Monster Media 1994 #2

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Text File | 1994-06-12 | 27KB | 620 lines

CD Carousel Door v 2.02 by Bill Esposito The Cereal Port BBS 1:132/152 (603)899-3335 bill.esposito@f152.bytepb.byte.com Magic name 'CDCAR' for latest version ********************************************************************** DISCLAIMER: This software is provided "AS IS" without any warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. Copyright 1993 by Bill Esposito. This program is SHAREWARE. Please read the file SHAREWRE.TXT included in this archive. ********************************************************************** What this archive contains: CDCar.doc This file. CDMenu.cmd The CD Carousel Local menu program. CDCar.cmd The CD Carousel Door REXX program. CDCar.cfg The CD Carousel configuration file. CDCar.mec A door 'drop' file which contains privs and keys CDMaint.cmd The CD Carousel File/msg maintenance REXX program. CDConvrt.cmd The CD Carousel Files.bbs conversion REXX program. * CDUpdate.cmd The CD Carousel File Area Maintenance/Update REXX program. CDCar.ico PM Icon for CD Carousel Seticon.cmd REXX script to create a desktop Icon for CD Carousel. Rxmsgapi.dll The REXX/SQUISH DLL written by Colin Adams. CDBull.txt Sample bulletin file. CDhelp.txt CD Carousel's help file. Sharewre.txt Registration information. History.txt Revision information. Whats.new New features/fixes for this release. * Allfiles.cmd File List Utility * Registered version only ----------------------- What is CD Carousel? CD Carousel is a collection of REXX programs which when used together provide a fairly simple means for making multiple CD Roms available on single CDROM drive Maximus/2 BBS's. With this release, CD Carousel can now be configured with privilege and lock control as well as for "stand-alone" operation, for those who don't run a BBS. You can use CD Carousel as a front- end for all CD's that are "BBS" ready. Basically CD Carousel provides the user with a listing of all your data CD's from which he can "request" offline files. The Sysop can then, once a day, once a week, or whatever, manually run the CDMenu program which will prompt for the required data CD's, and automatically copy the requested files to a predefined file area for download by the user. All user privileges and the numeric keys are fully supported. The CDMenu program will also generate a message in either squish or *.msg format acknowledging that the "request" has been successfully fulfilled. In the "stand-alone" mode, CD Carousel's operation differs only in that messages are not generated. * Registered version only * Once the user has downloaded his file, CDUpdate.cmd will clean up the file areas. If a file has more than one request against it, CD Carousel will keep track of them, finally deleting the file, and it's entry in the files.bbs, when all requests have been satisfied. CDUpdate.cmd also now features down- load counting and "Uploaded by" options. ---------------------- CD Carousel is not designed for real time access to your CDROM. However, you can configure CD Carousel to treat your Online CD as an Offline CD. Everything will work the same except instead of generating a request, CD Carousel will copy the files to your request directory for immediate download. This provides for a very fast search and browse function. If you want to have access to your CDROM like a normal Max/2 file area then you must set up MAX/2 File Areas for your online disk. Installation. REXX must be installed. If it is not, use the "Selective Install" function in your OS/2 "Setup" folder. ***** The CD must already be "BBS Ready" with Files.bbs files contained ***** ***** in each directory. Here's an example: ***** ***** \ Root ***** IBMPC ***** Utilities ***** files.bbs ***** filename.ext ***** etc. ***** Graphics ***** files.bbs ***** filename.ext ***** etc. ***** GIFS ***** files.bbs ***** *.gif ***** etc ***** *********************************************************************** 1. Create a directory for CD Carousel. Since all the file lists of your CD's will be stored on this disk, make sure you have plenty of space. Figure on about 1 meg for each CD. 2. Unzip the CDCAR.ZIP archive into this directory. a. Move the Rxmsgapi.dll to your \OS2\DLL directory. * b. Move the CDUpdate.cmd to your Maximus/2 directory. * Registered version only ****** Don't forget the trailing backslashes in the pathnames ***** 3. Edit the variables in CDCar.CFG to suit your needs. TechTool 1st line - Select a name that will represent the default disk that will shown to the user when he enters CD Carousel. This should match the name you pick for this disk when you run CDConvrt.cmd. See section on privs and keys. 0 2nd line - Menu Style. 0 for default and 1 for Maximus/2 style. j:\cd\ 3rd line - Drive:\path\ where CD Carousel resides. (cdcar.cmd) e:\max\ 4th line - Drive:\path\ to LastusXX.bbs file. i:\max\file99\ 5th line - Drive:\path\ to file area where requested files are to be placed. In the Unregistered version, CD Carousel does not delete these files after User download, The Sysop must perform the house cleaning. 99 6th line - File area number (ex. 99) SQUISH 7th line - Enter the type of message base that is being ^ used to receive msgs from CD Carousel to the | USER.(ie. The area defined by next parameter) | SQUISH or .MSG | SQUISH = Squish format area |__Must be in UPPER CASE SDM = *.msg format area SDMECHO = *.msg format echomail (1.msg as a highwater mark) E:\max\msg\msg1 8th line - Message area where acknowledgments go. This will either point to a directory for *.msg bases or a areaname for SQUISH bases. 1:132/152.0 9th line - To Node complete address including point (1:132/152.0) 1:132/152.0 10th line - From Node complete address including point (1:132/152.0). Normally the same as the TO node. Bill Esposito 11th line - Sysops Name SQUISH 12th line - Enter the type of message base that is ^ being used to receive msgs from CD Carousel | to the SYSOP. (ie. The area defined next) | SQUISH or .MSG | SQUISH = Squish format area |__Must be in UPPER CASE SDM = *.msg format area SDMECHO = *.msg format echomail (1.msg as a highwater mark) E:\max\msg\sysop 13th line - Message area where the SYSOP will receive messages from CD Carousel. This will either point to a directory for *.msg bases or a areaname for SQUISH bases. 1 14th line - Public or Private message to users. Enter either "1" for Private or "0" for Public. (private recommended) * This is new to v1.1 0 15th line - 0 for priv/lock control and non-standard files.bbs. 1 for no priv/lock and standard files.bbs e:\max\max.log 16th line - Drive:\path\filename of your Max log file 0 17th line - 0 for BBS mode, 1 for Stand-alone mode Simtel20 *18th line - Name of the CD normally installed in CDROM If you do not want CD Carousel to copy files from your Online CD, delete the entire 18th line of the .cfg file. *19th line - Enter the rest of your installed CD's, 1 per line. No limit. If you have 6 online CD players, than the CD's will be entered on lines 18 thru 24. * Just to clarify things, if you dont want to use the online CD function then LINE 17 should be the last line in your Cdcar.cfg file. 4. Now run CDMenu.cmd. a. Select the option S)et-up a new cd. b. CDConvrt.cmd will be executed and will prompt you for a name to be given to the data CD. This name should be descriptive, and be no more than 8 characters long. (mark the cd with the name for future use) Example: Simtel20 c. You will also be asked for the CDrom drive letter. For the example below, "L" would be entered. Simtel20 CD L:\msdos\4DOS L:\msdos\ABC L:\msdos\ADA L:\msdos\AI L:\msdos\AIJOURNL etc... If configured properly, it will read the files.bbs off your CDROM, add size and date info, and copy the new file into a subdirectory corresponding to the name you entered for this disk. Example: Given the paths listed in 4 above, CDConvrt will read the CD in L:. It will scan all the file areas and copy each files.bbs, with the new size/date info into a subdirectory under j:\cd\ named after the disk, Simtel20. creates: j:\cd\simtel20 4DOS.BBS contains the ABC.BBS files.bbs's ADA.BBS AI.BBS AIJOURNL.BBS In order to provide for compatibility with many different CD directory layouts, CDConvrt must search your CD for directories which contain Files.BBS. This process is time consuming (unless you have one of those new triple speed drives!), so be patient. CDConvrt must search the disk twice, once to find all the directories, and the second pass to convert all the Files.BBS's into the new format. The CDConvrt.cmd utility converts standard Max-type files.bbs files like this: AR15.ZIP Run a program from an ARC file ARCINDX2.ZIP Create a catalog of archived data ARCRUNER.ZIP Run COM and EXE files in archives Into this format with size and date info added, and the description truncated to result in a line length of 79 characters: AR15.ZIP 39323 11/10/88 Run a program from an ARC file ARCINDX2.ZIP 42633 7/23/88 Create a catalog of archived data ARCRUNER.ZIP 8096 8/29/88 Run COM and EXE files in archives You may manually edit non-standard files.bbs or index lists to conform to the above if you don't have the standard type which is needed for CDConvrt.cmd to work. If your disk contains files.bbs which already have date/size info, then answer 'Y' to the prompt "Do the files.bbs already contain date/size information? (y,n)" You will be asked if you want CD Carousel to prompt you at each directory for it's inclusion. This may be helpful if you want to make only some of the directories available to the user. Once selected, you may abort the prompting by typing 'a' at the prompt. You will also be asked if you want to sort the directories. This may be helpful with disks that contain multiple subdirectories with the same name. (ex. Hobbes) Speaking of multiple subdirectories with the same name, CD Carousel will prompt you for a new name when this occurs. Lets say for the sake of argument that there are three subdir's with the same name: l:\os2\comm l:\os2\1x\comm l:\os2\2x\comm You will be prompted at the second and third occurrence of the subdir "comm" for a new name. Keep track of the new name so you know what you've used when the third occurrence rolls around. CD Carousel will not let you enter the same name twice. Privledges You will Also be prompted to enter a Privilege level for the disk. You must enter the first letter of a valid Maximus Privilege. Acceptable entries are: S, A, C, F, P, W, N, L, D, and T. Be sure that the disk that you make as your 'Default CD' is available to all. The reason for this is because the 'Default CD' is not checked for privilege of keys, so if you have say an adult CD as default, and a 12 year old enters CD Carousel, the adult CD will be displayed to him as default. ** If all Disks require the same access level, and that level is not available to all users, then set the menu privilege for CD Carousel to that level in the menus.ctl file. Otherwise, when the user enters CD Carousel, he will be presented with the 'Default CD'. And Locks Next, you will be prompted for a lock. You may enter any number between 1 and 8. If you do not wish to set a lock, enter the percent sign "%" for the lock. The same rule applies to locks as it did to privileges. Make sure that your 'Default CD' is available to all. 5. If everything ran right, a file called DISK.LST was created in your homedir. This file contains the names of the disks, as you entered them in CDConvrt. You may OPTIONALLY add CD disk descriptions as you did for the file areas. If you ever delete a disk, you will have to edit this file. If you want to add a disk, this file is automatically updated. Also created was a directory with the same name as you gave the CD, and it will contain all the *.BBS files as well as a list of area names (name.lst). 6. One other file was created and placed in the same directory as the files.bbs. The file, NAMES.LST, contains the CD file area names and also the full drive:\path of all the CD directories. You may OPTIONALLY add File Area descriptions to this file. example: Here's the first 3 lines of the NAMES.LST as it was generated by S)etup (CDConvrt.cmd). 4DOS L:\MSDOS\4DOS ABC L:\MSDOS\ABC ADA L:\MSDOS\ADA If you want to add File Area Descriptions, use an ASCII editor to make it look like this: 4DOS L:\MSDOS\4DOS Great Command Processor ABC L:\MSDOS\ABC Strange Programming Language ADA L:\MSDOS\ADA ADA Programming Language 7. Repeat steps 4, and 5 for each CD you wish to install. 8. To make CD Carousel available to your users, add these two lines to your menus.ctl like this: Nodsp Display_file j:\cd\cdcar normal "+" ^ | Full path & filename of cdcar.bbs drop file - do not add the .bbs Xtern_run maxpipe_%P_j:\cd\cdcar.cmd_j:\cd\_%g_0_%n normal "+CD Carousel" ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Full Path & filename of CDCAR.CMD| | | | | Path to CDCAR.CFG _____| | | | Graphics Mode ___________| | | Place holder _____________| | User Name ________________| 9. You must now edit the CDCar.mec file to point to your CD Carousel directory Once you've done that, you must compile it to create a .bbs file using the program, meccap.exe, which came with Max/2 and should be in your Max/2 directory. Syntax meccap cdcar That will create a file called CDCar.bbs, which should be located in the disk/dir defined by the first line you added to your menus.ctl file. 10. If you elect to use the priv/lock control, by setting line 15 in CDCar.cfg to '0', then you must make the following modification to your Max.ctl file. No FilesBBS Download Normal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ | | Max.ctl parameter | Set this priv to the lowest allowed for any CD download. This parameter allows the user to download any file in the file area, even though it's not listed in the files.bbs. Since the files.bbs is non- standard, Max doesnt read it, and therefore wont allow the user whose priv is lower than defined to download the file. 11. Edit your filearea.ctl to add a file area for the requested files. 12. * Registered version only * Edit your SpawnBBS.cmd file (ie. the batch file used to start Max/2) to include these two lines: ----- cd\max ;Change to your BBS directory cdupdate j:\cd\ 1 2 k c ----- ** Dont forget the Trailing Backslashes on all pathnames ** The syntax is: <>=Required, []=Optional CDUpdate <CD Carousel Dir> <down count> <up by> [CD drive] [Alternate drive] CDUpdate i:\cdcar\ 1 2 k c <Download Counter> = 0 for no download counting, 1 for download counting At this time it only supports 3 place counts, and only () as the brackets. <Uploaded by> = 0 for none 1 for "(Uploaded by USERNAME)" appended to file description. 2 for "- (Uploaded by USERNAME)" on the next line. If you select 1 the Uploaded by will be permenantly attached to the file description. Selecting 2 will cause it to be located as a comment on the next line of the files.bbs. This comment will not be moved by MFM when/if the file is ever moved to another area. [CD Drive leter] = Drive letter (without colon) of your CD Drive [Alt Drive Letter] = Drive letter (without colon) of the drive where your files.bbs for your CD are located. If you create the same directory structure on a HD, and copy the files.bbs from your installed CD's into them, and modify your Filearea.ctl to point to that disk, then CDUpdate will be able to modiify those files.bbs and enter the download count. If these optional entries are omitted, then CDUpdate.cmd will try to write to the files.bbs on the CD, which of course will create an error message, but will not affect CDUpdate's operation. CDUpdate.cmd will scan your max.log to look for downloads. If it finds a download of a requested file, it will either decrement the request counter, or if it was the only/last request of that file, delete the file and it's files.bbs entry. CDUpdate will also put an '*' at the end of each line in the log that represents a download, so that it will not be checked/counted again. CDUpdate also creates a small file in your Max directory where it keeps user names and the files that they requested. This list is used by CDUpdate abd compared with the download log. Only if all the names and files match, will CDUpdate take action. To speed CDUpdate, delete your log every day. I copy mine to a backup file, then delete it. 13. Edit the BULLETIN.TXT file to your liking. Use an ASCII editor and keep the line length to 79 or fewer characters per line. 14. To install CD Carousel on the desktop; a. From your CD Carousel Directory, type "Seticon" b. When prompted, enter the full drive and pathname for your CD Carousel Dir The CD Carousel Icon should have appeared on your desktop. Click on the icon to run CD Carousel in the local mode for F)illing requests, or searching for and retriving files for yourself. OPERATION The BBS User will be presented with the following options: C)hange Disk F)ile Area S)earch by Filename/Text B)ulletins ?)Help Q)uit Back to BBS "Change Disk" will present the User with all available CD's from which he can choose. "File Area" will present the User with a list of all the file areas available on the selected disk. "Search by Filename/Test" is a string search of all the filenames and descriptions for the selected CD. If you set up CD Carousel to work with your ONLINE CD by entering it's name as line 18 in Cdcar.cfg, your Users will have a very fast file lookup available to them, much faster than from the Max/2 file menu. "Bulletins" displays the file CDbull.txt, in which you can put anything you want. "?Help" displays the file CDhelp.txt. "Quit back to BBS" sends the user back to your BBS. If you set up your ONLINE CD by entering it's name as parameter line 18 in CDcar.cfg, then those files will be copied to your file request directory for immediate download. --------------------------- At the end of the day, or at whatever frequency you want, you must manually run CDMenu.cmd. You will be notified by CD Carousel in the msg area defined by config parameter 13 when there is at least one (1) pending request. You will not receive another message until after you have filled the requests, then the first time there is a new request, you will again receive a message. When you receive this message, run CDMenu.cmd. When the menu comes up, select F)ill file requests. This will run CDMaint.cmd. When run, it will prompt you for each disk that has an outstanding request against it. If enabled it will also ask you if you want to change the file's priv or key, then offering you the option of doing so. If priv/lock is not enabled, it will offer you the chance to mark the file as a free download. If a file already appears in the files.bbs no change will actually occur. After copying the files, it will send a message to the user telling him/her that their request has been fulfilled. If for some reason an error while copying occurs, the error will be entered in a file called 'errors.log'. This file can be reviewed and/or deleted by selecting "R)eview logs" at the main menu, then selecting "E)rror log". If the error was caused by having the wrong disk in your drive, CD Carousel will let you try again. You must select from the "R)eview logs" menu the option "F)ill from error log". This will step through the error.log and offer you the choice of trying again. If you answer yes to the propmp "Do you want to fill this request?", a .req file will be generated. When you're finished reviewing the log, return to the main menu, and select "F)ill file requests". CD Carousel will behave as if nothing had happened and again try to fill the request. a. To run the CD Carousel door in the local mode select L)ocal CD Carousel from the CDMenu menu. b. You can also run the door from the command line by typing: cdcar default_dir graphics 0 first last which works out to cdcar j:\cdcar\ 1 0 Bill Esposito c. You can run CDMaint.cmd from the command line by typing "cdmaint". d. You can run CDConvrt.cmd from the command line by typing "cdconvrt". 14. Review of CDMenu.cmd. S)et-up a new cd - Runs CDConvrt.cmd. Creates new .BBS files on your hard disk. F)ill file requests - Runs CDMaint.cmd. Copies files from your CD to a Max/2 file area. L)ocal CD Carousel - Runs the door, CDCar.cmd, in the local mode. R)eview logs - Displays another menu allowing you to display either the error log or a log of user requests and fill requests from the error log. The error log contains a list of requests that were not filled because of some file copying error, usually the incorrect disk in the CD player at the time of the fill. 15. * Registered versions only. Allfiles.cmd is a simple utility to create file lists of your CD's. To use it just type: allfiles dir output_filename Dir is the full path to the file area that contains all the .bbs files. Output_filename is the name you want to use for the output. Lets say that we have the Hobbs 94 CD setup. CD Carousel would have created a directory under it's directory with the name you gave the disk when you installed it. Lets say we called it Hobbs, and we want the output file to be named Hobbs94.lst. You would then enter, from the CD Carousel Dir: allfiles i:\cdcar\hobbs\ hobbs94.txt The file Hobbs94.txt will be created in the CD Carousel Directory. Why use this utility? Because you may have had to rename some directories (if you installed Hobbs, I know you did) or you may have elected not to include some directories. Allfiles.cmd will only list what's available from CD Carousel. ********************************************************************** Maximus/2 2.01wb CDROM BUG If you already have a working Max/2 CDROM setup, then don't bother reading this, you've already applied the patch. You MUST patch Max/2 v2.01wb in order for your CDROM to be found by both Max/2 and Siltp. The error manifests itself you producing Siltp errors trying to create the file areas on you CDROM, and then Max/2 cant locate the CD. Here's the patch. Patch Maxp and Siltp at the following locations: MAXP.EXE: at offset 299430 (0x491a6), change 06 to 00 SILTP.EXE: at offset 31859 (0x7c73), change 06 to 00 You can use Patch.EXE located in your OS/2 directory. Bug Reports Please send all bug reports to Bill Esposito at: FidoNet 1:132/152 Internet bill.esposito@f152.bytepb.byte.com UUCP bytepb.byte.com!f152!bill_esposito End.