Oakland CPM Archive/oakcpm.iso/sigm/vol092/rbbs-use.doc

Text File | 1984-04-29 | 9.2 KB | 203 lines

        INSTALLING A COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARD PROGRAM
                    Ben Bronson, 3/29/81

If you want to put up a bulletin board or a program exchange
system that runs under CP/M (and if you don't want to write all
your own software from scratch) you have two choices: Ward
Christensen's and Randy Suess's assembly-language CBBS and the
BASIC-language RBBS written by Howard Moulton, Bruce Ratoff,
Ron Fowler, Tim Nicholas and others.

          * THE REAL CBBS *

CBBS is the daddy of all bulletin board programs for micro-
computers and as such has been imitated to some extent by all
other public-domain and commercial BBS software.  It is also
an excellent program: fast, compact, and flexible.  One of its
best features is its sophisticated message editing capability.
However, as its authors tell the would-be system operator
quite plainly, installing it (not to mention modifying it)
does require a good knowledge of assembly language.  CBBS is
written as a whole set of modules that have to be configured,
then linked, and finally maintained with another set of
programs.

If you are good at assembly language, you should certainly
choose it over RBBS.  The cost is negligible in terms of what
you get --

Send a check for $50 made out to Randy Suess to: CBBS, 5219
W Warwick, Chicago, Ill. 60641.  You will receive a copy of
the CBBS source program and files on 2 CP/M format soft
sectored 8" floppy disks.


             * MINICBBS *

If you are only moderately familiar with assembler and want to
run a system dedicated to software downloading rather than
message interchange, there is one intermediate alternative that
should be mentioned:  Keith Petersen's stripped-down version
called MINICBBS, which runs as a COM file on a CP/M system to
which (as is normal with program downloading or RCPM setups)
the caller has access.  MINICBBS can be obtained in already
assembled form from any of the SYSOPS (Keith himself, Dave
Hardy, Calamity Cliffs or Dave Moritz) who use it, but (as
CBBS is copyrighted and as MINICBBS needs several of the
auxiliary and maintenance programs supplied on the CBBS distri-
bution disks) they will only release it to those who have
bought CBBS.  MINICBBS retains the good message editing
features of its parent program and occupies only about l0K of
disk space.  It is a good deal easier to get up and running
than the full CBBS.

The only disadvantages of MINICBBS are (1) that making modifi-
cations requires greater familiarity with assembler and (2)
that its method of storing new messages makes keeping these
private from other users a bit complicated.  The programs to do
this are well worked out and in the public domain (for example,
SECURITY.ASM and TAG2.ASM), but most MINICBBS sysops still
find it necessary to keep the program and its messages in a
very high user area and to move everything back down whenever
they want to do some purging and editing.


           * RBBS, ETC. *

The main (and only) alternative to the CBBS series is RBBS or
its two RCPM-specialized descendants, ENTERBBS and MINIRBBS.

The RBBS programs have several shortcomings.  In their current
form they have inferior message editing features.  They are
impossibly slow when run as BAS files under MBASIC.  And when
compiled with BASCOM (which makes them almost as fast as CBBS
or sometimes even as fast), they are bulky.  A compiled RBBS
occupies 34K of disk space and RAM, and a compiled MINIRBBS
needs 30K all by itself, compared with the 10K used by MINI-
CBBS.  While most people have enough RAM so that size in
memory is not a problem, the RBBS series performs noticeably
worse on systems with slow disk drives.

On the other hand, RBBS has a single great advantage: it is a
lot easier to install.  If you have a very modest knowledge of
BASIC and own or have access to BASCOM, you can get a RBBS
system up and running in a single evening, while installing
CBBS takes several days for a crack assembly-language
programmer.  To the RCPM operator its use of a MBASIC-type
sequential message file is also an advantage--access to mes-
sages can be controlled simply by declaring the MESSAGES file
a $SYS file, and can easily be protected from XMODEMing by
using TAG2.COM.

RBBS is essentially self-explanatory, but a few notes might
ease the installation process even further.  Briefly, one
becomes an RBBS SYSOP like this:


         * INSTALLING RBBS *

(1) Get RBSUTL22.BAS (or ASC) and RBBS24.BAS (and later,
ENTBBS24 & MINBBS24.BAS as well) from a local RCPM system.  As
indicated earlier, you will also need to have a version of
BYE (PMMIBY63, BYE65 and BYE67 all can load a COM file
automatically after bringing themselves up when the telephone
rings, so choose one of those--the COM file in question will
of course be RBBS.COM).

(2) Try the program with MBASIC in interpreter mode.  Just
type MBASIC RBBS24 and see what happens.

(3) Look at the disk directory after you have exited back to
CP/M.  You'll notice that several new files have been created:
MESSAGES, CALLERS, USERS, COUNTERS, SUMMARY, LASTCALR and (if
you have left yourself a comment) COMMENTS.  These are 7/11 of
the auxiliary files that a full-fledged RBBS can use, and 7/7
of those it absolutely has to use.

(4) Now use an editor (or a word processor that does not put
queer control characters in the file--WordStar in non-document
mode works fine) to write four brief text files.  Put amything
you want into three of them, and call them INFO, BULLETIN and
NEWCOM.  Just that.  Filenames without filetypes.  The fourth
file, PWDS, should contain only three words separated by
commas:
        HONDURAS,BANANA,NOPASS

These are the P1$, P2$ and P3$ you will see referred to in the
early parts of the source code.  "HONDURAS" and "BANANA" can
be replaced with whatever you like; those are passwords for you,
the SYSOP to use for quick entry and message-killing authority
within the system.  "NOPASS" is what you put in if the system
is to be for unrestricted public use.  Anything else here will
become the access password for all users.  Now return to CP/M.

(5) Try the MBASIC RBBS routine again several times.  Sign in
with the same name, then with different names.  Notice which
text files are printed where when the name is new and when it
is one the program already knows.  Try signing yourself in with
the first name SYSOP and the second name anything but BANANA or
whatever your P2$ is.  When you have had enough of this,

(6) TYPE all the files with one-word names to see what they look
like.  If you look at them with an editor you'll notice that
the ones created by the program rather than you all have fixed-
length lines.  Use the editor to put asterisks in front of a
couple of the names you've invented that are already in the
USERS file.  Make sure you don't inadvertently make the lines
with asterisks longer than the others, and put the asterisks
at the very beginning of the line.

(7) Go back to CP/M and do MBASIC RBBS24.  Sign in with one of
the names you have marked with an asterisk and see what happens.
Play around with passwords a bit more.  By now you should under-
stand most of the program's tricks.

(8) So go into RBBS24 (again with an editor or word processor
that does not create MBASIC-incompatible conttol characters)
and personalize the various messages that appear in quotation
marks.  Exit.  Test with MBASIC.  Try all combinations of
commands and make sure they still work.  Kill a couple of
messages.  Notice that you can kill the passworded ones if
you're the SYSOP.

(9) Next try RBSUTL22.BAS.  Run it with MBASIC.  Look at the
menu and do what it tells you to do.  Purge the file of
killed messages.  Remember to rebuild the SUMMARY file.  Exit.
Look at the directory and what has happened to the MESSAGES
and other files.  Now you know how to maintain an RBBS system.

(10) And then compile.  You'll need about 50-52K of memory to
hold both BASCOM and RBBS.  If you don't have that much,
prevail on a friend or a local SYSOP (who is likely to be
delighted at the idea of a new system that'll take some of the
pressure off his) to compile it for you.  Use the /X switch
(check the manual for why if you're curious).  Load with
L80 with the /E and /N switches.  And presto.  You have a
file called RBBS24.COM.  Do the same with RBSUTL22.

(11) Run it.  Make sure it works as advertised.  Notice that
it picks up all the files created while you were trying the
program out with MBASIC and treats those files as its own.
Rewrite the INFO, BULLETIN and NEWCOM files so that they
contain appriate messages.  Test RBSUTL22.  Note that it runs
a good deal faster in compiled form.

(12) Last, assemble BYE with the filename of whatever you
have called RBBS24.COM (that'll work fine) in the appropriate
place.  Load it so that it too becomes a COM file.

(13) Type BYE.  Notice that it responds "COM FILE LOADED".
Wait for the telephone to ring.

(14) With any luck at all, you will find that you are now the
proud proprietor of a Computer Bulletin Board.

The rest is up to you.  You'll have to decide whether you want
public or passworded access, emphasis on messages or programs,
and that sort of thing.  If you opt for a RCPM or program down-
loading function, RBBS will work quite nicely for that too, but
you may care to try ENTBBS24 and MINBBS24, which offer less
temptation to people who want to use the system as primarily a
message service.  Once you've succeeded in getting RBBS up,
ENTERBBS & MINIRBBS will be a piece of cake.