan C:\CDROM1; RomDoor will treat it simply as another drive. If you have Lantastic or a similar network which lets you map multiple drives to one drive letter and access the different drives as directories, then you can use the same logic as above. For example if you have two CD-ROMs and they are accessed as, D:\CDROM1\ and D:\CDROM2\ then you would tell RomDoor to scan D:\CDROM1 and D:\CDROM2. To configure this feature: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters". ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Drive Assignments". ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Node 1's CD-ROM Drives". You should be presented with a screen that lists 32 paths and unit numbers. (Unit numbers are discussed in the "Using RomDoor with multi-disk CD-ROM changers.) If you haven't changed any of the fields in here already then the paths should start at C: and incrementally go up to Z: and the unit numbers should be all 0. For this example lets assume you have a CD-ROM drive on the local system as drive E: and you have two CD-ROM drives on a mapped drive as letter D: the directories for the CD-ROMs on drive D: are D:\CDROM1\ and D:\CDROM2\. ■ Blank out all the path fields using either the delete key or CTRL-Y. ■ Go back to path #1 and put E: in that field. ■ Go to path #2 and enter in D:\CDROM1. ■ Go to path #3 and enter in D:\CDROM2. ■ Notice that the trailing back slashes were left off. This is the way they are supposed to be, MakeRom will delete them if you put them in. ■ Press F10 to save your changes. Now when RomDoor searches for the CD-ROM disks it will search only those three paths. [Page 16, RomDoor v3.00] USING ROMEDIT TO SPEED UP MARKING ───────────────────────────────── This speed enhancement is only possible if you have purchased the registered version of RomDoor. It allows you to use one of the extra utilities namely RomEdit to speed up the process of marking files in RomDoor. Once you have configured and imported the all the files on a CD-ROM disk into RomDoor then it is advisable for you to compare the disk to the database. To do this you must: ■ Load up RomEdit and select the CD-ROM disk that you want to compare. ■ Once the browse screen appears, press ALT-U. ■ You will be presented with a window asking you: Path to CD: Simply type in the drive letter of the CD-ROM that you are doing the compare on. Note: You must add the colon after the drive letter, ie D: instead of just D. Freshen Action: This determines if RomEdit will freshen the date and time. There are three settings for this: freshen size only, freshen date only, freshen size and date. Freshen size only will tell RomEdit to only update the database when it finds a file which has a different size in the database compared to what is actually on the disk. Freshen date only will tell RomEdit to only update the database when it finds a file which has a different date in the database compared to what is actually the date on the disk. If you choose Freshen size and date then RomEdit will perform both of the above functions. Not Found Action: This determines the actions RomEdit will take when it encounters a file that is in the database but not on the disk in the area that you have configured in MakeRom. There are two settings to this feature: Flag/Report Not Found and Delete/Report Not Found. The flag setting tells RomEdit to "flag" (or add the to the third key) this allows you to browse the files which were not found. (Press ALT-S when at the browse screen and select "Not Found".) The delete setting tells RomEdit to simply delete the files that it can't find on the CD-ROM disk. Use this setting sparingly; it should only be used after you have used the flag setting and made sure that the area paths in MakeRom are correct. With both settings the files which were not found will be reported to a file called ROMEDIT.LOG. [Page 17, RomDoor v3.00] ■ Once RomEdit is finished comparing the disk to the database, it will update the CDRECS.DAT; so that RomDoor will know that the CD-ROM disk was checked with RomEdit. Now when RomDoor is told by the user to mark a file off of that disk, it will assume that the file exists as long as the not found flag was not set. This feature is EXTREMELY beneficial to sysops who have a multi-disk CD-ROM changer; simply because now RomDoor will only access the disks when the user goes to download a file. This means that if two or more users are in RomDoor and are marking files at the same time, your multi-disk CD-ROM changer will not switch back and forth as much as it did when the CD-ROM disks were not check with RomEdit. USING ROMDOOR WITH MULTI-DISK CD-ROM CHANGERS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Quite a bit has been discussed already about how to optimize RomDoor for the multi-disk CD-ROM changers, but here are a few extra items that have yet to be discussed. If you are skipping around the documentation then it is advisable for you to read the entire section on "Optimizing RomDoor". CONFIGURING UNIT NUMBERS ──────────────────────── If you have used a previous version of RomDoor (before v3.00) with a multi-disk CD-ROM changer than you have probably noticed you CD-ROM drive often switching back and forth between two disks while RomDoor copies files to the hard drive. Now there is a way to stop the flipping back and forth by simply telling RomDoor that the CD-ROM drives you have RomDoor scanning are all one unit; RomDoor will lock a unit while a user is copying a file to the hard drive and will unlock it once the copy is completed. To configure this feature: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters." ■ Next press ENTER on "Edit Drive Assignments." ■ Next press ENTER on "Edit Node 1's CD-ROM Drives." ■ Now for example if the drives G: - L: were all on the same physical unit then you will want to tell MakeRom that paths G: - L: are all on unit number one. Repeat this process for any other CD-ROM units you have installed on your system, incrementing the unit number as you go along. Note: Giving a drive path a unit number of zero will tell RomDoor not to lock the drive path. [Page 18, RomDoor v3.00] CONFIGURING ROMDOOR WHEN NODES HAVE DIFFERENT DRIVE LETTERS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you have Lantastic or a similar network and have nodes which have different drive letters for the same physical disk then you will need to use this feature if you want RomDoor to scan those drives. For example say you have a CD-ROM drive on node 1 which is drive F:, if the rest of your nodes mapped that drive as drive D: then you will need to configure RomDoor accordingly. To do this: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit RomDoor's Main Parameters." ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Drive Assignments." Note: In the "Edit Node 1's CD-ROM Drives" menu make sure you enter in the paths according to what node one can see. In this example you would enter in F:. ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Node 2-250's Drive Ltrs." ■ Press ENTER on "Node 2." For this example you would move your cursor down to drive "F:" and enter in "D". Repeat this step for each node that has different drive letters then node one. CONFIGURING THE MAIN MENU ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ■ Similar to Wildcat's menu definition, RomDoor allows the sysop to disable certain commands via menu access level. RomDoor reads in the menu access level from the DOOR.SYS; in local mode RomDoor automatically gives you a menu access level of 9999. ■ RomDoor also allows you to reorder the commands. This is only useful if you use the default RomDoor's internal menu. ■ There are ten dos hooks which are available in RomDoor. The batch files for them are called RDHOOK##.BAT where ## is the number of the dos hook. For example: Dos hook 1: RDHOOK1.BAT Dos hook 10: RDHOOK10.BAT SETTING UP GROUPS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Introduced in version 1.10, groups allow you (the SysOp) to categorize your file areas so that the user doesn't have to wade through hundreds of file areas to find something that he/she needs. To configure groups: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER on "Edit Group Information". ■ This will pop up a screen where you can enter the group names'. Notice you may have up to 32 groups. [Page 19, RomDoor v3.00] ■ Type in a name for your first group. For example MUSIC or GRAPHICS. ■ Press F10 when finished. ■ Now you need tell RomDoor which files are in which groups. To do this press ENTER on "Edit CD-ROM Information". And select the CD-ROM that you want to work with. Next press ENTER on "Edit Areas" when you come to a file that should be in one of your groups press ENTER on that area and press F2 on the "Groups" field. Then simply press the SPACE BAR on the groups that it belongs in. NOTE you may assign a file area to multiple groups. ■ Once you have configured the names press F10 to save your changes. ■ Make sure that "Use Group Names" is set to "YES" in the "Main RomDoor Parameters" menu. CONFIGURING AND MAINTAINING THE REQUEST FEATURE ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── New to version 2.00, the request feature allows users to request files from off-line CD-ROM disks. This feature is useful for boards that have more CD-ROM disks than they do CD-ROM disk drives. (Only available in the registered version.) To configure the request feature: ■ Load up MakeRom and press ENTER to edit "RomDoor's Main Parameters". ■ Press ENTER on "Edit Extra Features". Then move the cursor down to "Allow Requests" and press the SPACE BAR to toggle the field to "YES". ■ If you want to limit the amount of files a certain security level can request then press ENTER on "Edit Security Level Information". Move the bar to the security level that you want to edit and press ENTER. There are two ways to limit a security level. The first is by limiting the amount of files that they can have requested at any given time, and the second way is to limit the amount of K-Bytes they can have requested at any given time. Once you have the request feature setup the users will be shown all the CD-ROM disks that have been configured for the board. If they decide to download a file from an off-line CD-ROM they will be asked if they wish to "Request" the file. If they press "Y"es then the request will be added to the request database located in the REQUEST directory directly off of the RomDoor directory. It is the sysops job to maintain the requests and copy the requested files to the HD. This process has been made simple with the use of MakeRom. [Page 20, RomDoor v3.00] To maintain the request feature: ■ Once a day, or however often you like. You will have to load up MakeRom and select "Check File Requests". You will be presented with a screen showing all of the requested files and if they are currently "Available" to the user. If there are any files that are "Not Ready" then you have to copy it to the HD. There are two ways you can go about doing this, the first is to move the cursor to any file that is "Not Ready" and press ENTER. The second and most convenient way is to press ALT-A. MakeRom will scan the database and check to see if there are any files that are "Not Ready". If there are, then MakeRom will prompt you for the CD-ROM disks to insert and will copy the files from the disks. COMMON ASKED QUESTIONS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Question: I have imported the files into the database and setup the files areas. But when I go into RomDoor I can't see the file areas. It may be reporting "Sorry no CDs are online." Answer: There are a couple of possible reasons why you are having this problem. 1) Check to make sure that you have given your security level access to those file areas. NOTE to give a security level access to a CD-ROM make sure that the correct CD-ROM Number is in the file area records. Then press ENTER on the security level in question and press F2 on the "Access To Areas" field. Then select the CD-ROM by pressing ENTER. Make sure that you have access to the areas on the CD-ROM disk. 2) Check to make sure that the "File to look for" and/or the "Volume Label" are correct for that disk. 3) If you have the "Scan disks on entry" feature turned off then try deleting PREVON.DAT, running GETON.EXE, or pressing F5 inside of RomDoor. All three actions will force RomDoor to re-scan the drives. 4) Make sure that you have told RomDoor to scan that CD-ROM drive. To make sure read the section on "OPTIMIZING ROMDOOR - CHANGING THE DRIVES ROMDOOR SCANS." Question: Users are having problems downloading, they keep getting CRC errors. Answer: If you have a high speed modem (9600+) then you need to set the flow control to CTS/RTS. Question: I changed a security level in MakeWild! or PCBSETUP but RomDoor doesn't seem to know that I changed it. Answer: Whenever you changed a security level in your BBS's configuration you need to make sure you load up MakeRom and update the security file. To do this press ENTER on "Edit Security Level Information", and then ALT-U for update. [Page 21, RomDoor v3.00] COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── RomDoor has two command line parameters: LOCAL and NOLOG Using LOCAL will tell RomDoor that you are running it from the command line and not to look for the DOOR.SYS and USERINFO.DAT files. RomDoor will get the sysop's name from MAKEWILD.DAT, and will get your security level from the ALLUSERS.DAT, and it will give you 5 hours. Using NOLOG will tell RomDoor that you do not want it to create a log file. Normally RomDoor creates a file called RDOOR##.LOG in the directory that you execute RomDoor from, using this parameter nullifies this action. Here are examples: ROMDOOR LOCAL ; Run RomDoor in local mode. ROMDOOR NOLOG ; Run RomDoor with out making a RDOOR##.LOG file. REGISTRATION ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Why should you register? First of all you should register if you like RomDoor and plan to keep it on your system. You must register if you use RomDoor for more then the 30 day trial period. Registration allows you free upgrades to most minor upgrades and Bug fixes. Major upgrades that involve substantial changes may require a nominal fee. All future version will be available on the boards listed on the next page. With registration you will also get additional programs such as ROMEDIT, ROMCHK, FIXROM, ROMBULL (Descriptions are located in REGISTER.DOC and RDEXTRA.DOC). You will also have the ability to create your own menus for use with RomDoor using ANSI. For the larger boards, you will be able to offer up to 32 CD-ROMs. Unregistered versions are limited to one. You will also give the user the ability to create text file listings ON-LINE! Most importantly you will have access to download premade databases so that when you add a new CD-ROM disk to your board, you'll spend minutes versus hours adding to the database!!! [Page 22, RomDoor v3.00] SPECIAL THANKS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── First of all I would like to thank Ralph Maya who helped me test out RomDoor through all of it's problems. It has not been an easy task. He has given me so many suggestions to make the program better, and quite a bit program's design and function wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Ralph. I would also like to thank John Choi of Infinite Data Source for suggesting RomDoor as a program to write and for giving me suggestions along the way. As well as providing the use of his BBS as the main RomDoor support board for well over a year. Ryan Cramer author of DataView. You have helped me so much I don't know what to thank you for. So all I will say is THANKS! Finally, I would like to thank all my beta testers for helping me along the way, especially the three amigos down in Texas (Mark Elson, Doug Scoggins, and Mike Shockley) who provided me with hours of bug reports <g>. I really appreciate all the help all of you guys did for me to make v3.00 less buggy, hopefully bug free. There are others who I would like to thank. I haven't forgotten you, I just have been spending too much time in front of this monitor, and my brain is melting! John Choi : IDS ■ (703) 642-1194 Ryan Cramer : Data Connection ■ (703) 506-8598 Mark Elson : The Blues Cafe ■ (214) 660-8613 Ralph Maya : Illusions ■ (703) 802-0382 Doug Scoggins : The Motherboard II ■ (214) 642-1287 Mike Shockley : Shock Treatment ■ (214) 495-5980 PROBLEMS, COMMENTS & FUTURE VERSIONS ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you have any problems with RomDoor, you can contact ASC: By calling via modem: ASC BBS: (301) 794-6496 2400-14,400 Fido 1:109/546 Martin's Domain (301) 621-7785 2400-14,400 Fido 1:109/545 The Latest version of Romdoor can be freq'ed with the magic name of: ROMDOOR The current version of RomDoor will always be on BBS's listed above as well as WildCat! HQ.