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∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
∙ ∙
∙ WISDOM: THE BBS ON A DISC ∙
∙ ∙
∙ by Stephen Ticehurst ∙
∙ ∙
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ What Are WisDom and Diskcom? ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A very good word don't you think? It means "Disk Communications"
which sums WisDom up very well, by using WisDom, you are able to
communicate with other users by means of a floppy disk.
This is because WisDom is really a BBS on floppy disk, it will
enable you to talk to other computer users from all over the world who
have the same interests as you do. If you are looking for DTP contacts
then just type in a number of commands and you will have a list of all
DTP contacts on WisDom. You are then able to talk to them all in the
public pool, or send one of them a private mail.
Because WisDom is completely ASCII based (no graphics, no GEM etc..)
it is easy to convert it for any computer system, ranging from TOS 1.x to
TOS 4.x, DOS 1.x to DOS 5.x, Workbench, System 7, CP/M, GEOS, on
computers ranging from the good old Atari ST to the Falcon, the old PC's
we seem to be stuck with at college, to the 386/486's other students seem
to be able to use (?), the Amiga A1000 to the Amiga A1200, an Apple Mac
Classic to the Apples creating The Sun's front page, even a PCW (!) and
my good old Commodore C64 running BASIC, my VIC20 (although slow on a
audio cassette tape system...) But have you got the point? This program
can be converted to any computer within a couple of hours, okay, a couple
of weeks, each different system using the same datafiles and all of you
talking to each other, whether you have a PC, C64 or an Atari.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ How Does The Diskcom System Work? ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A BBS system will be updated every time a user logs on.
Because WisDom is disk based it means that you have to send the disk back
to the System Compiler, or SYSCOM, in order for all new users and
messages to be updated. You could send your disk back every month, or
every two months, or even every week if WisDom is getting busy. Each
update will have a "Best Before Date", which tells the user an ideal date
to send the disk back for an update. Any disks sent back before this
date will be kept until the date has past. Exactly when you send your
disk back is up to you; there is nothing saying that you can't send it
back once a year if you wanted!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ The WisDom Diary ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that I have told you what WisDom is, I'll tell you how it was
written. Below is a diary that I've been keeping, it not only contains
details on WisDom that I've done, but also home and and college life. In
some places you may find it amusing! Next issue I hope to talk about all
the troubles and joys that I've had writing it. WisDom has (and
hopefully will remain so) been a very big part of my life; lots of spare
time has gone into it and I've got lots of stories to tell.
??/07/92 - WisDom is thought up and I get support from Shane,
so I start to write it. Didn't get too far, draw
the main menu in an art package and got a
colourful window routine written.
??/08/92 - Idea: Lets make WisDom look like a real BBS! This
will result in a shorter source code, it will also
be possible to convert the program easily for
different computers.
14/09/92 - Version 1.β has been ready for release for a
number of weeks now, I'll give it to Shane on
Wednesday so that he can test it. Great day at
college, why is it that all the students who use
the computer floor to type their essays up can
use the nice 386's (running at 33Mhz!) when us
computer students who need "power computing" have
to put up with the 8088's with mono monitors
running slower than my VIC20?
19/09/92 - Version 2.β is created. This version asks the
user what interests he/she has, so that he/she can
talk only to other people with the same interests.
The same goes for computer type as well.
I started at 11:00, it is now 20:00, and for the past
four hours I have been trying to get the "Show
Users" procedure to only show users with the same
computer and same interests as the user. My brain
has now gone dead and so I'm having a rest for a
while.
As far as college goes, we have a C assignment
that has to be in the first week in October. The
only problem is, none of us know anything about C
because we only started this year, but the
assignment is to fill in the spaces in a C program
that uses the mouse etc... Talk about putting us
in the deep end! Most of my machine code
programs are now complete, the last one is to
convert a string into an integer, or something
like that, I'll have a look at it next week.
COBOL is boring! We're now doing DBASE which
isn't too bad. The worst thing is that we are
doing payrolls with Sage Payroll, just the thing a
computer student needs to know about, I don't
think. Anyway, I'm now off downstairs to watch
Casualty.
26/09/92 - Just watched Casualty and decided to try to get
WisDom to work. Semi-successful. I've changed the
way that the computer type and interests are
stored and it seems to work. All apart from when
I have all computers and all interests, one user
who has an Amiga and likes DTP, doesn't show up on
the list? Well I'm off to watch Commando now.
06/10/92 - Just to say that I'm still here. I haven't done
anything on WisDom for ages because a load of
deadlines are coming up at college. By the way,
Commando wasn't a very good film.
26/10/92 - I've been very busy at college just lately, so issue
12 of PDP was even late. I got the machine code
and the C assignment done, waiting for my mark
now. Have started to fill in my UCCA/PCAS form.
Great news, as far as I can see, the show users
procedure is now working. Now to change the
messages section. See you later......
Something funny going on here! I changed the read
from pool procedure and it worked fine, I then
went downstairs to have some dinner and when I
came back, it didn't work anymore?? I took out
all changes and it still didn't work. Then, for
some reason it started to work again! A gremlin
is lurking around I think... Well I've got to bike
to the village to post some letters. Be back
soon.
OK, Jackie Bramble's gone, Steve Wright's here,
it's 3:00pm and the pool is now working! So what
do I do now? Well, I've got to tidy up little
bits, get ASCII import and export working.
Tidied bits up, had a look at TEMP because it
didn't work, fixed it. Should be finished
tomorrow.
27/10/92 I have been busy, been programming all morning,
we're halfway through the Jackie Bramble show now.
Improvements are: the show users procedure tells
you the total number of users with the interests
(the ones shown) and the grand total of users. To
speed up the diskcom section, it doesn't check how
many messages/private mail you have each time you
enter the menu, it now has it as a separate option
(Status). You are told how many relevant messages
in pool (ones with the same interests as you), the
total number, number of private mail and the total
number. You even get snazzy graphics to show the
computer sorting.
All that's left to do is to allow the user to
import ASCII.
Funny things are going on in the import ASCII
procedure... Had to hack about with the diskcom
status procedure, got it all sorted. I've noticed
that the show users procedure wasn't working
correctly so I'll have to have a look. I'll also
sort out the ASCII problem. One big problem, it's
gone past 6pm and there's nothing decent on the
radio anymore.
16 odd hours gone, two days of my holiday gone,
and WisDom looks as if it's ready to be sent out
to my "testers" again. Can't get ASCII to work,
"can't be bothered" to sort it out at the moment.
All that's left to do is to write up the
documentation and write the "supervisor" version
of WisDom that will let me look after the system
once it's running.
04/11/92 WisDom_S is born. This is the version that
everyone wants because it's the System Compiler's
version. This allows the user (limited access to
SYSCOMs only) to view usernames and passwords,
details about new users, merge and read messages
etc.. I got the view usernames and passwords and
details about new users working.
College: Bank 2 in L502 has has more computers
added onto it. Unfortunaly more "CAS" PCs have
been added, these computers are very unreliable.
Some of them also have amber monitors. Some of
the computers on the new bank 3 kept tripping the
switch on the power socket.
The best thing that has happened is that some
FDITs are sending messages to each other on the
printer queue, and me and a friend have been putting
messages like "Please report to me - Supervisor"
onto it and watching all the people messing about
quickly quit from the printer queue and get on with
their work. It's really funny!
07/11/92 - I sent a small number of WisDom2's out for test
purposes. I received many suggestions and found
many small little bugs. Features added today were
a print out option of messages, and I got ASCII
working. Things to work on will be a feature
where you will be given a menu of all the messages
and you can select which one you want to read,
instead of having to go through all of them just
to read the last one.
20/11/92 - It's nearly time, advertising is already going on,
everyone is waiting... Tonight I've put in a date
check routine which will check to see if there is
a battery clock installed, if not then it asks the
time. This is so that messages can be date
stamped properly. I'm going to write the
instructions tonight. Things left to do are to
improve the text editor, that should take up most
of my spare time tomorrow.
Good news! My friend John has been busy working
at his Amiga and AMOS package, transferring WisDom
over to the Amiga. I've been told that most of it
works, if this is the case then it shouldn't be
two long before this version is ready to go
online.
Documentation done, I'm now going to change the
datafile filenames.
College news: We now have a third bank of computers
in one room, a nice bank of 486s. We've been
having some trouble lately with them, when you turn
on of them on or off, it trips a switch in the fuse
box which turns off the whole bank. Very annoying!
The printers have also gone "under re-development".
We now have the "printer swiper" back on, this
means that when you want to print something out on
the printers, you have to pass your student card
(the barcode part) through the "swippy thing"
connected to the computer. This then sends your
printout to the printer. This stops people from
keep pressing PRINT SCREEN, because only the last
printout sent will be let through the printer
swiper.
It's also supposed to stop students (usually girls,
sexist I know, but it's true) sending massive great
assignments written using DTP packages going to
the printer, as you may know, these sort of print
jobs are VERY big and take ages to print out. They
also make the paper very wet with ink (we use ink
jets), and I'm always after one of these and so get
a massive great ink splat on the back of my work.
Well the printer swiper did stop this last year, it
wouldn't allow a print job through over a certain
size. It does the same this year, but the limit is
4megs. When you think that a file 400K takes for
ages to print, just think how long a 4meg file will
take, so much for the limit!
Also on the printer front, the printer console
which some students were writing rather nasty
messages on, has been taken off the network now.
Fortunately, I've got a copy of this program
actually in my area, hidden, packed, crunched etc
so that the supervisor can't find it and lock my
area What a nasty person I am! This program joins
a large collection of supervisor un-friendly "get
your area locked if found" software that's in my
area, like a memcopy program, and a copy of the
"Commander Keen" platform game.
21/11/92 - While working on WisDom , little
bits of it started to "fall off". I found quite a
number of errors, and even shortened sections of
the code. This morning I wrote a new text editor
procedure, this new one saves the text in memory
until you press #. you now have the option to edit
a line. A load of WisDom disk labels came from
good old John Maclaren (Scanman) today, along with
the front cover for the christmas issue of PDP.
Thankyou very much John.
24/11/92 - Went to the Shopper Show, bought a second disk
drive (about time) and re-wrote parts of WisDom
so that you don't have to keep using drive A, you
can now use any drive. Also re-wrote the input
routine for when you enter your computer types,
this is now fully error trapped, you can only
press a 1, 2, or 3, and you can't do silly things
like 111. The bad news is that the interest type
input routine is still not very error trapped.
Sorted a problem out with the import ASCII and
write to pool clashing, it is now all working.
WisDom is now ready for the first release,
although there is still a lot of work to do on it.
What I have to do, and will do over Christmas, is
to finish writing WisDom_S. I still have to write
the part where it allows you to merge the pool and
email files together.
06/12/92 A lot has happened. There is now a conference section,
allowing five different debates to go on at the same
time. The WisDom programmer's reference guide has
also been written, this will not only make John's and
Kevin's (John being Amiga SYSCOM and Kevin being the
IBM person) life easier, it will also make mine a lot
better! The advertising is well under way. An A4
promo for both PDP and WisDom has been written and
sent off to a small number of people. Have a look in
Micro Mart for the WisDom ad.
Latest news on the college front, me and another 20
odd people have all been locked out of the computer
system, our areas have been locked until Tuesday, this
is due to the supervisor doing a network search and
finding things that he didn't like. Oh dear! What am
I going to do, COBOL assignment that I've hardly
started is due in on Friday, "Lowres VGA hardware"
graphics program in C++ to be in shortly after.
08/12/92 - What a great day, two good things have happened. The
first is, WisDom is finished! This time I mean it is
finished, every option works okay.
The other good news is that the supervisor on the
college computer network has let me back into my
computer area. I can now get on with the awful COBOL
assignment and the lowres VGA graphics program in C.
09/12/92 - I know I said it was finished, but it wasn't. I took
out a couple of bugs and then added the option to
import ASCII into a conference. Now it is finished.
College news: COBOL is nearly done. I've got all
actual programing finished, I now have to write up the
documenation for it. I should hopefully get it
finished by Friday which will give me a week to finish
the graphics program. It's then Christmas time!
06/01/93 All disks sent off and I'm waiting for the first
WisDom disks to come back. A couple of problems with
user disks.
Wisdom_S is on it's way. So far you can add a new
user direct or through the TEMPS file. you can
re-read users, re-login, set best before, setup
conferences.
A little extra to WisDom: When showing users, a
SYSCOM's name is marked with "SYS" at the side.
Back to college. Time delay in Z80 machine code
has to be in soon, new C assignment - 4 generation
programming.
12/01/93 News is coming in from the Amiga front. All
programming has stopped. Not only has John Briggs
bought a new Amiga (the A1200) he has also purchased
AMOS Perfessional and is now having to get to grips
with them both.
That is the story so far. If you would like a demo copy of WisDom
then send me a disk and I'll send you WisDom. Subscription fees are £5
for 12 updates, this is explain more in the instructions. I may add a
STEN section to WisDom in the near future where subscription will be
free. If you're interested in WisDom, then please contact me:
Stephen Ticehurst,
118, Old Roman Road,
Terrington St. Clement,
Kings Lynn,
Norfolk,
PE34 4JP.
~~~~~eof~~~~~