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_______________________________________________________________________ ADIAL20.XXX -- A Dialer v2.0 Copyright (C) April 1989 by Charles Lee (The 'A' is for Attack!) _______________________________________________________________________ Please note that the file extension .XXX refers to the file compression scheme of your choice. With the rate that BBS's have been changing file compression methodologies lately, it is hard to predict which scheme will have been used by the time that you have downloaded this. This file contains the .exe modules needed to make just about any telecommunications package PC Pursuit capable. Instructions and implementation details for specific packages are contained in separate files also available on the BBS where you downloaded this. These separate files also contain small driver scripts that may be necessary to interface A Dialer v2.0 to your terminal package. Most terminal packages can run A Dialer without these drivers, but the drivers allow the packages to make use of A Dialer's support for linked scripts and passwords. At the writing of this document, the following instruction/driver files are available: TLXPCP20.XXX -- Instructions and drivers for Telix v3.11 TMPCP20.XXX -- Instructions and drivers for Telemate v1.1 QMPCP20.XXX -- Instructions and drivers for Qmodem v4.0 BOYPCP20.XXX -- Instructions and drivers for Boyan v4.0 Support is planned for a number of other packages including Procomm Plus, GT PowerComm, and etc. If your telecommunications package isn't mentioned or is not yet supported, take heart. It is very easy to interface A Dialer to a modem package. You can find instructions on how to do so later on in this document. Features: o Seamless operation with your existing telecommunications package. You will think that it has suddenly gained PC Pursuit capability. o BBS oriented operation. Previous dialers are all city oriented. You had to remember which cities your favorite BBS's were in, select those cities, wait to get into those cities AND THEN finally select your BBS's AND THEN wait to connect to the BBS. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, A Dialer v2.0 has changed all that. Now, all you do is select the BBS. This software takes care of the rest. o Built in intelligence to handle the myriad of strange stuff that happens sometimes while using PC Pursuit. o Your connected to the city time is tracked by this software. This is a cumulative monthly timer that will keep you from going over PC Pursuit's usage cap. o A usage log of your connect times is maintained. o The dialer's characteristics are user programmable. Want to disconnect from the city when a BUSY! is detected? Or are you dialing a hard-to-get-into city and want to stay connected no matter what? Choose the appropriate option. Want to try to connect to both 1200 and 2400 baud outdials? Or do you just want to stay at 1200 or 2400 baud? Just select that option. o It's fast! Over 44 attempts to connect to a busy city per minute have been reported. o Easy to use user interface. Just move the select bar, and hit a command key. o Selections are made before dialing into PC Pursuit. No more rushing to beat Telenet's rapid indial timeouts. o The colors are user configurable. o The software detects what sort of video display is being used. If it is monochrome, colors are mapped accordingly. o New cities are easy to add to the menu. Just add the city to the text file and the software takes care of the rest. o Desqview aware. o Passwords and linked scripts are supported. Shareware: A Dialer v2.0 is shareware. Registration is $5.00 (cheap). At that price, you have in your hands what has to be the best software value in history. To register, print out the file REGISTER.FRM. You can do this by typing type REGISTER.FRM>prn <enter> at DOS's command prompt. Fill out the requested information and send it and $5.00 to: Charles Lee P.O. Box 6534 Huntsville, AL 35824-0534 What do you get for registering A Dialer v2.0? Besides the warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach for doing the right thing, you'll encourage me to continue to distribute quality software such as this package. Also, there are lots of people who use this package. While I intend to *try* to answer all of the questions I get relating to A Dialer, it'll be the registered user who gets priority. There will probably be future enhanced versions of A Dialer. Suggestions of registered users will receive greater weight. How to contact me: Well, you could send me mail to the above address, but that is kind of slow. It would probably be faster to drop me a note on one of these BBS's: The Network Exchange -- This is PC Pursuit's official source of propaganda. I check in here periodically. To log on, just type C PURSUIT at the @ prompt. The DC Information Exchange (DCWAS 433-6639) The Program Exchange (CODEN 440-0786) The Seattle Signpost (WASEA 547-0167) I frequent all of these boards. Mail left on anyone of them would get to me. The contents of this archive are: ADIAL20.DOC <-- You're reading this now. CONTROL.EXE The module that controls the others. MODULE1.EXE The BBS directory editor. MODULE2.EXE The PC Pursuit interface. MODULE3.EXE Time keeping, disconnect, and log off module. MODULE4.EXE Manual timer update module. CITIES.PCP List of valid PC Pursuit cities. Used for entry error checking. When PC Pursuit changes its outdial mnemonics, you should use an ascii text editor to update this. CONFIG1.EXE Used to setup MODULE1 options. May be deleted after use. Creates MODULE1.DAT. CONFIG2.EXE Used to setup MODULE2 options. May be deleted after use. Creates MODULE2.DAT. REGISTER.FRM Simple, easy to use registration form. Files created by A Dialer v2.0: MODULE1.DAT Configuration file for the BBS directory. MODULE2.DAT Configuration file for the circular dialer. USAGE.PCP Usage log of PC Pursuit times. This is a collection of disconnect strings as returned by Telenet's outdials. ELAPSED.PCP Monthly elapse time is stored in here. LASTDIR.DAT Temporary file created to allow A Dialer to track the last BBS directory used. PASSWORD.BBS Temporary file created by A Dialer to pass the BBS's password to your communications software. SCRIPT.BBS Temporary file created by A Dialer to pass the script associated with a BBS to your communications software. This is put on the disk when contact is made with the BBS and removed the next time the options window is brought up. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank all of the people who helped beta test A Dialer v2.0. Most notable of my beta testers was John Abatte and Ken Harwell. John expended a lot of effort in helping me track down and stamp out a serious problem that A Dialer had with its Desqview compatibility. Thanks, John. Ken has been providing me with good ideas for software that I have written for some time now. Thanks, Ken. Installation: 1. Create a separate subdirectory on your hard drive and copy the A Dialer v2.0 files into it. You could just copy the files into an existing subdirectory, but this way is a little more organized. 2. Add a line to your autoexec.bat file that assigns the path to A Dialer v2.0 to a variable named "ADIALER". (Without the quotes, of course.) For example, if the path to A Dialer's files was C:\main\telecomm\adial, you would add this line to your autoexec.bat file: SET ADIALER=C:\main\telecomm\adial This is necessary for A Dialer to be able to find its files at all times. If you don't put this line in your autoexec.bat file, A Dialer assumes that its files are in the active subdirectory. Reboot (reset) your computer so that the new autoexec.bat takes effect. 3. Run config1 by typing its name and hitting <enter> at the DOS prompt. (You did change back to A Dialer's subdirectory after rebooting, didn't you?) Answer the questions in config1's menus. Border Attribute The color of menu borders. Directory Attribute The menu color. Select bar Attribute The menu select bar color. Toggle Attribute Some commands in the BBS directory involve selecting blocks of entries. This is the color of the selected block. Window Attribute The color of the pop up windows. All attributes must be 3 digits long. If you want a color value of 31, you must specify it as 031. Also, appealing default color attributes are supplied in case you don't want to mess with this. ___________________________________________________________ A brief tutorial on attributes. (Or, how in the world do those numbers translate into colors?) Calculating a color attribute is easy. Basically, a character on the screen has a foreground color and a background color. Allowable colors are numbered as follows: black 0 blue 1 green 2 cyan 3 red 4 magenta 5 brown 6 light grey 7 dark grey 8 light blue 9 light green 10 light cyan 11 light red 12 light magenta 13 yellow 14 white 15 The formula for finding a color attribute value for a given color combination is: color attribute = foreground number + (16 * background number) Example: The color attribute for a red background with a white foreground would be: color attribute = 15 + (16*4) = 79 See, I told you it was easy! Warning: Your resulting color attributes should be less than 128. Values greater than this indicate that you probably chose an invalid color combination. Result? The area on your screen corresponding with the attribute will blink. ___________________________________________________________ CGA snow reduction If you have a CGA display adopter and it shows "sparkles" or "snow" when stuff is being written to the screen, set this option to "Y". It should reduce the amount of sparkles you see. BIOS screen writes Setting this option to "Y" causes all screen writing activity to go through the BIOS instead of using direct screen memory writes. Much slower than direct memory writes. Exit on City BUSY! This allows you to choose the default behavior of the dialer. Answer 'Y' if you want the dialer's response to a BUSY! BBS to default to exiting from the city. Answering 'Y' also indicates that you want to get out of the city before the one minute mark comes up. 2400 baud Outdials? Answer 'Y' if you want the dialer to default to connecting to 2400 baud outdials. 1200 baud Outdials? Answer 'Y' if you want the dialer default to connecting to 1200 baud outdials. If both types of outdials are selected, the dialer will try the 2400 baud outdial first. 4. Run config2 by typing its name at the DOS prompt and hitting <enter>. Answer the questions in config2's menus. User ID Your PC Pursuit user id. PC Pursuit Password Your PC Pursuit Password. 2400 Indial Phone No. This is your local number to access PC Pursuit at 2400 baud. 1200 Indial Phone No. This is your local number to access PC Pursuit at 1200 baud. Modem is on COM (1-4)? Which COM port is your modem attached to? Dialing String This is the string to be sent to your modem when dialing into PC Pursuit. City dial attribute The color of the city dial window. RV dial attribute The color of the Racal Vadic dialer window. A Dialer v2.0 uses the RV mode of Telenet's modems. You can see this in action in this window. Status attribute The color of the status window. This window is where error/info messages are kept. CGA snow reduction If you have a CGA display adopter and it shows "sparkles" or "snow" when stuff is being written to the screen, set this option to "Y". BIOS screen writes Setting this option to "Y" causes all screen writing activity to go through the BIOS instead of using direct screen memory writes. Much slower than direct memory writes. Tones? Set this to 'Y' if you want progress tones to be sounded. This is used when you want to keep an ear on what is happening when you are in another room. Alarms? Set this to 'Y' if you want an alarm to sound when you connect to a BBS. When the alarm sounds, you must press a key to continue. Set this to 'N' if you want to exit A Dialer immediately when a BBS is connected to. Usage: Specific usage is determined by which telecommunications software you are using. Some start A Dialer v2.0 by the press of a key (Telix, for instance). Others require that you execute a script or command file that calls up A Dialer. Refer to the A Dialer v2.0 installation document file for the specific software you're using. 1. CONTROL.EXE (The Options Menu) Invariably though, CONTROL.EXE is executed first. This presents the first menu of A Dialer v2.0. (D)isconnect City (update time) Invoke (C)ircular Dialer Go to (B)BS Directory (L)og of PC Pursuit Return to (P)C Pursuit Prompt (M)anually update elapsed time The monthly elapsed time is displayed below the menu selections. If a new month is detected, you are informed and a new total is started. Menu options are selected by using the arrow keys to highlight the desired option and hitting <enter>. Also, each menu entry has a highlighted character in it. Hit the key corresponding to it and that option is selected. Let's take the menu selections one at a time. a. Disconnect city (update time). If you are connected to a city, this option disconnects the city and reads the disconnect string sent by the outdial. The elapsed connect time is derived from this string. You are prompted by A Dialer to see if you want to update the monthly elapsed time with the value that the outdial reported. Note that this time is rounded up to the next minute. This is a conservative approach designed to help insure that you avoid going over the usage cap. Anytime a city is disconnected after a BBS connection an entry in the usage log is created. If the entry is used (you control this by answering the update time prompt) to update the monthly elapsed timer, a "+" sign is placed before the entry. b. Invoke Circular Dialer. Use this if you have already selected BBS's to dial from the BBS directory. This is used to tell A Dialer that you want to try to connect to another BBS on your previously selected list. If you just finished with a BBS and are still in that city, this option does one of two things. It first checks to see if any of the other BBS's selected are in that city. If so, it tries to dial the first on the list. Otherwise, it disconnects from the city (and reads the disconnect string) and asks you if you want update the monthly elapsed timer. If you try to invoke the circular dialer and the dialing queue is empty, A Dialer will give you an error message. (This should be expected. You can't dial anything if you don't have anything in the queue.) If you aren't connected to a city, it attempts to dial into the first on the list. c. Go to BBS Directory. Select this option to go to the BBS Directory. The BBS Directory is where you select the BBS's that you want to connect to. Also, this is where you maintain your directories of PC Pursuitable BBS's. Much more on this subject later. d. Log off PC Pursuit. PC Pursuit is logged off. If a city is still connected when this option is selected, the city is disconnected and you are asked if you want to update the monthly elapsed time. Also, an entry is made to the usage log. e. Return to PC Pursuit Prompt. This option is primarily intended to return you to the terminal mode of your communications package. That is all it does. f. Manually update elapsed time. Every once in a while, PC Pursuit just hangs up on you. Click. That's it. No warning or anything. If you were connected to a city, that is too bad. That time is lost. You can use this option to add an estimate of your connect time to the monthly elapsed timer. 2. The BBS Directory The BBS directory maintains the list of your PC Pursuitable BBS's. Specifically, these six categories are maintained by the directory: BBS Name A 24 character field for BBS names. Date The date you last connected the BBS. Format is MM/DD. Updated automatically by A Dialer. City The mnemonic for the PC Pursuit city. Phone The phone number of the BBS. Script If your communications software can run linked scripts (scripts or command files that are executed when a BBS is connected), this field is where you would enter the name. When connection is made, this name is written to disk in the file "script.bbs". Your communications software can get this name and then start running the file. Password The password associated with the BBS. When the BBS is connected, this password is written to disk in the file "password.bbs". Then, your communications software can make use of it. This is a hidden field. You can't see it on the screen -- this prevents people from looking over your shoulder and stealing your passwords. When the BBS directory is invoked for the first time, it looks for a file named "BBS.dat". This is the default directory file name. If it doesn't find it, it creates it and puts four blank entries in it. The select bar is moved by using Pg Up, Pg Dn, Up arrow, Dn arrow, Home, and End. Selection of BBS's is done by positioning the select bar to an entry and pressing the space bar. The quantity of BBS's selected is shown at the top of the screen near the heading of the BBS name field. Selection is indicated by a marker placed to the left of the BBS name. There are two sets of commands that are available for use in the BBS directory. These sets are the primary set and the secondary set. The primary commands. These commands appear on the bottom line of the directory window when the directory is first invoked. The primary commands are available only when they displayed on the bottom line. Each command is activated by pressing a key corresponding to the letter highlighted in the command's name. These commands are as follows: a. Edit. Use the select bar to indicate which entry to edit. Press "E". The Edit window will pop up allowing you to change the contents of the selected entry. Error checking is provided for the city and script fields. Use 'ESC' to abort the edit. b. Add. Use the select bar to indicate where you want to add an entry. Press "A". The Add window will pop up allowing you insert another entry. The new entry is placed before the select bar. Error checking is provided for the city and script fields. Use 'ESC' to abort. Note that 600 entries are allowed per BBS directory file. To change/create files, see below. c. Delete. Use the select bar to indicate which entry you want to delete. Press "D". d. Go! Use the select bar and the space bar to indicate which BBS's you want to dial. Then press "G". A window will pop up for each of the cities that has a BBS that has been selected. You will now be allowed to change your default dialer characteristics as defined when you ran config1.exe above. You will see these options: Exit on City BUSY! _ Use 2400 baud outdials? _ Use 1200 baud outdials? _ The blanks will contain the options you selected when you ran config1. Change them as you see fit. Pressing <enter> will step you through each option of each window. After doing this for each of the selected cities, the Circular Dialer will be invoked. More on this later. Pressing 'ESC' aborts. e. Toggle. Press "T". Toggles the secondary command set. Pressing Toggle again brings back the primary command set. See below. f. Load. Press "L". Allows you to load or create an alternate BBS file. 'ESC' aborts. g. Save. Press "S". Allows you to save or change the name of a BBS file already loaded. 'ESC' aborts. h. Clear. Press "C". This will clear all of the selected BBS marks. The secondary commands. These commands appear across the bottom of the directory window when Toggle is pressed from the primary command set. They are available only when they are displayed. Each command is activated by pressing a key corresponding to the letter highlighted in the command's name. Most of these commands are used by first highlighting a block of BBS entries. (Exit is the exception for obvious reasons.) To highlight a block of entries, move the select bar to the start of the block. Press <space>. Then move the select bar to the end of the block of entries. If you decide that you need to change where you started the highlighted block, you can do so by returning the select bar to the beginning of the block and pressing <space>. This frees the select bar so you can move it to where you really wanted to start the block. After highlighting the desired block, press one of the command keys below to indicate the end of the block and to start a command. 'Esc' aborts most of these commands. a. Sort. Press "S". Performs a sort of the contents of the selected block. A sort can be performed based on BBS name, city, or date. b. Move. Press "M". Allows you to move the selected block to another location of the directory. The move to location is indicated by placing the select bar and pressing <enter>. c. Print. Press "P". The selected block is sent to the printer. You have a choice of LPT1 or LPT2. d. Exit. Press "X". This causes the contents of the directory to be saved and an exit to the parent process. (If you brought up the directory under DOS, it returns to DOS. If you brought it up with your modem software, it'll return to that.) e. Toggle. Press "T". Brings back the primary command set and deselects whatever block you may have highlighted. f. Append. Press "A". You then get a prompt for the name of the file that you want to append the block to. The block will be placed at the end of the specified file. If you specify a nonexistent file name, you will be asked if you want to create it. Answer the prompt "Y" and the file will be created with the block used as its contents. g. Bdel (Block Delete). Press "D". This deletes the selected block. After doing one of the secondary commands, the block remains highlighted. This allows you to perform consecutive functions on the same block. To deselect the block, you need to use toggle. 3. The Circular Dialer. Logs you on to PC Pursuit using the indial indicated by the baud that you software is configured for. If you're set for 2400 baud, it dials the 2400 baud indial number. Does the same for 1200 baud. Sorry, 300 baud is not supported. A Dialer v2.0 is designed to be used with no parity, 8 data bits, and one stop bit (N81). Other parameters are unsupported in this version. The circular dialer is used to connect to cities and to dial BBS phone numbers once in those cities. It is designed to be user programmable via the BBS directory. Specifically, you can choose whether or not to exit a city if a BBS is BUSY! and you choose which outdials and baud rates to connect to. The circular dialer display consists of three windows. These windows are: City Dialer Active while attempting to connect to a city. All input and output is shown in this window when trying to connect to a city. Racal Vadic Dialer Active while connected to a city and trying to dial a BBS. All input and output is directed to this window while attempting to dial a BBS. Note that the circular dialer uses the Racal Vadic mode of Telenet's outdial modems, hence the name of this window. Status This window shows the following information: City and outdial baud rate. Name of BBS being dialed. ETM (Elapsed Time Monthly) Last error message ************************* Important ************************* Did that get your attention? Good. Reading this paragraph may save you a little frustration. When the circular dialer is operating, you can exit it by pressing the space bar. All it takes is just one tap on the space bar. Just one. Leaning on the space bar will only serve to fill up your keyboard buffer and make your speaker beep. As soon as A Dialer finishes its current operation, the dialer will abort back to your communications software. For instance, if the dialer is issuing a command sequence to an outdial, it will finish those commands, see that the space bar has been pressed and then exit back to your communications software. Pretty simple. The key to remember is that the dialer will finish with whatever it is doing *first* before aborting. This is done to be certain that PC PURSUIT does not get confused by the software being aborted halfway through a series of commands. ************************************************************* 4. A Typical PC Pursuit session with A Dialer v2.0. Well, it is wednesday evening 5:55 pm. Five minutes to wait. The clock goes tick.... tick.... tick. Ho hum. Finally! Six o'clock. Now I can use A Dialer v2.0 to call my favorite boards. "Great!" I say, while turning on the computer. The hard drive zips and whirls. Clacking on the keyboard, I soon I have my desired DOS prompt. 18:03:01 c:\telix > I type in the name of my favorite modem software and hit <enter>. It comes up. Which boards will I call tonight? Hmm. Let's see. I punch the key (I use the "+" key on the numeric keypad) that I assigned the script to bring up A Dialer. (Note the invocation of A Dialer v2.0 will vary from modem package to modem package. I'm just illustrating one (my favorite) of them.) The script runs. Control.exe is executed. Ta Da! The options menu appears. (D)isconnect City (update time) Invoke (C)ircular Dialer Go to (B)BS Directory (L)og of PC Pursuit Return to (P)C Pursuit Prompt (M)anually update elapsed time Checking my monthly elapsed time (only 20 hrs 5 min so far this month), I mutter some choice words about the 30hr/mo usage cap. I need to select my boards, so I hit "B". The BBS directory pops up. ( I could have used the arrow keys to move the select bar and hit <enter>, but this way is faster.) Scrolling through the directory, I select (with the space bar) several boards that I have not been on in a while. Next, I hit "G" (for Go!) because I'm ready for the circular dialer to begin its work. The city windows pop up one by one. I selected three BBS's. Because two of them are in the same city, only two windows pop up. I answer all of the prompts. Because I didn't want to change my default settings, I just pressed <enter> through all of them. The BBS directory disappears and the circular dialer pops up. It logs on to my local PC Pursuit indial. The first city is dialed. BUSY. Beep! (I have the tones and alarms turned on.) The second one is BUSY too. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! (The circular dialer does its thing.) Hunger pangs are felt in my stomach. I head off to the kitchen to nuke (a popular misnomer for using a microwave oven on something) a chunk of leftover pizza. I keep an ear on the progress of the dialer by listening to the beeps. Do do lee! Do do lee! Do do lee! The alarm tone is sounding. I must have connected to a BBS. I grab my pizza and while opening a soft drink, I rush back to the computer. Looking at the status window, I see which city I'm connected to and which board I'm on. I hit a key and the alarm stops as my communications software regains control. "First Name?" I press a macro key. "Last Name?" I press a macro key. "Password?" I press the key that I have my password script assigned to. It dutifully looks on my hard disk for the file named "password.bbs" and sends it to the BBS. (This is how A Dialer passes parameters to your communications software.) Now that I'm on the board, I do my thing. Any new messages? Any new files that I need (I have been accused of having "need" and "want" confused) to have? I log off the board. Left a comment to the sysop complementing him on his fine board. Bringing up the options menu, I press "C" to go back to the circular dialer. The circular dialer checks to see if there are any more BBS's to dial in that city. Finding none, it disconnects the city, reads the disconnect string and prompts me to update the monthly elapsed timer. I answer "Y" for "yes". The status window shows the increase in usage time. The dialer attempts to connect to the next city. BUSY. Beep! Beep! More beeps! I hit the space bar, telling the dialer that I want to quit. After finishing its current operation, it returns me back to my communications software. I bring up the options menu again and hit "L" to log off. Gotta go to work tomorrow -- it's bedtime. Requirements: o A Dialer v2.0 can use up to 180k of RAM, and requires about 200k of disk space to store all of its files. A hard disk is preferred. A Dialer makes a lot of accesses to its files. Users with floppy based systems may (or may not) find some operations slow. o It will operate on any type of video display adopter although you may have to play with the color attributes configuration to get a good display on some monochromes. o COM ports 1-4 may be used providing that your machine uses the following port addresses and interrupts: port no. address irq no. -------- ------- ------- COM 1 0x3f8 4 COM 2 0x2f8 3 COM 3 0x3e8 4 COM 4 0x2e8 3 Chances are pretty high that your machine will follow this convention as this seems to be pretty standard. o A Hayes compatible modem is expected. Also the modem should be configured to return verbose responses to commands. This can be assured by placing V1 in your modem initialization string. This is the string that your communications package sends to your modem to set it up. You should be able to change it fairly easily. Also, A Dialer v2.0 works best if the modem returns extended result codes. (Add X2, X3, or X4 to the initialization string.) ******** IMPORTANT ******** The modem must show the correct value of the CD (carrier detect) line. Some modems force this line high (true). If this is the case, A Dialer v2.0 is virtually certain not to function properly for you. You may be able to remedy this by including &C1 in your modem's initialization string or by changing the position of a dip switch inside your modem's case. I can not place enough emphasis on this requirement. The modem must be configured to show the correct value of the CD line. o There must be enough space in your environment for you to assign the variable "ADIALER" the path to the A Dialer v2.0 files. This is done by putting a line similar to this in your autoexec.bat file: SET ADIALER=C:\PATH\TO\ADIALERS\FILES Interfacing A Dialer v2.0 with a non-supported communications package: This section should contain enough information for you to interface A Dialer v2.0 with any modem software. I tried to write interface routines for all of the communication packages that I could find, but I don't doubt that I have missed some. Or perhaps you don't like the way that I supported your package and you want to improve on it. Then this section is for you too. A Dialer v2.0 was written in modular form to allow easy control of its functions and to alleviate some of the memory constraints that a larger package would have imposed. It consists of 5 modules. They are listed above. The most important one that you need to be concerned with, however, is control.exe. This is the module that you will need to execute from your terminal package. A Dialer uses the baud rate that your communications software has set to determine which indial to log on to. If the baud is 2400, it uses the 2400 baud indial. It handles 1200 baud similarly. Also, it assumes that you want communications parameters set to N81. If your terminal package can shell to DOS, then you're in luck. You already have a primitive interface to A Dialer. Just shell to DOS and run control.exe. But, I bet you want something better. I would. Most modem software these days will allow you to run interpreted scripts or command files. These are essentially programs that run under your modem software using commands that are particular to your software. You may have a command that will allow you to run a program under DOS. This is what you're looking for. Something like: run("control.exe"); would do nicely. Placing this as a line in a script would allow you to run A Dialer by running that script. Better still, some modem packages allow you assign scripts to keys. Pressing the appropriate key makes the script run. If you can do that, you've got it made. After finding how to invoke control.exe, it would be ideal to be able to make use of A Dialer's capability to store linked scripts (a script that begins running when connection to a BBS is made) for each BBS. You see, when connection is made to a BBS, two files are written to disk: password.bbs (more on this in a bit) and script.bbs. To support linked scripts, you need to be able to read the contents of this file and execute it as a script. So, the contents of the script to invoke A Dialer would ideally look something like this: run("control.exe") string_variable=contents_of("script.bbs") do_script(string_variable) Of course, you would want to do error checking to make sure that you are not trying to run a non-existent script. Next, it would be nice to be able to send the password that A Dialer is capable of storing with each BBS entry. It would be neat to have a script assigned to a key that would send the password when the key is pressed. Something like this would work: string_variable=contents_of("password.bbs") send_string(string_variable) Error checking here would be a good idea also. You don't want to send empty password strings. If you want a good example of scripts that do all of the above, download TLXPCP20.XXX. This contains the scripts necessary to interface A Dialer v2.0 to Telix v3.11. These scripts are ideal examples. Disclaimer: Telix is a trademark of Exis Inc. and is shareware and available from many BBS's across the country. Several other modem software packages have been mentioned in this document. They are trademarks of and copyrighted by their respective companies. PC Pursuit is a service of Telenet, a US Sprint Company. Hayes is a trademark of Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. Desqview is a trademark of Quarterdeck Office Systems. Turbo C v2.0 is a trademark of Borland International. CXL v5.1 is a shareware product of Mike Smedley and is available from many BBS's across the country. I am not associated with any of these companies. They and they alone are responsible for the performance of their products and services. I make reference to them only to give a description of how to use A Dialer v2.0. I make no warranties either expressed or implied as to the suitability of A Dialer v2.0 for any applications. Your use of this product constitutes agreement on your part to hold me free from any liability for any damages, either direct or indirect, that may occur. A Dialer v2.0 is distributed as is, with no guarantee that it will work correctly in all situations. In no event will the I be liable for any damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of or inability to use this program, even if the I have been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. Despite the somewhat imposing statement above, it *is* my intention to fix any bugs which are brought to my attention. This package is the result of my efforts to make my hobby a little bit easier on myself. This software works great for me. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee anything for your machine. The only application they might be able to fill for you is to take up space on your hard drive. I have done my best to debug them, but no software package should ever be considered to be 100% bug free. A Dialer v2.0 was written completely in Turbo C v2.0, a great C compiler from Borland International. The windowing library used was CXL v5.1 a powerful, easy to use, inexpensive shareware product from Mike Smedley. Feel free to distribute ADIAL20.XXX whenever and where ever you like. It is large enough to make great upload credit and small enough not to be inconvenient to do so. Just upload it in complete, unmodified form and we will all sleep better at night. Remember, this software package was not just a localized spontaneous entropy reversal event on my hard drive. A lot of work went into designing, writing, testing, and debugging it. If you use it please register it.