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Text File | 1993-08-25 | 15.3 KB | 329 lines

BGFAX 1.0 BETA 05 WED 25 AUG 93 -------------------------------- 1. Many people requested they wanted BGFAX to be able to send faxes. This is now possible! Only added about 8K to the EXE file as well! To send a fax use the following parameters: BGFAX /SEND filename phonenumber The file must already been in QuickLink II .QFX or ZyXEL's ZFAX .FAX file format. If the fax is not sucessfully sent, BGFAX exits with an errorlevel of 1. If it is, no errorlevel is issued. 2. New fields in BGFAX.CNF for frontend/init/send users: si=ATZ si=AT+FLID="713 893 9124" ds=ATM2+FCLASS=2;DT mb=3 mf=3 ; ; si ... initialization strings for send fax mode, up to 5 entries ; ds ... dial string (bgfax will append telephone number) ; mb ... maximum of busy signals before abort ; mf ... maximum number of connect failures 3. Found a bug (yet again) in the EOL logic. Fixed. BGFAX 1.0 BETA 04 THU 19 AUG 93 -------------------------------- 0. Added registration logic. The BGFAX Registration DOOR is available on my BBS, as DOOR #6. If you have mailed in your registration, this door will allow you to download your registration key file. If you haven't sent in a registration, you can also instantly register with your credit card (Discover, Visa, MC, Amex). The registration keyfile is called BGFAX.KEY and should be placed in the directory that you tell BGFAX to place incoming faxes. There are no differences with the registered and unregistered versions of BGFAX, except one ... Unregistered versions of BGFAX will cease operation on December 31, 1993. Other than that, both versions are fully functional. 1. Added changes for more compatibility with EXAR based fax modems. ROCKWELL and SIERRA based fax modems report errors in the following format "+FHNG: 123" while EXAR reported "1 +FHNG: 23". Why the numbers were split up, I don't know, but this may help some of you who have been having problems with BGFAX leaving a BGFAX.TMP file hanging around. 2. For those of you running BGFAX in frontend mode, if you were using an edit other than QEDIT to modify the BGFAX.CNF file, if the editor left imbedded spaces after the line, this would cause BGFAX to choke with a division by zero error. This bug has been fixed. 3. If the BGFAX.DAT file was less than 13 bytes, a disk read error would occur. Now, the size is checked, and if its an invalid length, the file will be automatically reset instead of erroring out. 4. Minor changes: Because FD 2.20 creates a DOFAX.BAT and an EXEFAX.BAT and the functions are slightly different than that of BGFAX, BGFAX will change the filenames so that it won't be as confusing. When an successful incoming fax is received, BGFAX will now make a DOPRINT.BAT which calls a EXEPRINT.BAT file. 5. Beta 1 offered the ability for rear end users to specify an optional fifth parameter that specified up to a three character "pid" for multinode systems. Example: BGFAX /FAX C:\BGFAX 1 Z 99 would, instead of using a BGFAX.LOG would use a BGFAX99.LOG. I forgot about this change, and now it's back for Beta 4. 6. A couple of people complained about the sounds BGFAX Beta 3 made when receiving the fax. Well, I took those out, but only because I noticied it lowered the CPS rating on the page receives, so I felt it was worth it. Now, however, it will play a short series of notes (about a second's worth) when a fax image comes in just to alert you if you are in the other room. BGFAX 1.0 BETA 03 WED 04 AUG 93 -------------------------------- I've finally got Fido echos on my own BBS. I will be monitoring the FDECHO, SUPRAFAX, HS_MODEMS for sure. I plan to get the PPI and HST echos shortly. (I've heard from someone that some of the new USR Sport modems may offer Class 2. Can anyone confirm this? Also, some people have called asking for help with PPI modems. I thought all PPI modems were supposed to have Class 2 fax, but this is not the case. If you have a PPI modem with a ROM revision of 1.x, it offers only Class 1. 2.x ROMs offer both Class 1 and 2. For $30, you can order a user-installable upgrade for your 1.x PPI modem to allow Class 2 fax. However, this will only allow fax speeds up to 9600. If you want to get full fax speed of 14400, you will have to send your modem to PPI and get a datapump change. I don't know the cost of that. However, 9600 fax is what almost all real fax machines support.) Also, a few people in the FDECHO found a better way of dealing with FD instead of having to set the modem E0 (echo off) in NVRAM. In your setup strings, anytime you have a +F, change it to a +f and FD will not think a carrier is established. 1. Bug swatted. If you were calling BGFAX like so: BGFAX /fax c:\bgfax 2! z (Notice the 2!, meaning port 2, and keep locked at whatever rate the port defaults to rather than adjusting to 19200), BGFAX would go nuts and select the wrong port address and IRQ. This should have only affected ZyXEL users running in rear end, ... HOWEVER, the person that discovered the bug was using a Zoom Internal VFP v.32bis FaxModem. It seems strange to me that that Zoom required the ! option, but it did. 2. Myself and many others have noticed Frontdoor is very slow in initializing the modem. (Sometimes it takes 10+ seconds to feed two simple strings to the modem.) Also, you don't really have enough room to specify all the proper fax strings in the little box FD gives you. (I'm using FD 2.02, so I don't know whether 2.20 corrects these problems.) Anyway, I've added another operation mode to BGFAX. Example: BGFAX /INIT ...will cause BGFAX to initialize the modem. If a problem occurs during initialization, it will exit with an errorlevel of 1, otherwise, it will exit with no errorlevel. (BGFAX will exit right after initialization.) If BGFAX is working fine for you with your current setup, this will not be needed for you. (You WILL need a BGFAX.CNF and environment variable if you plan to use the /INIT option). 3. Beta 2 did not include the scan line count that Beta 1 had because I had lost my notes. (Anyway, the routines used for scan line count determination in Beta 1 didn't work too hot anyway.) Now, I've developed a new routine that seems to count the EOLs correctly. I had to do this because some people had problems with Smith Micro Software's EXPORT program giving a "division by zero" message because BGFAX was stuffing QFX files with bogus scan line numbers (VIEWFAX.EXE didn't seem to care.) Anyway, this should be fixed. Let me know. 4. Added a debug mode to BGFAX. This is mainly for my own personal use, but if you wish to activate it for whatever reason, just make an environment variable called FAX and set it equal to DEBUG, e.g., "SET FAX=DEBUG" in a batch file. When debug mode is active, anything that comes surronded by brackets in the bottom blue box on the BGFAX reception screen will get appened to file called DEBUG.LOG. You should never have to use this unless you personally call me and I ask you to, if it sounds like it might help me in diagnosing the problem. 5. The BGFAX.DOC file now includes a list of the fax hangup status codes. BGFAX 1.0 BETA 02 THU 22 JUL 93 -------------------------------- Finally, the long awaited BGFAX reconstruction ... If you hadn't heard, I lost all source code to BGFAX back to Alpha 5, so if you find any bugs, let me know! My other computer crashed, so I had to go buy a new one. I was running a 286/8, now am using an 386DX40. Cost me $1200, so hopefully I can recover some of that with BGFAX as shareware. New things in Beta 2 ... 1. NEW FAX SWITCH OPTION! Previously, only /FAX and /FCON were the valid commands for rear end mode. Now that I've got a new computer to play around with, I've noticed that if your modem reports only +FCON, on a really fast machine, BGFAX would NOT work. (Norton 7 CPU 41.0). To fix this problem, there are now three valid switch options: /FAX ... use if your modem reports "FAX" or "CONNECT FAX" when it REALLY is a fax connect. BGFAX will wait for "+FCON". /FCON ... use if your modem doesn't support the /FAX option. Will assume a frontend program has already trapped "+FCON" and will signal the other fax machine (blindly) to begin sending the page. WARNING: If you tell the remote end to send the page and it hasn't send you the "OK" signal, it will force both ends to immediately hangup. If this happens, try the new /FAST option rather than /FCON. /FAST ... use if your modem doesn't support the /FAX option *and* your computer is very, very fast. Instead of blindly telling the other fax machine to begin, it will wait for an "OK" signal. (On slower computers, the OK signal will get lost during the time it takes BGFAX to load.) 2. May have fixed a bug dealing with high resolution faxes in the ZFAX format. Let me know if printing still only yields half a page. Also, please note that I added a new fax command string segment in the BGFAX.CNF file ... here's the relevant line: in=ATM0+FAA=1;+FCR=1;+FDCC=1,5,0,2,0,0,0,0;+FLID="TRANQUILITY BASE" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ +FDCC sets the DCE capability parameters. The first "1" means you allow high resolution faxes. Almost all faxmodems default it to 0, which means don't allow high resolution documents. The "5" means your top FAX (receive) speed is 14400 bps. IF YOUR FAXMODEM ONLY SUPPORTS 9600 BPS FAX CHANGE THAT "5" TO A "3" OR IT WON'T WORK!!!!!!!!!!!! The other numbers are just part of the defaults. They shouldn't really be needed, but to be safe, you might want to include them (if you have enough room in your init string configuration.) Also, in the FAXIN.LOG file, high resolution documents will be denoted by a signal asterick, *, between the fax DCE speed and saved filename. Normal resolution documents will just have a space. 3. Desqview detection. BGFAX will now return ticks to DV and will also use the video buffer reported by DV rather than blindly using $B800. 4. Oddball port support. Say you have a port configured at a base address of HEX 325 and IRQ 5. You would have the following line in your BGFAX.CNF file: po=325x5 ...or via rear end command line like: BGFAX /FAX C:\BGFAX 325x5 Z 5. Some people called me voice and informed me that some oddball modems (can't remember which ones) would report something like: RING FAX CONNECT 14400/ARQ ... on a data call and ... RING FAX +FCON ... on a real fax call. After BGFAX frontend mode saw "FAX", it would assume only a +FCON would allow. (I never thought a data CONNECT message could occur, but now BGFAX will ignore the "FAX" token and only start fax protocol upon reception of "+FCON". Did I spell reception right this time? I spelled it 'receiption' in all previous release notes and program files and a couple of people noticed it. I haven't checked in a dictionary yet. BGFAX 1.0 BETA 01 SAT 19 JUN 93 -------------------------------- I have been getting reports from all over about ways people have been getting BGFAX to work with certain FidoNet front end mailers. See the included text file BGFAX.HLP to find setup hints for BGFAX and your mailer. Thanks to all the people that have included reports. BGFAX seems to be getting more stable as time moves on, so I have decided to move the test into the beta phase. Just like the alpha test, this is a public beta test, and all can run and test the software. Additions/Changes to BGFAX since the last Alpha version: 1. The previous alpha versions would sometimes hang requiring a user to press <Esc> to manaully exit BGFAX if something odd happened during a connection (or if your front end mailer or modem accidently passes control of a non-fax call to BGFAX). Now, BGFAX attempts to handle these events better. A timeout will occur if no data is received from the modem within 60 seconds. Also, if a "RING" or "NO CARRIER" happens before those 60 seconds, it will force an exit of BGFAX as well. 2. On errorlevel 4 exits previously, the fax file name was not being passed in any manner. Now, when a fax is received, the program will exit with an errorlevel of 4 (as before) but it will also construct a DOFAX.BAT file which calls EXEFAX.BAT file with a single parameter (the fax file name). Here is an example DOFAX.BAT file constructed by BGFAX: C:\BGFAX\EXEFAX FAX0007.QFX In your EXEFAX.BAT file, you can try something like @ECHO OFF PRINTFAX %BGFAX%\%1 9PIN.QLP 3. Some people wanted BGFAX (in front end mode) to create DOBBS.BAT files just like FD and other frontend programs. The EC = entry before held the "string" that was to be inserted as the 4th parameter on the DOBBS.BAT file if an error correcting session was established. The following is what happens if you get a CONNECT 14400/ARQ and EC=/RELIABLE C:\BGFAX\EXEBBS 14400 1 876 /RELIABLE However, now, if you set EC=<ECHO> the program will echo the exact rest of the connect string as the 4th parameter (like FD), like so: C:\BGFAX\EXEBBS 14440 1 876 /ARQ 4. Some people liked the old method of passing parameters to BGFAX in rear end mode, and some people don't like having to use the BGFAX environment variable for rear end mode, so I combinded this wishes into one: BGFAX rearend mode can be started in the usual way (ie., BGFAX /FAX or BGFAX /FCON) as long as the BGFAX= environment variable is set as the BGFAX.CNF file is still rear. If you do something like this though ... (OPTIONAL) BGFAX /FAX C:\BGFAX 1 Z BGFAX rear end mode will start WITHOUT USING THE BGFAX= ENVIRONMENT VARIBLE OR BGFAX.CNF CONFIGURATION FILE. First parameter is /FAX or /FCON Second parameter is the directory to store faxes in Third parameter is 1-4, the com port number, place a bang after the com port number if you use a ZyXEL (like so: 2!). Forth parameter is fax type, (Z or Q only) AN OPTIONAL FIFTH PARAMETER ALSO EXISTS ... you can specify a one to three digit node number if you want multiple nodes to receive faxes in the same directory. Example: BGFAX /FAX C:\BGFAX 1 Z 12 Would cause BGFAX to make a BGFAX12.LOG file rather than the normal BGFAX.LOG file, and will also allow incoming faxes at the same time from multiple nodes. (THIS IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN REAR END MODE). 5. Elapsed time was being garbled during parts of the day (as well as the midnight crossover). Fixed. 6. A slight cosmetic change has been made so that people with monochrome monitors can see what's happening in the state window. 7. After looking at the source code, it looks like Alpha 11 shouldn't have worked with ZyXEL modems as the "!" port modifer wasn't being treated successfully. I'll have to get my ZyXEL friend to test out this beta for me tomorrow.