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LiveCat Ver 3.1/M
A Live Program External Menu System and Execution Monitor
for
Multi User Wildcat! 3.xx
LIMITED TEST DRIVE VERSION
Copyright 1988, 89, 90, 91, 92 Stephen L. Cox
All Rights Reserved
A Live Systems Presentation
[[ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ]]
* Card Guppies, (c) Doug Peterson
* RBBS-PC (c) Ted Mack,
* Power Struggle (c) The LRSG Software Group
* Trade Wars II (c) Chris Sherrick
* TheDraw (tm) (c) TheSoft Programming Services and Ian E. Davis
Walnut Creek, Ca.
* QuickBBS (tm) (c) Adam Hudson, Arvada, Co.
* GAP (tm) (c) Gap Development Co., Laguna Nigel Ca.
* PCBoard (tm) (c) Clark Development Co., Salt Lake City Ut.
* Wildcat! (tm) (c) Mustang Software, Bakersfield CA.
* Spitfire (tm) (c) 1988 Buffalo Creek Software, Des Moines IA.
* DOORWAY (tm) (c) 1987-89, Marshall Dudley
* 'C' 6.0 and Macro Assembler 5.1 (c) Microsoft Corporation, Redmond WA.
* DESQView (tm) (c) Quarterdeck Office Systems, Santa Monica, CA.
* Lantastic (tm) (c) Artisoft Inc, Tucson, AZ.
* Novell Netware (tm) (c) Novell Inc., Provo Utah.
LiveCat 3.1 is written in Microsoft 'C' V 6.0 and Microsoft Macro
Assembler V 5.1.
Portions of LiveCat 3.1 utilize the Ctree File Handler, copyright
1988 by Faircom and are the proprietary and confidential property
of Faircom Inc., Columbia, Mo.
THE PRELIMINARIES:
[[[ Limited License ]]]
This software is copyrighted commercial software and may NOT be
distributed in any way.
LiveCat 3.1/M (tm)
Copyright 1988,1989,1990, 1991 by Stephen L. Cox
All Rights Reserved
Distributed by:
Live Systems
3800 Old Cheney Road
Suite 101-133
Lincoln, Ne.
68516
With registration you receive:
Full registered copy of the latest version of LiveCat
Program support
Updates via Flite-Line Download
[[[ Warranty ]]]
The LiveCat system is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to
the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for any
purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of this
program is with the user and should the program prove defective,
the user and not the author will assume all responsibility for
correcting all information. The author does not warrant that this
program will function in the desired mode or will meet any users
requirements or that the operation of the program will be error
free.
THE INSTALLATION OF LIVECAT ON YOUR SYSTEM CONSTITUTES ACCEPTANCE
OF THE ABOVE TERMS *
This version of LiveCat 3.1 is designed to work in both a single
user and Multi-User BBS environment. Depending on the version you
registered, it may be simultaneously executed on from 1 to 99 nodes
of a SINGLE BBS SYSTEM ONLY.
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING:
I am deeply indebted to the following people for their
participation in the beta testing phase of LiveCat. Without their
efforts this product would not have been possible... Thanks to all
of you!
Don Gump, Silicon Alternative, Fort Wayne IN.
Herb Mellinger, The Silicon Lab, Hudson FL.
Rick Kingslan, The Omaha Connection, Omaha NE.
Jacque Shipley, The Mother Board, Des Moines, IA.
Ira Lichtenstein, Sing Sing Sing, Ossining, NY.
Bob Gibson, Life Line BBS, Los Angeles, CA.
Dr. Hugh Mitchell, Doctor on Board BBS, St. Catharines Ontario
Bernard Sincennes, Alley Cat BBS Montreal, Quebec
Dale Allen, Truck Stop BBS, Houston, TX
Ron King, The Drag Strip, Hopkinsville KY.
Larry Solheim, Opus Information Systems Richfield, MN
Larry Easley, The Ranch House BBS, Lunenberg MA.
Ron Alspaugh, Hotlanta BBS Atlanta GA.
Tim Wool, Express Line BBS Winterville GA.
LiveCat 3.1 is dedicated to my wife Pam, who has (almost) silently
endured the hundreds of hours of 'Computer Widowhood' imposed by
this project over the years.
[[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]]
INTRODUCTION .............................................. 7
ORGANIZING YOUR BBS ....................................... 10
FIRST TIME INSTALLATION ................................... 14
CREATING NEW MENUS ........................................ 20
INSTALLING DOORS IN MENUS ................................. 22
EDITING DOORS ALREADY INSTALLED IN THE SYSTEM ............. 30
APPENDIX A - FIELDS IN THE CONFIGURATION PROGRAM .......... 31
APPENDIX B - MENU NAMING, CREATION AND SECURITY ........... 36
APPENDIX C - SUPPORTED DOOR TYPES AND CODES ............... 39
APPENDIX D - DTE LOCK/UNLOCK FUNCTIONS AND USE ............ 40
APPENDIX E - USING REPLACABLE SCRIPT PARAMETERS ........... 41
APPENDIX F - HOW VARIOUS DOOR TYPES ARE CONFIGURED......... 43
APPENDIX G - RUNNING SUB-COPIES OF WILDCAT AS FORUMS ...... 47
APPENDIX H - LIVECAT AND LSEDIT FUNCTION KEYS.............. 51
APPENDIX I - OPTIONAL ANSI AND ASCII MENUS ................ 53
APPENDIX J - UTILITY AND SUPPORT PROGRAMS ................. 54
APPENDIX K - DOOR HINTS AND TIPS .......................... 55
PROBLEMS, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ........................... 57
LIVECAT REGISTRATION INFORMATION .......................... 58
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the wonderful world of LiveCat!! LiveCat 3.1 provides
COMPLETE external menu and execution control of doors running under
WILDCAT 1.13+ and up. It adds many useful features to WILDCAT's
slim support of doors. Here are a few of the highlights of version
3.1..
*EXTERNAL MENUS - Registered versions provide 64 menus of 22
entries each. Shareware versions provide 2
menus of 4 entries each. Allows up to 1408
total doors in system
*NO BATCH FILES - Execute Wildcat!, RBBS and PCBoard, GAP and many
other doors without batch files.
*RE-ENTRANT MENUS - All doors return to MENU instead of WILDCAT
FAST!!
*USER SELECTABLE MENUS - Users select new menus without return to
WILDCAT
*AUTO LOCAL SUPPORT - Runs MOST doors in LOCAL mode automatically
*RE-RUN LOCKING - Lock out multiple daily runs of each individual
door! Allow any door to be run from 1 to 9
times daily
*TIME CONTROL - Control the time users can spend in individual
doors
*SECURITY CONTROL - Control security level for each individual
door AND menu!
*MULTI-LEVEL TIME LIMITS - Different time limits for different
security!
*FULL Support of High Speed Modems - Lock/Unlock DTE on the fly!
at baud rates to 38400.
*UP/DOWNLOAD RATIO DETECTION - Lock doors on ratios -
multi-level-optional
*VAULT TIME LOCK - Lock doors completely during certain hours of
the day!
*FULL FEATURED EDITOR - Includes LsEdit to construct and edit
menus.
*FULL MULTI-USER OPERATION
LiveCat Version 3.1 6 06-09-91
The real reason LiveCat was developed was to control time usage on
my extremely active BBS system and to better organize the entire
doors system.
I currently run about 70 doors and have found it to be a problem
because of the addictive nature of the games, especially those of
the caliber of Trade Wars 500. I wanted to encourage users to
spend at least part of their daily time participating in other
sections of the BBS besides the games. I had dozens of users
logging in and playing out their entire daily time allotment in the
doors and never doing anything else.
My reasoning was that if a user is limited to a certain amount of
time that is something less than their daily board time, they
might, just might, spend their remaining time doing other things.
Experience with it's predecessor LiveMon has shown this assumption
to be correct. The success with LiveMon led to the plan to expand
it into the full blown door monitor that you are now looking at,
LiveCat!
LiveCat operates as a door program itself although a very special
one. It's purpose is to tightly control the execution of other
doors within your system. It organizes your doors into categories
that let you place like games in specific menus. It also allows you
to place a specific door in more than one menu.
The menu layouts follow those of WILDCAT closely so they should
present your users no problems. You may have upto 64 menus of 22
entries each or 1408 doors total in your system. Try doing THAT in
your WILDCAT DOORS menu. The Shareware version allows 2 menus of 4
entries each.
Doors executed within the LiveCat environment are no longer forced
to return back to the BBS upon termination thereby forcing the user
to go through the log-on sequence repeatedly. Return from each
door is back to the LiveCat menu from where the user started. This
saves a great deal of time for the user and provides greater
execution control for the sysop. Users may change menus and move
around at will, selecting any door your system has available
without returning to the main board.
LiveCat provides built in support for door programs written to be
run under several types of BBS systems. Most of the doors we have
available today were designed to run under either the PCBoard
system or RBBS-PC.
Running doors for other systems under WILDCAT can be tedious at
best and capable of producing cardiac arrest at worst! LiveCat
does it's best to make this task easier. It will automatically
produce all the conversion files necessary to run doors for these
other systems.
Doors for most all versions of Wildcat, PCBoard 11.x thru 14.x,
doors for the newer versions of RBBS 15.1C and up, GAP doors, and
QBBS doors are supported. Most of them even in the LOCAL mode! And
with our exclusive Script Language called LSSL, you can run most
any door known by passing it the command line it needs directly
from LiveCat.
LiveCat Version 3.1 7 06-09-91
The time monitoring features of LiveCat allow you to set the
maximum amount of time a user may spend in doors each day.
Additionally each individual door may have a time limit for each
access by the user. These time limits are independent of the daily
WILDCAT time limit controlled by the users security level. The
timing features are multi-level in that users with different levels
of security can be given different time allocations within LiveCat.
LiveCat provides full security control of all the doors in your
system. You can attach a security level to each door that will
prevent users with lower or higher security levels from executing
it. This can be set for EACH door in your system.
You might for instance have a few doors that could be considered
adult doors and you do not want them accessed by users without the
proper clearance and verification. Or, you might have some doors
that you want available only to registered or contributing users.
You can assign those doors a security level that would let only the
selected levels access them.
LiveCat also provides a feature called 'Vault Time Lock' or VTL.
This feature allows you to completely lock your door system to ALL
users between certain hours of the day.
Ever suffered the frustration of trying to get onto your own board
during the day to do maintenance from some remote location, and
couldn't get on because Joe was playing out 50 Trade Wars turns?
LiveCat can alleviate this problem by making it impossible for
users to enter the doors between the times you set. This will at
least keep gaming activity from interfering during your selected
times. The lock time can be as short as 1 minute or as long as 23
hours and 59 minutes. You should be able to find a time slice that
will meet your needs.
LiveCat also provides a feature called 'UDR' or Upload/Download
Ratio monitoring. This feature will allow you to optionally lock
the doors system to users who have exceeded the pre-set up/dn load
ratios.
One other feature worth mentioning that LiveCat provides to you is
Re-Run locking. You may mark any door in your system as a 'run
once only' door and the user will automatically be prevented from
accessing it more than once a day. Or, optionally you can allow a
door to be run from 1 to 9 times daily depending on how you
configure it. Nice for the addicts out there that never get a
chance to see what else you have because they can't tear themselves
away from Star Traders or whatever.
That pretty well sums up what LiveCat is and what it can do for
you. While the features that it provides are extensive, it is
relatively easy to set up and run.
I have provided a full featured editor for the menu system to make
the task of door installation into LiveCat nearly painless. I hope
you enjoy it. If it proves useful to you and your users then
please register it and encourage me to continue to enhance it.
I believe that LiveCat will prove to be a valuable enhancement to
an already superb piece of software, Wildcat!.
LiveCat Version 3.1 8 06-09-91
[[ LIVECAT FILES IN PACKAGE ]]
The package you downloaded should contain the following files. If
any of the files listed below were not included, call Flite-Line
BBS to download the latest Shareware version:
A * denotes files in the registered systems only!
LIVECAT.EXE The main menu/monitor system Version 3.1/M
LSEDIT.EXE V 3.1/M of the menu editor
LSFIP.EXE The Time Converter and execution profiler
LSCONFIG.EXE System Configuration program
LIVECATM.DOC This documentation.
LSRBLD.EXE Reconstructs damaged indexes
README.1ST Last minute notes not in the documentation
DOORS.BBB Example DOOR MENU for your WILDCAT system
DOORx.BAT Sample .BAT to run LiveCat with WILDCAT
Files created at runtime by the LsEdit editor:
MNAMES.LST Menu names and security levels
SCRIPT.IDX LiveCat 3.1 Database Index
SCRIPT.DAT LiveCat 3.1 Database file
ATTRIB.IDX LiveCat 3.1 Database Index
ATTRIB.DAT LiveCat 3.1 Database file
******.IMG Menu Images for runtime operation
MONITOR.CFG Configuration file all LiveCat components
MONITOR.DAT Security level timing parameters
During execution both LsEdit and LiveCat will create and delete
swap files on your disk, or in EMS if selected. These files are
erased at the end of each run.
LiveCat Version 3.1 9 06-09-91
[[ ORGANIZING YOUR BBS TO RUN DOORS UNDER LIVECAT ]]
* PLANNING YOUR INSTALLAION *
Before you actually install LiveCat and start start building
menus for it, you need to spend some time thinking about and
planning how you will organize your doors.
In order to make this system perform for you there MUST be SOME
logic to your board setup. The applies MAINLY to the directory
names you use for your NODES and to the .CFG file names for your
DOORS.
In a MULTI-NODE system, the IDEAL configuration is one that
follows DIRECTORY NAMING conventions that have a NODE NUMBER
relationship!
Because of the new script language and the fact that you now have
replacable script parameters you MUST think carefully about how
some of these things relate to one another.
Now, before we go any further, lets take a look at an IDEALLY
mapped configuration of Wildcat! and LiveCat working together.
\WC30 (contains Wildcat! and LiveCat .EXE files!)
|+------------------------+------------------+-------------------->
| |
DOORx.BAT |
\WCWORK \LIVECAT
| lcuser.dat
\NODE1 \NODE2..x monitor.dat
MONITOR.CFG MONITOR.CFG *.img
LC.SYS LC.SYS *.idx
*.dat
*.bbs
*.scr
menu.ans
menu.bbs
|
\BULL
blt.bbs
blt.scr
As you can see, the NODEx directories EACH have the node number in
their name. The diagram shown above is how Wildcat! 3.0 installs
itself by default. All you need do is add the LiveCat directory to
the tree and you're ready to go, you may ALSO use the above map as a
guide to the correct placement of ALL the LiveCat related files.
Study the above diagram carefully and make any changes to your
Wildcat! installation that might be necessary.
LiveCat Version 3.1 10 06-09-91
LiveCat can keep everything orderly for you only if you do your
planning! In LiveCat, everything is oriented around a MENU
concept, that is, several doors attached to a single menu that is
displayed to a user. When inside a LiveCat menu, a user can either
PICK A DOOR TO RUN or CHANGE TO A DIFFERENT MENU.
Running under LiveCat it is best to categorize all of your
doors into specific themes such as WAR GAMES, Trivia Games, Board
Games and so on.
The FIRST step in setting up a LiveCat system is to create a
Wildcat! DOORS.BBS FILE that presents the user a selection of all
these categories, and then you will want to take care to place all
the doors of the same type into the appropriate LiveCat menu.
Here is a reproduction of the WILDCAT DOORS Menu I use on my
system.
Flite-Line-On-Line
"DoorWays to Other Places in the Flite-Line World"
DOOR #1 DOOR #2 DOOR #3 DOOR #4
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ ╔═════╗ │ │ ╔═════╗ │ │ ╔═════╗ │ │ ╔═════╗ │
│ ╚═════╝ │ │ ╚═════╝ │ │ ╚═════╝ │ │ ╚═════╝ │
│ Θ│ │ Θ│ │ Θ│ │ Θ│
│ WAR │ │ ADVENTURE │ │ TRIVIA │ │ EASY FUN │
│ GAMES │ │ GAMES │ │ GAMES │ │ GAMES │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
DOOR #5 DOOR #6 DOOR #7
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ ╔═════╗ │ │ ╔═════╗ │ │ ╔═════╗ │
│ ╚═════╝ │ │ ╚═════╝ │ │ ╚═════╝ │
│ Θ│ │ Θ│ │ Θ│
│DATABASE │ │SIMULATIONS│ │ GAMES OF │
│ UTILITIES│ │ │ │ CHANCE │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
GAME INSTRUCTIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD IN FILE AREA 'K
The above example illustrates the categorization of a
LiveCat system that could have up to 154 doors, or 22 entries in
each of the 7 categories.
The door numbers shown in the DOORS.BBS MENU each correspond to a
DOORx.BAT file in the \WC30 directory required to start LiveCat
with the indicated menu as the default.
You should NOW decide how many major categories of doors your
system will have and decide on a NAME for each menu.
LiveCat Version 3.1 11 06-09-91
In dealing with a MULTI-NODE installation, it's probably best to
concentrate on getting ONE NODE going first with a couple of doors,
THEN go ahead and set up the remaining nodes. All that is required
for the second node is a configuration file in the node directory
that points to where the LiveCat database is located, all nodes
share this same database and it makes running doors in the
Multi-Node environment a dream because you only have to do things
ONCE no matter HOW many nodes you will eventually have.
In this documentation I refer to A CATEGORY name and a MENU name,
they are the SAME THING. A category or menu name must follow all
the rules of a DOS FILE NAME, 8 characters or less, no spaces and
alphanumeric characters .
These category names will be displayed to the user when they are
inside LiveCat so they should be descriptive. Door #1 on our
example Menu screen is WAR GAMES. Inside this category we might
have Trade Wars II, Power Struggle, Galactic Conquest and other war
game doors. It seems that a logical name for this menu or category
might be WARGAMES, right? Right now, decide on the names that you
will use for the menu categories you decided on and write them
down.
Now that we have decided how many categories we will have and
what their names are, we must construct one DOORx.BAT file in the
x:\WC30 directory for each of them. This DOORX.BAT file is VERY
simple, and remember, at this time we are NOT concerned about the
names of the actual doors you will run on your system! We are ONLY
concerned with what the name of the MENU will be that holds a
selection of doors.
Again, using door #1 in our example screen above, named WARGAMES,
here's what DOOR1.BAT would look like.
LIVECAT MONITOR.CFG WARGAMES <--- DIFFERENT IN EACH DOORx.BAT
CD \WC30 | BUT ONLY THE MENU NAME IS
| DIFFERENT
See, very simple! Construct one of these DOORx.BAT files in the
\WC30 directory to correspond to the number and name of each of the
categories in your proposed DOORS.BBS DOORS Menu. Each DOORx.BAT
file is IDENTICAL with the exception of the MENU NAME as indicated
by the arrowed line above. If this were DOOR2.BAT the only
difference would be that the indicated line would read: LIVECAT
MONITOR.CFG ADVENTUR instead of WARGAMES.
It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that the commands to CD back to the
\WC30 directory be in the proper place or you will have a mess! If
you previously had doors running on your system and you ever got
your directory changes wrong you will understand what I'm saying.
LiveCat Version 3.1 12 06-09-91
Once you have determined what your menu categories will be, named
them and constructed a DOORX.BAT file for each of them, make a list
of the doors that you will include in each category and write down
the category name, you will need all this information to construct
your LiveCat menus with the editor.
We can now proceed to physical installation of LiveCat 3.1!
LiveCat Version 3.1 13 06-09-91
[[ INSTALLATION OF MULTI USER LIVECAT 3.1 FOR THE FIRST TIME ]]
We have tried to make the installation of LiveCat 3.1 as simple
and painless as possible for you. There are a certain number of
steps that you MUST follow to the letter in order to guarantee a
successful install. Here is a brief overview of the steps we will
perform:
Step 1: Create a LIVECAT directory on your hard disk that
will hold all of the 3.1 files.
Step 2: Run a CONFIGURATION program will create the version
3.1 database files and configuration information.
Step 3: Create a couple of new menus and directories.
Step 4: Make a couple of configuration changes to your modem.
Step 5: Start up!
As you can see, it's not a complicated process and it shouldn't
take more than 30 minutes to an hour to install, configure and run
your first door, IF you follow these instructions carefully. From
that point on, a door can be installed in LiveCat and brought up on
your system in a matter of minutes.
LiveCat Version 3.1 14 06-09-91
[[ PHYSICAL INSTALLATION STEPS ]]
Refer to the map given earlier of the system configuration to name
your directories and place the files during the following steps.
Now, lets do it!
Step 1: Create new DIRECTORY called LIVECAT that is ONE DIRECTORY
DOWN from your \WC30 directory, ie:
C:\WC30\LIVECAT
Step 2: If you unzipped this package (or copied from disk) in a
directory OTHER than x:\WC30\LIVECAT, copy ALL the files
from this package to the \WC30\LIVECAT directory NOW, and
change to that directory before proceeding.
Step 3: There are five .EXE files associated with LiveCat 3.1,
they are: LIVECAT.EXE, LSEDIT.EXE, LSFIP.EXE,
LSCONFIG.EXE and LSRBLD.EXE. These .EXE files must be in
EITHER your x:\WC30 directory OR any directory that is in
your SEARCH PATH. Copy the five .EXE files to the chosen
directory now and delete them from the x:\WC30\LIVECAT
directory.
Step 4: Change directories to x:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1
Step 5: TYPE: LSCONFIG to start up the System Installer
Step 6: You can refer to APPENDIX A for the exact format and
description of each field that you are prompted
for.
Answer EACH of the configuration questions asked of you
by the configuration program. It's ESSENTIAL that you
answer the questions that ask for PATH NAMES correctly!
Instructions for EACH field are shown at the bottom of
the screen and the data you enter MUST match the example
format in the instructions. At the end of the last
configuration question, the installer will give the
message: Creating Isam Files'.
The 3.1 database has now been created and the Main Pull
Down Menu System of LSEDIT will now appear. Immediately
press ESCAPE to get out of LSEDIT. Do _NOT_ go exploring
around the editor at this time! Plenty of time for that
later.
Step 7: Change to the x:\WC30\LIVECAT directory and
verify that the following files were created:
SCRIPT..DAT SCRIPT.IDX
ATTRIB..DAT ATTRIB.IDX
LOKFILE..DAT LCUSER..DAT
MNAMES.LST MONITOR.DAT
If these files were not created, something is wrong.
Check your procedures and start again. If the files ARE
present everything is fine so far.
LiveCat Version 3.1 15 06-09-91
Step 8: Now change back to your x:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1
directory and verify that a file called MONITOR.CFG
exists there.
Step 9: Change back to the x:\WC30\LIVECAT directory.
Step 10: Creating the MENU.BBS file. In a LiveCat door system the
user is allowed to select new menus of doors by pressing
the 'Z' key. You must now create at least ONE menu file
that will be shown to the user when they press 'Z' while
inside one of your LiveCat menus. This file is called
MENU.BBS and is an ASCII menu file. You may also create
ANSI COLOR file that will be displayed to a user using
color, it's name is MENU.ANS. LiveCat will detect from
the user settings which of the files to use but only the
.BBS file is required. In addition, you may have a menu
file, both ansi and ascii that are security level
specific. For instance if you have some protected menus
that you want to display to LEVEL 50 users only, you
could create a MENU50.BBS and a MENU50.ANS. If LiveCat
finds a security specific menu it will use it, otherwise
it will use the default. Included with this package is a
SAMPLE MENU.BBS file for you to work from. This security
system is described in more detail in APPENDIX B.
Since most all of you have a WAR GAME or two, like Trade
Wars 500, we will use WARGAMES as the name of our first
menu during this installation procedure. You can add new
menus later on using exactly the same procedure. If you
don't understand the concept of a 'LiveCat Menu', reread
the ORGANIZATION section of this document.
If you will now type out the contents of the sample
MENU.BBS file included with this package you will see
that the MENU A is described as War Games. No need to do
anything else with the MENU.BBS file for now, just
remember that it's there.
Step 11: If you will remember back to when we ran the
CONFIGURATION options, one of the questions you were
asked was if you wanted to use the SCORE BULLETIN
feature. LiveCat 3.1 has the ability to handle scoring
bulletins in much the same manner as the BBS itself.
This allows you to move all your game score bulletins
out of the main board area and into the LiveCat system
where they belong. This however IS an option. In order
to USE the option you must create a new directory named
BULL one level below your x:\WC30\LIVECAT directory.
In a Wildcat! system this directory path would be
x:\WC30\LIVECAT\BULL. If you do NOT wish to use this
option you do not have to create the directory. If you
DO want to use this feature you create the indicated
directory and in it you must place at least 1 file, a
file called BLT.BBS which is the MENU of the score
bulletins, or the equivalent of what the user would see
if they typed B while in Wildcat! for a bulletin
listing. Create that menu file and the score system is
configured.
LiveCat Version 3.1 16 06-09-91
I included a sample BLT.BBS file for you to start from.
If you use this feature you will now have to go to EACH
door directory that produces a scoring bulletin and tell
it to place the bulletin in \WC30\LIVECAT\BULL instead
of the main board bulletin area. In addition, each of
the score bulletins has a slightly different naming
convention than you might be used to. Bulletin #1 must
be named BLT1.BBS for the ASCII bulletin and BLT1.SCR
for the ANSI bulletin. A matching ANSI is not necessary
but LiveCat will use it if it finds one otherwise it
will use the ASCII bulletin. Using the above
conventions to put a TRADE WARS 500 scoring bulletin
into the monitor as bulletin #1, you would configure
Trade Wars to name it's bulletin file
x:\WC30\LIVECAT\BULL\BLT1.BBS, the BLT.BBS menu file
would say:
1 .. Trade Wars 500 Scores, or what ever you choose.
Refer to the example files to get it straight.
Step 12: You must now edit a file that was created automatically
during installation called MONITOR.DAT. This file is
in the x:\WC30\LIVECAT directory.
The MONITOR.DAT file contains a list of EVERY SECURITY
LEVEL IN USE ON YOUR WILDCAT SYSTEM. It is crucial that
this file be set up correctly or improper times for your
users will result.
* NOTE *
In Wildcat! 3.0, SECURITY PROFILES are used to hold a
set of parameters relating to a particular user level.
THE PROFILE NAME IS _NOT_ A SECURITY LEVEL, it is
a NAME for a set of security attributes. The SECURITY
LEVEL is the MENU level of the PROFILE set by you when
you define the profile. Your WC1000 PROFILE for example
will have a MENU LEVEL of 1000. The 1000 is your
actuall security level and THAT is the number that
MUST be placed in the LiveCat MONITOR.DAT file.
During running of the configuration program this file
was created with two default security levels of 110 and
1000. THESE SHOULD NOT BE DELETED, even if you
don't USE 110 or 1000 on your BBS.
The format of this file is VERY simple, I'll use a LEVEL
20 user as an example.
The entry in MONITOR.DAT for a level 20 user might look
like this:
20 60 75
The number 20 is obviously the SECURITY LEVEL. The
number 60 is the TOTAL TIME ALLOWED ON THE BBS EACH DAY
FOR A LEVEL 20 USER. The number 75, is a PERCENTAGE of
the NUMBER 60 that you will allow a level 20 user to
LiveCat Version 3.1 17 06-09-91
have for door usage each day. In other words, the above
line states that a Level 20 user has 60 minutes total
each day on the BBS, of that 60 minutes you will allow
75% of that to be used in doors.
The PERCENTAGE field may be ANY percentage you choose
from 1% to 99%, but should NEVER be 100%... LiveCat uses
these fields the FIRST time a user goes into doors on
any given day, it calculates the time they can stay in
doors and then keeps track of the door time used for the
day. At midnight, the time rolls over and the user will
again be allowed the full percentage of time.
At this time, use a text editor and edit the MONITOR.DAT
file to include the LEVEL TOTALTIME PERCENT numbers for
every security level in use on your system, INCLUDING
YOUR OWN SYSOP LEVEL.
Step 13: If you didn't do it before, we now must create a
DOOR1.BAT file that will be executed by Wildcat! when
the user is in the BBS and types D for doors and chooses
#1. You will have a DOORx.BAT file for EACH LiveCat
menu that you install in your system, but for this
session we will create ONLY the one, DOOR1.BAT file to
start LiveCat with your WARGAMES menu as the default
menu.
* IF YOU DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE RIGHT - YOU MUST CREATE
THE DOORx.BAT FILES CORRECTLY OR LIVECAT WILL SIMPLY
NOT RUN *
Your DOOR1.BAT file will look EXACTLY like this:
LIVECAT MONITOR.CFG WARGAMES
CD \WC30
Each DOORx.BAT file you create will be identical to the
above WITH ONE EXCEPTION. The menu name WARGAMES will
be different in DOOR2.BAT thru DOORx.BAT. These MENU
NAMES correspond with what you want the user to see as
the DEFAULT LiveCat menu when they make a door choice
while in Wildcat!. You might for example have your
system set up so that DOOR 1 in Wildcat! is WAR GAMES
and DOOR 2 might contain Adventure Games. In this case
DOOR1.BAT would be identical to the above and DOOR2.BAT
would be EXACTLY the same except that line 2 would say:
LIVECAT MONITOR.CFG ADVENTUR (provided of course you
named your second LiveCat menu ADVENTUR)
One final note about the DOORx.BAT files.
1.) All DOORx.BAT files are located in x:\WC30 directory.
Initial installation of LiveCat 3.1 is now complete. You will now
begin installing MENUS and DOORS into your LiveCat system.
LiveCat Version 3.1 18 06-09-91
**** SPECIAL NOTE **** **** IMPORTANT *****
In order for LiveCat to do all the things it is designed to do, you
MUST pay close attention to your use of security levels in WILDCAT.
It is recommended that you only use the MINIMUM number of security
levels to properly secure your system.
In a WILDCAT system, the most important file to LiveCat is a file
called 'MONITOR.DAT'. This file contains an entry for each security
level being used in your WILDCAT system and the total amount of
daily BBS time users with that security level can have.
This file is read by LiveCat when a user enters doors for the first
time each day. It looks up their security level in this file and
then determines how much daily time they can have, and how much of
that time can be used for doors. This time is the one against
which all other LiveCat time calculations are performed.
YOU SHOULD MAKE SURE THAT THERE IS AN ENTRY IN THE MONITOR.DAT
FILE FOR EACH SECURITY LEVEL IN USE ON YOUR SYSTEM..PLUS LEVEL
110 EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT USING IT.
If LiveCat cannot find a security level in the MONITOR..DAT
file that matches the one assigned to the user that just entered
doors, it will by default assign security level 10 and a
maximum daily board time of 30 minutes. It will use these
numbers to calculate the door control times.
I further recommend that you assign to yourself, as sysop, a
security level of 1000 and make sure it is entered in the
MONITOR..DAT file with the proper time limits. This makes it easier
for LiveCat to recognize you as the sysop and not control you as
tightly as a regular user.
Please read the above descriptions completely until you understand
them. The setup of this is crucial to the proper operation of
LiveCat.
LiveCat is now configured to run on your system. The next step is
to begin building your LiveCat operating menus. These menus will
contain all of the doors available on your BBS.
LiveCat Version 3.1 19 06-09-91
[[ CREATING NEW MENUS ]]
The next step in configuring LiveCat to run on your system is to
build the system menus and install the execution script for each
door in your system.
The LsEdit editor is designed to make this as easy and intuitive
as possible, but I'll warn you now, it's going to take some time
and work.
Make sure you are logged into the \WC30\WCWORK\NODE1 directory If
you are ready to start building just type: LSEDIT
The intro screen of the editor does a little salesmanship for me
and then expects you to press <ENTER> to get started. When you
press <ENTER> the main operating menu appears.
Creating a menu with the editor is a single step, very fast
process and isn't difficult. All you need are the names of the
menus you decided on earlier, and remember that you MUST install
menus in the same order that you created your DOORx.BAT files. If
DOOR1.BAT is for the WARGAMES menus, then you must install the
WARGAMES menu first, then the name in your DOOR2.BAT and so on.
Also remember that All of the work in setting up LiveCat comes at
the front end when you are installing all of your existing doors
for the first time. After that, the installation and maintenance
of doors inside LiveCat is extremely fast and simple.
* INSTALLING YOUR FIRST MENU *
Step 1: Make sure you are in the \WC30\WCWORK\NODE1 directory,
where your MONITOR.CFG is located, and type:
LSEDIT to get the editor started.
LsEdit uses the classic 'Pull Down' menu approach to
present informtion and choices to you. All movements
through the menu structure are via the arrow keys OR full
'Point and Shoot' mouse functions.
Step 2: The LsEdit cursor highlight should be positioned on MENU
FUNCTIONS at this time. Use the right arrow key to
positon the highlight on MENU FUNCTIONS and then Just
press ENTER and the pull down will appear.
Step 3: Use the down arrow key to move to: CREATE NEW MENU and
press ENTER. The menu display box should open and the
cursor will be placed in the entry field awaiting the
entry of your first menu name.
Step 4: Enter the name of your first menu and press ENTER.
Remember that the menu name you enter here is the SAME
menu name you selected in the previous steps and put
into each of the DOOR1.BAT files as a menu name.
LiveCat Version 3.1 20 06-09-91
Remember also that menu names MUST follow all the rules of
a DOS file name. They must contain standard characters,
no spaces and they must be 8 or less characters in length.
The name you chose for the menu will be displayed to the
user while in LiveCat so the names should be meaningful.
We are going to build the menu for our WARGAMES category
and we are going to install two doors in it, Trade Wars
500 and Power Struggle.
Type in WARGAMES now and press <ENTER>.
Step 5: When you pressed ENTER the cursor moved to the SECURITY
and is waiting for input. The number you place in this
field is the LOWEST security in your system that you will
allow to view this menu. If you don't want to use
security on your menus, just enter the number of the
lowest level available on your system and the menu will be
open to all users above that level. Enter the desired
security level for this menu now.
Step 6: Reselect the ADD MENU function and install any other menus
that you would like to use at this time.
This completes installation of a MENU into the MONITOR system.
Thats all there is to it. ANYTIME you wish to add a new menu to
your system this is the series of steps you will follow. You may
install as many menus as you want, up to 64 and as long as no doors
are physically attached to them, the menus will not display.
Now comes the FUN part, actually installing DOORS into your newly
created menus.
LiveCat Version 3.1 21 06-09-91
[[ INSTALLING DOORS INTO THE MENU SYSTEM ]]
If there is a _HARD_ part to installing LiveCat, this is it.
Installing a door is NOT difficult, IF you have some idea of what
you are doing with doors in general. If this is your first
experience with doors, then things will be a little tougher, BUT,
persistance WILL pay off and LiveCat will run your door system like
no other product on the market.
The series of steps presented below will lead you step by step
through the installation of the Trade Wars 500 door into your
WARGAMES menu created previously. The version of Trade Wars we
will be using is release 10.0. Use of any other version will
likely be somewhat different.
Step 1: The first step of course is to create a directory on your
system to hold the Trade Wars programs and data. Do that
now. Unzip your Trade Wars files into this new directory
now.
Step 2: Change to your x:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1 directory and start
up the editor by typing: LSEDIT
Step 3: The menu select bar is already on EDIT SCRIPTS so just
press to get the pull down menu of functions.
Step 4: Move the select bar to ADD NEW DOOR and press <ENTER>
Step 5: In LiveCat 3.1 EACH and EVERY door MUST be given a UNIQUE
identifying name. This name is how LiveCat itself
selects and runs the user specified door. It is ALSO how
YOU select doors later on for editing and changes.
At this time the editor is asking for the NAME of the new
door you will be installing. This name is NOT related to
the MENU names that you created earlier, but it DOES
follow the same convention, 8 characters or less and no
spaces in the name. For our Trade Wars door a name of
TW500 sounds good so enter that now and press ENTER.
Step 6: As soon as you pressed ENTER in the step above, the DOOR
ATTRIBUTES window opens and it's expecting some entries
that will tell it all about what YOU want to happen when
the door is run. On the next page is a graphic of what
you should be seeing.
LiveCat Version 3.1 22 06-09-91
╔════════════════02:39:50╗
Menu Functions Text Editor Print Op║ A = 2-AM
═══════════╗░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║ B = Unused ║░
or Script ║░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║ C = GTPower Comm ║░
═════════════════════════════════════════║ D = Door.sys Generic ║░
║ E = Unused ║░
Door Type (Q/G/R/P/W/2/4) = 4 ║ F = Unused ║░
Door NAME = TW500 ║ G = GAP 4.x/5.x ║░
Attached to Menu = WARGAMES ║ H = Unused ║░
Door Time limit (minutes) = 30 ║ I = Unused ║░
Low Security Limit = 20 ║ J = Unused ║░
High Security Limit = 1000 ║ K = Unused ║░
One run lock (Y/N) or (2..9) = N ║ L = Unused ║░
Menu Display Discription = Trade Wars║ M = Unused ║░
Unlock DTE before run (Y/N) = Y ║ N = Unused ║░
Door LOCKED (Y/N) = N ║ O = Unused ║░
Multi User Door (Y/N) = N ║ P = PCBoard 12.x ║░
Door Number = 0 ║ Q = QBBS ║░
Date Last Run = 10/28/90 ║ R = RBBS 15.1C+ ║░
║ S = Spitfire 2.7+ ║░
═════════════════════════════════════════║ W = Wildcat 1.10/.11 ║░
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║ 2 = Wildcat 1.12/.13 ║░
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║ 3 = Wildcat 2.xx ║░
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░║ 4 = PCBoard 14.x ░
╚════════════════════════╝
Step 7: The first field you are being prompted for is the DOOR
TYPE. Door Type means 'WHAT BBS SYSTEM WAS THIS DOOR
DESIGNED TO BE RUN ON'. The door type code you enter
here is very important. If it's not correct, the door
will absolutely refuse to function properly, if at all.
You may refer to appendix C for a more detailed
explaination of the meaning of each of Door Type Codes
available. We will be running our Trade Wars 500 door
on the Wildcat 1.12/1.13 interface so move the selector
bar in the pick list to the 2 type door for Wc 1.12/1.13
and press ENTER. The door type code is moved into the
proper field in the attributes. It may take some
experimentation with new doors to determine exactly which
of the available interface types are required for it to
function properly.
Step 8: Attaching the DOOR to a MENU. The next field called MENU
ATTACHMENT is driven by a pick list. You will note that
this pick list contains the names of the menus you
previously installed with LSEDIT. You may move up and
down through the pick list by use of your up and down
arrow keys, or your mouse. Position the selector bar in
the pick list on the menu name WARGAMES and press ENTER.
You will note that the menu name is moved into the MENU
ATTACHMENT field of the attributes. You can move ANY
door to ANY menu instantly by just calling up this window
and selecting a different menu from the pick list.
Lsedit will instantly remove the door from the original
menu and place it in the new one.
LiveCat Version 3.1 23 06-09-91
Step 9: The next field is the time limit you will place on each
run of this door. LiveCat will enforce this time limit
and NOT allow the user to stay inside the door longer
than this amount of time. For Trade Wars I usually allow
about 40 minutes maximum play time so enter the number 40
here.
Step 10: You are now being asked to supply the LOW LEVEL security
for this door. LiveCat allows doors to be tightly
controlled by the users security level. The number you
enter here is the security level of the LOWEST level
user you will allow to use this door. If you wish
EVERYONE to be able to use this door then just enter the
number of the lowest security level in use on your
system in this field.
Step 11: The HIGH security level field is exactly like the field
above. It determines the security level of the HIGHEST
level user you will allow to use this door. If you want
EVERYONE to be able to use the door, enter your SYSOP
security level in this field.
Through creative use of the two above fields you can
restrict the running of certain doors from a wide range
of levels down to a single permitted level. By entering
the number 50 in both fields for instance, you would
restrict the door to being run ONLY by users with
security level 50, PLUS of course YOU as the sysop can
run it because you are exempt from all these
restrictions.
Step 12: Entering RUN CODES. The field you are being prompted
for now can be a bit confusing since it allows two
different types of entries. Some doors you may want
restricted to only a single run per day, if that's the
case enter a Y in this field, meaning RUN ONCE ONLY. If
you want NO limits on the number of times each day a
door can be run, enter N. Additionally you may enter
any NUMBER between 2 and 9 and the door will be
restricted to that many runs on any day.
Examples are: Y Allow 1 run per day only.
N Allow unlimited runs daily
3 Allow only 3 runs per day
Step 13: Menu Item Description: This line permits up to 25
characters to be entered for a MENU DESCRIPTION. These
one line descriptions are displayed to the user while in
LiveCat so they should be as descriptive as possible
within the one line allowed. The description for our
Trade Wars door might look like this:
Trade Wars 500 My favorite
This will appear to the user when they see the WARGAMES
menu as : [A] .. Trade Wars 500 My Favorite, and they
would press the letter A to run it.
LiveCat Version 3.1 24 06-09-91
Step 14: Unlock DTE (Y/N): This is a very special field and
can be confusing if you do not understand what is
meant by 'Locked DTE'. It won't be important
unless you are running a high speed modem whose comport
is locked at a baud rate of 19200 or 38400. If
you use one these modems then you MUST read
appendix C carefully that talks about variations and
problems you will encounter. In the case of Trade Wars
500 it will run just fine with the DTE locked at 19200
and any rate below that. It will NOT run on a modem
whose baud rate is locked at 38400. If you have a
modem locked at 19200 OR a modem that is NOT locked,
a standard 2400 modem or anything else, enter N in
this field. This says: 'No, do NOT unlock the DTE
before running the door'. If you have a modem
attached whose baud rate is locked at 38400, then
answer with a Y that says: 'Yes, DO unlock the
DTE before running this door.
Step 15: DOOR LOCKED (Y/N):
This is an important field in a Multi-User system. Each
time LiveCat runs a door, this field is set BY LIVECAT to
a Y to indicate that door is IN USE and LOCKED OUT to
other nodes! YOU may use this field to manually lock out
a door while you are testing the door or to repair it!.
Simply set this flag to Y and the door will become
inaccessible to other users.
*NOTE* If for some reason your system should CRASH while
a door is running, LiveCat will NOT get a chance to set
this flag back to N to clear the lock on it. You must do
that manually by calling up the edit door function in
LsEdit and manually changing this flag back to N. This
will manifest itself to users by telling them that the
door IS IN USE ON ANOTHER NODE when the door is not being
run at all! This will ONLY happen if your system goes
down and LiveCat does NOT get a chance to reset the
LOCKED flag back to 'N'.
Step 16: Multi-User Door (Y/N):
This is also a very important field in a multi-user
system. Some doors DO permit more than one user to
execute them at any given time. If this is true with
the door you are installing, set this flag to Y and
LiveCat will let all users into the door simulateously.
This can have DISASTROUS effects on a SINGLE USER DOOR!
Take care, if you don't know for SURE if a door is
single user or multi-user, set this to N to mark it as a
single user door. Don't take chances with this.
You will have noticed that there are 2 or 3 fields in the window
that you are NOT allowed to edit. Door name is one of them.
Remember that you are NOT allowed to CHANGE the DOOR NAME of a
door once it's installed into the system because of the indexed
nature of the database. If you wish to CHANGE the NAME OF A DOOR,
you must first DELETE the door entirely and then ADD it again under
the new name.
LiveCat Version 3.1 25 06-09-91
The other fields you are not allowed to edit are fields that are
maintained automatically by LiveCat, door number is used to control
the daily multiple run parameters, and Date Last Run is there for
you to see when the door was last run. This field will help you
evaluate and get rid of those doors that are not being run and just
taking up disk space.
Now!!! We move to the MOST critical part of installing a door in
the LiveCat environment, writing the 'Execution Script'
** EXPLANATION OF SCRIPTS **
In loose terms an EXECUTION SCRIPT is similar to a batch file.
It is the sequence of commands that LiveCat will follow each time a
user runs the door. Entering an execution script is very easy to
do if you have all of the info about the door.
While in the script editor, you have all most all the features of
a good text editor available to you, including line delete, line
insert, block moving and so on. While inside the editor, the F1
key is the help key and will display all of editor commands
available, use it! I will not cover function by function use of
the editor.
* YOU CANT *
Even though a SCRIPT has many similarities to a BATCH FILE, there
are a number of BATCH language commands you may NOT use in the
script.
You CAN use GOTO's, CALL, IF EXIST and most all DOS level commands
but you CANNOT use IF ERRORLEVEL and you may NOT use the %x
modifiers to try to pass parameters. In a LiveCat environment the
normal parameters passed to a batch file in the %1 %2 etc. manner
have no meaning.
* IMPORTANT *
There are a number of cases in which your SCRIPT file might need
to execute BATCH FILES. If this is the case, you must NEVER
execute the required batch file by simply typing it's name on a
line of the script.
To execute a BATCH FILE from within a LiveCat script, you MUST use
DOS 3.3 CALL command to execute the batch, OR use the EXECUTE.EXE
program supplied with LiveCat to handle it. If you DO NOT call
batch files in the following manner, LiveCat will completely loose
track of the door it is trying to execute and the reaction will be
unpredictable.
Example script calling of batch files:
CD \DOOR
CALL PREPARE.BAT
DOOR DOOR.CFG
CD \WILDCAT
LiveCat Version 3.1 26 06-09-91
or
CD \DOOR
EXECUTE PREPARE.BAT
DOOR DOOR.CFG
CD \WILDCAT
PREPARE.BAT is a normal batch file, the only thing it CANNOT do
is receive %1 %2 %x.... parameters from the script.
As a general rule, enter only the bare minimum commands to change
to the directory where the door is at and execute it. LiveCat will
automatically change itself back to the proper directory when the
door has shut down. There is no need to put commands in the script
to CD back to the LiveCat directory itself.
** ENTERING THE SCRIPT FOR TRADE WARS 500 **
Organizationally, each door on your system should have it's own
subdirectory. The complete path to TW on my system is:
C:\DOORS\TW500
Remember that and try to visualize the paths as we create the
script.
The script on MY system would like this, you just change it to
suit your path names.
cd \doors\tw500
tw2 /P %D\%I\CALLINFO.BBS
That's it!! Notice that I did NOT include a command to restart
WILDCAT such as 'cat.bat' or a command to restart LiveCat. That's
because all restarting is handled by the DOORX.BAT file that you
created. You must NEVER include a command to restart Wildcat! from
within a door script, the result will be a mess!
Now, here is a script for a PCBoard 12.x door that is typical of
the installation and running of that type of door on a multi-node
system.
CD \DOORS\GUPPIES
GUP-%N.CFG
A PCBoard 14.x example of the same door,
SET DOORPCH=PCB
CD \DOORS\GUPPIES
GUPPIES GUP-%N.CFG
Again, in both cases, very simple. The command line to start Card
Guppies, GUPPIES GUP-%N.CFG includes the name of the configuration
file (.CFG) that the door should read during startup that informs
it WHERE the PCBOARD.SYS file is that it needs to run.
LiveCat Version 3.1 27 06-09-91
Now some explaination is order. You will have noticed in the
example TW500 and GUPPIES scripts above that some REPLACABLE
parameters were used that begin with the character % (percent
sign).
LiveCat 3.1 incorporates a new Script Parameter Language that
allows special directives to be imbedded in your script and will be
used by some doors to receive specialized commands on their command
line. The Script language is also used by and is critical to the
operation of Multi-User versions of LiveCat running on multiple
node Wildcat! systems.
These replacable parameters are designed to replace the %1 %2
parameter passing functions in a batch file. They are able to
modify the door command line at run time to take some special
action that otherwise would not be possible.
Refer to Appendix E for all the replacable parameters available,
and their use.
In a MULTI-NODE LiveCat system, you MUST remember that the SAME
SCRIPT runs doors for ALL NODES!
The example TRADE WARS script is fairly unique and shows you how
these parameters work with some doors that do NOT depend on .CFG
files to obtain callers information.
Trade Wars 500 Version 10.0, which is what we are presently
installing, does NOT use a .CFG file as do most other types of
doors. Instead, it picks up the location of the CALLINFO.BBS to be
read from the command line.
The replacable parameters in the example TW500 script tell it how
to do this. The command line in the script actually reads:
TW2 /P %D\%I\CALLINFO.BBS
At runtime, LiveCat constructs the runtime file to read:
TW2 /P C:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1\CALLINFO.BBS
This is true of course if the script were actually being run from
NODE 1. If it was being run from NODE 2, then at runtime the
script contstructed by LiveCat would read:
TW2 /P C:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE2\CALLINFO.BBS
Both runtime files were created by LiveCat based on the NODE from
which the door is currently being executed.
The replacable parameters used are:
%D means replace this with the DRIVE LETTER that is the current
drive, or in this case, C:
%I means replace this with the name of the CURRENT NODE HOME
DIRECTORY.
LiveCat Version 3.1 28 06-09-91
See how that works? It may take you a little head scratching to
figure this out, but once you understand how it works, it can save
you tremendous amounts of time when configuring a new door to run
on your multi-node system since the script need only be put in ONCE
and all menu changes are automatically taken care of.
In the GUPPIES scripts the %N replacable parameter is replaced at
runtime by LiveCat to read: GUPPIES GUP-1.CFG.
If you were running a 3 node Wildcat! system, you must of course
have a .CFG for GUPPIES to read from EACH NODE! Or, a GUP-1.CFG, a
GUP-2.CFG and a GUP-3.CFG.
This is necessary because the .CFG files for the doors MUST look
in DIFFERENT NODE directories to find the PCBOARD.SYS and .DAT
files, therefore you must be able to tell GUPPIES at runtime, WHICH
.CFG file to use so that the proper .CFG will be read. The %N
parameter is ALWAYS replaced by LIVECAT with NODE NUMBER of the
node that is actually executing this script at any given time. The
NODE NUMBER will always be placed in the EXACT locatation at
runtime that the %N parameter appears.
For example, using the above script with the %N parameter, at
runtime from NODE 1, LiveCat would contstruct a runtime batch file
to exectute guppies that would read:
CD \DOORS\GUPPIES
GUPPIES GUP-1.CFG
or, if run from node 2, the file would read:
CD \DOORS\GUPPIES
GUPPIES GUP-2.CFG
IN ALL cases you MUST NOT run other types of file format
converters such as WC2GAP or GAPDOOR to convert from one board type
to another unless you are specifically instructed to do so by this
documentation because LiveCat does all that for you and if you try
to include these other conversion utilities in your script you
DEFEAT LiveCat's attempt to time control the door.
Believe it or not!, Trade Wars has now been installed in LiveCat.
And thats all there is to it! Each and every door that you
install in your system will be installed in EXACTLY the same
manner. The only things that will vary are the content of the
script to actually run the door.
It may seem a bit confusing the first time or two that you do it,
but as soon as you get used to the procedure, and get some doors
experience under your belt, you will find that the editor makes it
very easy and fast to install a new door, edit an existing one and
to diagnose a problem with any door in your system.
LiveCat Version 3.1 29 06-09-91
[[ EDITING EXISTING DOORS ]]
It is necessary from time to time to edit menus that are already
in your system. This is how you would move a door from one menu to
another menu or alter some aspect of a door that is already in the
system. You might want to change the time users have for the door,
it's required security or possibly change the re-run lock flags.
** SELECTING A DOOR TO EDIT **
To edit an existing menu you first need to SELECT it. You do this
almost as if you were entering a new door, by pulling down the
SCRIPT EDITING window at the main menu. Move the selector bar to
SCRIPT EDITING and press ENTER to pull it down.
When the SCRIPT EDITING Pull Down appears, you will notice that
one of the seletions is EDIT EXISITING DOOR. Move the selector bar
to this item and press ENTER.
A pick list opens at this point that contains the name and
description of each and every door in your system in alphabetical
order by door name.
You move up and down in the pick list window with up and down
arrows and the page up and page down keys, OR by positioning your
mouse cursor on the arrows in the left side of the window border
and pressing the left mouse button.
Postion the selector bar over the door you wish to view or edit
and either press ENTER or the left mouse button and the door
attributes window will appear and you're on your way. You can
change ALMOST every aspect of the door at this time except it's
name.
LiveCat Version 3.1 30 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX A - FIELDS IN LSCONFIG ]]
Read this appendix carefully! Most of the parameters you enter
here are CRITICAL to the proper operation of LiveCat and your BBS.
Experience has taught me over the years that 99% of reported
problems with LiveCat can be traced to improper configuration
and/or and incomplete understanding of exactly what each parameter
in the configuration file controls. Understand VERY clearly that
the MONITOR.CFG file that contains this information is produced and
maintained by LsEdit and you must NEVER edit the MONITOR.CFG with a
text editor or you will destroy it AND possibly your doors
database!
FIELD 1: Name of This BBS:
Self explanitory. Enter the name of your BBS as you wish
it to appear to callers.
FILED 2: Sysop FIrst Name:
YOUR first name.
FIELD 3: Sysop Last Name:
YOUR last name.
FIELD 4: Home Directory for this node.
The full name of the directory which is considered to be the
base directory for the node. Ie: \WC30\WCWORK\NODE1 would be
entered as the Home directory for NODE 1. It is critical that
this field be correct.
FIELD 5: Path to the ACTIVITY LOG for this node:
This is the FULL PATH NAME INCLUDING THE ACTUAL NAME OF
THE ACTIVITY.LOG. An example is: C:\WC30\ACTIVITY.001.
If you do NOT include the actual name of the activity log, you
will see Null Pointer assignment errors at the time LiveCat is
trying to run a door.
FIELD 6: Path to the MONITOR Data files:
This extrememly important path name is what tells LiveCat
WHERE it's files are located. This is normally the
LIVECAT directory and is normally one directory down from
the \WC30 directory. An example is C:\WC30\LIVECAT
The directory named here is where the ATTRIB.DAT,
ATTRIB.IDX, SCRIPT.DAT and SCRIPT.IDX files will be
created by LSEDIT on first time startup and is where
LIVECAT will look for the files.
FIELD 7: FULL path to the BBS USERS file:
This SHOULD be the FULL path and FILE NAME of your WILDCAT
users file. Although, in LIVECAT this field is not used
at this time and whatever you enter here will be ignored,
you should put it in because some future enhancement to
LiveCat might require it.
FIELD 8: Comport this node runs on (1..8):
This is just the NUMBER only of the comport your system is
running on.
LiveCat Version 3.1 31 06-09-91
FIELD 9: Base Address:
This field MUST be entered in conjunction with field 8.
It is the base i/o address that the previously named
comport is using. In COM1 and COM2 systems LiveCat
defaults this to 03F8 and 02F8. If you are using a
comport other than 1 or 2, you must determine the address
at which the port is running. If you enter a number in
this field, it MUST be in hexidecimal format at shown
above.
FIELD 10: IRQ:
This is the INTERRUPT number your comport is using. In
COM1 and COM2 systems LiveCat defaults this number to 4
and 3 respectively. If you are running other than COM1
or COM2, you must insert the appropriate IRQ number that
your comport is using in this field.
FIELD 11: Rate at which to LOCK MODEM DTE (NONE, 1200..38400):
LiveCat has full support of high speed modems running at
rates higher than 9600 baud, all the way to 57600 baud.
If you do NOT have a high speed modem whose DTE is locked
at some given rate, enter NONE in this field. If you ARE
using a high speed modem, and DO have the DTE locked,
enter the RATE at which the DTE is locked in this field.
If you are using a high speed modem whose DTE is NOT
locked, then enter NONE. If you are using a LOW speed
MNP modem and DO have the DTE locked, enter the RATE at
which the DTE is locked.
Any lock rate from 1200 to 38400 baud is supported.
FIELD 12: Node NUMBER for this copy (1..99) ?
Just place the NODE NUMBER for this node in this field. The
range of numbers you can place here depend on the version you
purchased.
FIELD 13: LiveCat 3.1 has a built in ability to log the user off
from within LiveCat. This feature is optional.
Be aware that if you ENABLE this feature by putting Y in
the field the user will be shown a [BYE] option in the
LiveCat main menu. If the user type BYE at the LiveCat
command line, the system drops DTR and hangs up. This IS
SEEN BY WILDCAT AS A CARRIER DROP AND IS RECORDED IN THE
ACTIVITY LOG AS SUCH! LiveCat does however clean up all
it's files and the system exit is a normal one. We do
NOT interface directly to the Wildcat! user file and log
the user off in a the same manner as Wildcat!
If you do NOT want to enable this feature, put N in the
field.
FIELD 14: Do you want to use the optional SCORE BULLETIN System:
LiveCat 3.1 has a built in Bulletin system similar to the
main board bulletins. It's purpose is to provide a place
INSIDE LiveCat to display score bulletins from your
doors as an alternative to displaying them in the main
board bulletins. This feature is optional. Enable it by
putting Y in the field. If ENABLE this feature, you must
create a new directory, 1 directory BELOW your LIVECAT
LiveCat Version 3.1 32 06-09-91
directory, create a directory named BULL. The full path
name would be as follows: C:\WC30\LIVECAT\BULL.
This directory is where you will direct your doors to
place their scoring bulletins, according to the naming
conventions documented in the installation steps, you
must also place at least a BLT.BBS file in this directory
that is a menu of the bulletins kept here. Refer to the
installation steps for naming conventions.
FIELD 15: LiveCat will allow you to control door access based on
the users upload/download ratio. If you want to use the
feature, enter the RATIO in this field. An entry of 40
for instance would enforce a ratio of 40:1 and if the
user is outside that ratio they will not be allowed to
enter the doors. If you do NOT want to enforce ration,
simply enter 0 (zero) in this field and it will be
disabled.
FIELD 16: What time do you want LOCK the door system (xx:xx):
You may TOTALLY lock access to the doors system at
a certain time of day. Enter the time, in 24 hour format
that you want the lock to BEGIN. An entry of 23:00 for
instance will lock the door system beginning at 11:00pm.
If you do NOT want to lock the doors, enter 00:00.
Notice that if you enter 00:00, the feature is DISABLE!
You may NOT lock the door system ACROSS midnight, only on
either side of it!
FIELD 17: What time do you want to UNLOCK the door system (xx:xx):
If you ENABLE locking in the field above, enter the time, in
24 hour format that want to UNLOCK the doors system. Again,
this time cannot be ACROSS midnight. If you did NOT enable
locking, enter 00:00 in this field.
FIELD 18: Use the AUTO ONE DOOR EXECUTE FEATURE ? (Y/n):
LiveCat has the ability to automatically run a door IF it
the ONLY door in a given menu. When the user enters
LIVECAT from WILDCAT for the first time, and if the MENU
chosen only has one door in it, LiveCat will go ahead and
automatically run the door for the user instead of
presenting the menu. When the user terminates the door,
it will return to the LiveCat menu chosen when the user
first entered LiveCat. Subsequent changes to this menu
by use of the 'Z' key, do NOT automatcially run the
single door, only on original entry from the BBS into
LiveCat does the feature have any effect. If you want to
USE the feature, enter Y otherwise enter N.
FIELD 19: What is your SYSOP security level in the BBS (XXXX):
Normally in Wildcat! this would be 1000. But some sysops
use different levels. Whatever level you have set as
your OWN level in Wildcat! is what you should enter here.
FIELD 20: Use EMS during swap if available (Y/N)?
LiveCat 3.1 employs swapping techniques to make the maximum
amount of memory available to a door when it is being run.
LiveCat Version 3.1 33 06-09-91
In order to accomplish this, LiveCat will swap all but about
2-4k of itself out of memory when it executes a door. You may
use either DISK for this swap information to be temporarily
stored, or if available you may use EMS memory to hold the
swap data. Our EMS routines SHOULD work with EMS DRIVES from
3.2 up. It is NOT uncommon to find EMS drivers however that
do not function totally as expected. If you set the use EMS
flag to Y and experience problems with LiveCat reloading
itself when returning from a door, simply forget EMS swapping
and use DISK swapping instead by setting the flag to N. If
you use DISK swapping, you may direct that the temporary swap
file be placed on a drive other than your default drive,
including a ram disk. If you wish to use RAM DISK to hold the
temporary swap file you must put a TEMP variable in your
environment. This is done during autoexec.bat by saying: SET
TEMP=D:\. If D: is your ram disk, then the swap files will be
placed there instead of the default drive and directory. If
LiveCat does not find a TEMP variable in your environment then
the default location of the temporary swap files will be the
current drive and directory. CAUTION, if using a ram disk, it
MUST be large enough to hold the swap file for EACH running
node simulaneously!! The swap file is about 192k in size for
each node, so if you have 3 nodes running and wish to use ram
disk for all of them, ram disk size must be a minum 3 x 192k
so that a swapping error will not occur because the ram drive
is full.
FIELD 21: Unlock DTE for ENTIRE Monitor Session (global) (Y/N)
This field is new in version 3.1. If you are running with DTE
locked you may set this field to Y and the DTE will be UNLOCKED
when LiveCat starts up and will REMAIN unlocked until LiveCat
shuts down and returns to Wildcat!. If you answer Y here, the
field in each SCRIPT that controls DTE lock/unlock for each
door is ignored. If you answer N to this field, LiveCat will
NOT unlock the DTE unless the script for any given door tells
it to, in which case the DTE will be unlocked for that single
door run and the RELOCKED when the door completes and LiveCat
restarts.
FIELD 22: DRIVE REMAPS:
These 9 fields will be used ONLY if you are using a
peer-to-peer network in which physical drives may be known to
different nodes by differnt names. If you are NOT using a
peer-to-peer network such as Lantastic, simply leave these
fields blank.
These things can be confusing and tricky, but if you've
managed to get your Lantastic configured in such a way that
all physical drives are not known by the same names to all
nodes, then you will have to use these so LiveCat will know
how to find the doors on different drives.
You are allowed to alias upto 9 drives. These are drives that
LiveCat will have to look for the doors on. For instance, on
node 1, your doors may be on a drive named C:, but on node two
these same doors are on a drive named F: because of the way
you mapped your network.
LiveCat Version 3.1 34 06-09-91
When configuring NODE 1, drive remap 1 would get a C: placed
in in it, the other can be blank if all your doors are on the
same physical drive. If you have doors on more than one drive
such as C: and D: then use C: in position 1 and D: in position
2.
When configuring nodes 2 thru x, the C: and D: drives of node
1 MAY be known as F: and G:, so on these nodes put F: in
position 1 and G: in position 2.
You USE these drive alias's in your scripts by using the
replacable parameters %1 thru %9. At runtime, LiveCat will
replace them with drive alias from the configuration on that
node. Using the above drive remap alias's heres what would
happpen:
SCRIPT:
%1
CD \DOORS\TW500
TW2 /P %D\%I\CALLINFO.BBS
This script assumes a drive change will have to take place on
at least one node to get to the drive where the door is at. If
run from node 1 the runtime script will become:
C:
CD \DOORS\TW500
TW2 /P C:\WILDCAT\NODE1\CALLINFO.BBS
when run from NODE 2 the runtime script would be:
F:
CD \DOORS\TW500
TW2 /P C:\WILDCAT\NODE2\CALLINFO.BBS
The %1 is replaced with the alias drive from the MONITOR.CFG
for that particular node. Using this you can have doors on
upto 9 drives in your system, all known by different names by
different nodes, and still use the same script for all nodes.
LiveCat Version 3.1 35 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX B - EXPLAINATION OF MENU LEVEL SECURITY ]]
In previous versions of LiveCat the 'Z' key menu changes were
driven by an INTERNAL menu formatting routine. In 3.1 this has
been changed to be driven from an EXTERNAL menu file.
When the user presses 'Z' to 'Change Menus' while in LiveCat, they
are presented a menu of the other menus that are available for them
to change to. You MUST create and format this menu yourself
according to specific conventions.
You may have TWO of these 'Z' key menus, an Ansi Color menu and an
Ascii menu. They MUST be named:
Ansi Color 'Z' key menu = MENU.ANS
Ascii 'Z' key menu = MENU.BBS
In addition to the two REQUIRED files, you may have SECURITY LEVEL
SPECIFIC 'Z' key menus that will be displayed to users with certain
security levels.
Before going any further, let me say that you CAN get lost and
confused in the area of security level menus unless you are VERY
familiar with LiveCat and doors in general. Tackle this part only
when you feel you are ready, it is NOT necessary to the proper
operation of LiveCat. Using these features it is entirely possible
to get some doors installed into your system and with improper
coding of security levels, they will never been seen again!
The naming convention of these OPTIONAL level specific 'Z' key menus
is as as follows:
Ansi Color 'Z' Key Security menus = MENUXXXX.SCR
Ascii 'Z' Key Security menus = MENUXXXX.BBS
In the above, the XXXX is substituted with the numeric security
level allowed to view this menu..
For instance, the user that logs on has a security level of 90.
When they hit the Z key, the monitor will look for either
MENU90.SCR or MENU90.BBS depending on whether color is on or not.
If it cannot find the 90 file it will use standard MENU.ANS or
MENU.BBS. You need NOT use the security level specific menus if
you do not want to, but you MUST create the standard MENU.ANS and
MENU.BBS
There are several things you need to take into consideration when
using the new feature that security level protects menus in your
system.
LiveCat Version 3.1 36 06-09-91
Basically, this is very easy to do using GAP and PCBoard, and
considerably more difficult using Spitfire and Wildcat!
The problem is in
1.) What you show to the user as DOOR CHOICES in the BBS and
how you will keep the user from seeing the MENU
selections up there. GAP and PCBoard allow you to
have different door menus for each forum, makes it easy
to control what a user sees. Wildcat! doesn't have this
feature nor will it allow security level door menus so
you don't have much choice, the user will SEE that the
option is available when they hit D for doors and are
shown the DOORS.SCR menu. When they get to the monitor
though those protected menus won't show. I believe this
is also the case with Spitfire.
2.) Stacking the MENUS and LIVEX - DOORX bat files so that
menus are presented in order of level access.
Basically, the only thing you have to do to properly support this
feature is to edit your MNAMES.LST file to insert the levels. They
SHOULD be stacked in order of LEVELS PERMITTED TO ACCESS THE MENU,
lowest to highest.
Here is what mine looks like:
WARGAMES 15
ADVENTUR 15
TGTRIVIA 15
QUICKFUN 15
DATABASE 15
SIMULATE 15
ADULT 28
SYSOPSDP 90
As you see, the security levels go lowest to highest. Your DOORS
MENU in the BBS Should REFLECT THIS SETUP thusly:
* NOTE * Door #7 below is my Mail Reader door, I do NOT run my mail
door from within LiveCat. Because it does not run INSIDE LiveCat,
it does not appear in the MNAMES.LST file described above.
DOOR #1 DOOR #2 DOOR #3 DOOR #4
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ WAR │ │ ADVENTURE │ │ TRIVIA │ │ EASY FUN │
│ GAMES │ │ GAMES │ │ GAMES │ │ GAMES │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
DOOR #5 DOOR #6 DOOR #7 DOOR #8
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│DATABASE │ │ │ │ MEGAMAIL │ │ ADULT │
│ UTILITIES│ │SIMULATIONS│ │FORUM MAIL │ │ GAMES │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
DOOR #9
┌───────────┐
│ DEMOS FOR │
│ SYSOPS │
└───────────┘
LiveCat Version 3.1 37 06-09-91
In GAP and PCBoard, the user with a security level of 20 would
never SEE the last two selections unless they were in a forum that
permitted viewing of this menu, from the main board they would see
ONLY door #1 thru 7.
In Wildcat! and Spitfire they will see the whole menu, but will
only be able to open 1 thru 7 provided you have your doors security
files for the BBS setup to match the MNAMES.LST levels. In
Wildcat! this is done in Makewild.
I think you'll be able to figure this out if you want to use it.
You do NOT need to use the level protections if you don't want to
but you must still edit the MNAMES.LST file to put in the levels.
LiveCat Version 3.1 38 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX C - DOOR SUPPORT FOR OTHER BBS TYPES ]]
LiveCat 3.1 automatically supports the following door types: The
codes displayed in the editor's attribute entry window have the
following meaning.
W = Wildcat 1.10/1.11 format. Required by most Wildcat doors
available at this writing. The file produced is
CALLINFO.BBS and is placed in your NODE HOME directories.
2 = Wildcat 1.12 format. Required by some newer doors for
Wildcat such as Masters of the Universe. This type will
become popular very shortly. The file produced is
CALLINFO.BBS and is placed in your NODE HOME directories.
3 = Wildcat 2.xx format. Required by the newest doors for
Wildcat! This type is becoming the most popular format for
Wildcat doors. The file produced is CALLINFO.BBS in
Wildcat 2.00 thru 2.50 format.
P = PCBoard 11.x thru 12.x format. This is compatible with
most known doors that run under the PCBoard 12.x system.
Files produced are PCBOARD.SYS and PCBOARD.DAT and placed
in the NODE HOME directories
4 = PCBoard 14.x. This is compatible with most known doors that
are designed to be run under the PCBoard 14.x system.
Files produced are PCBOARD.SYS, PCBOARD.DAT and USERS and
placed in the NODE HOME directories.
R = RBBS 15.1c+ format. This format is compatible with version
15.1c and up of RBBS-PC. LiveCat produces a file called
DORINFO1.DEF from which the door program will obtain it's
callers information. DORINFO1.DEF is placed in the WILDCAT
directory. If you are running your system on COM1, the RBBS
door will use this file directly, if your system is running
COM2, the DORINFO1.DEF MUST BE RENAMED TO DORINFO2.DEF in
your script entry and then either file must be copied to
the directory in which the door itself will run. Any RBBS
door in a download area that you see with a dating of 0288
or later in it's name such as CAVE0288.ARC or KING0488.ARC
can be run by LiveCat.
G = GAP format. This format is compatible with doors written
to run under the GAP BBS system. LiveCat produces a file
called DOOR.SYS and places it in the NODE HOME directories.
S = SPITFIRE 2.x and 3.x format. This format is compatible
with doors written to run under the SPITFIRE BBS. LiveCat
produces a file called SFDOORS.DAT and places it in the
NODE HOME directories.
Q = QBBS format. This format is presently capable of running
ONLY the QBBS version of TRADE WARS 1000.
Other door types will be added on an 'as needed' basis.
LiveCat Version 3.1 39 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX D - DTE LOCK UNLOCK SYSTEM ]]
One of the features added in 3.1 that is most important to users
of high speed modems is the one that allows Locking and Unlocking
of modem DTE on the fly for any door that requires it.
If you ran the 2.x to 3.x conversion utility, the flag in the door
script that tells the MONITOR to unlock the DTE before running the
door was set by default to Y, meaning that each time the door is
run, if the modem has it's DTE locked, it will be UNLOCKED before
the door is run, and then RELOCKED when the door is terminated and
the MONITOR restarts. Your system should run just fine using this
default for all doors, but, since many of the newer doors WILL run
at baud rates of 19200 and above, there's really no need to waste
the time of unlocking and relocking the DTE on doors that don't
need it. If you want, start up LSEDIT and go into the appropriate
scripts and change the LOCK DTE flag from Y to N for those doors
that you do NOT want to unlock the DTE before running.
In order to USE the DTE features that the 3.1 Monitor makes
available, you must make a change to your modem setup. This change
is VERY simple. You must make sure that the S2 register in your
modem is set to ONE, or S2=1.
If you are using an HST, you must also make sure that dip switch
#9 is DOWN.
Our exclusive method of DTE control is PROPRIETARY and works on
MOST ALL MODEMS without change. It's been succesfully tested on a
variety of high speed modems without problems, plus it adds only
about 3 seconds to the door execution sequence unlike some other
external programs that are complex in operation and quite slow as
well as modem sensitive. The whole KEY to using the DTE features
are setting your modem to S2=1 and if an HST, setting dip switch #9
DOWN.
Remember that there are some doors that will run sucessfully at
19200 baud and below but will NOT run at 38400 baud. If this is
the case, the door MUST be set to UNLOCK the dte at ALL baud rates
or 38400 baud modems will not be able to use the door.
The last point that you must know about when using the DTE unlock
features have to do with the older pre 1440 versions of the HST.
These older HST modems will NOT permit the modem to be placed into
command mode if an ARQ/MNP connection is in progress. If you
attempt to place the modem into command mode during this type of
connection, the modem immediately drops carrier and hangs up. What
this simply means is that if you have an old HST, and a caller with
another modem connects in either ARQ or MNP to you, your modem will
drop carrier and hang up the instant they try to run a door that
unlocks the DTE before running. This is NORMAL for the older HST
modems and U.S. Robotics says there is nothing can be done about it
so it's something you'll just have to live with.
The only way to know how a door will react to DTE locking is to
test it thouroughly at all speeds to determine what will work and
what will not and then set the DTE flag in the door script
appropriately.
LiveCat Version 3.1 40 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX E - REPLACABLE PARAMETER SCRIPT LANGUAGE ]]
Currently, the 3.1 release has implemented a new SCRIPT
INTERPRETER language to make it possible to run doors of many
different types that do not use standard command line formats.
Below are the imbedded script commands that you can use to
configure an oddball door.
If you are using the SINGLE USER version of LiveCat, you will
probably have very few occassions to need the replacable
parameters, if however you are running one of the MULTI-USER
versions of LiveCat, EACH and EVERY script MUST make use of these
replacable parameters.
%D - Replaced at RUNTIME by the CURRENT DRIVE LETTER and COLON
%B - Replaced at RUNTIME by the CALLERS BAUD RATE
%C - Replaced at RUNTIME by the COMPORT # for this node
%F - Replaced at RUNTIME by SYSOP FIRST name
%L - Replaced at RUNTIME by SYSOP LAST name
%U - Replaced at RUNTIME by USER FULL NAME
%P - Pyroto Moutain style PORT NUMBER
%T - Replaced at runtime with TIME FOR THIS DOOR
%I - Replaced at runtime with name of NODE HOME DIRECTORY
%N - Replaced at runtime with the CURRENT NODE NUMBER.
%1 thrun % 9 - Replaced at runtime with Remapped Drive alias
names.
When you enter these replaceable parameters, the letter MUST
be in UPPER case and it MUST be preceded by the percent sign.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF REPLACABLE parameters.
Pyroto is one of the wierd ducks that require almost EVERYTHING
to passed to on a command line. Here's how you'd do it
with replacable parameters:
cd \pyroto
pyroto /DOOR/%U/%T/%P/
Always mark this kind of door that is NOT dependent on a caller
file such as CALLINFO.BBS or PCBOARD.SYS as a 'W' type Wildcat
door.
At runtime the above script would actually be constructed to read
(assuming I've given the user 40 minutes for the door and running
on PORT 2) to be:
PYROTO /DOOR/STEVE COX/40/1016/
LiveCat Version 3.1 41 06-09-91
See how that works, this allows you almost TOTAL flexibility in how
you would set up a door, with the existing replacable parameters
plus the ones I intend to add later, you should be able to run
virtually any door from any location using any drive your mind can
dream up. Thats all thats required and covers just about all the
possibilities you might run into.
LiveCat Version 3.1 42 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX F - RUNNING PCBOARD, RBBS and WILDCAT DOORS ]]
** PCBOARD DOORS **
Of all the door types available, doors written for PCBoard can be
the most exasperating to get running on a NON PCBoard system. Here
are some tips and tricks that I and other users have learned over
the years for running these little beasts.
PCBoard doors can presently appear in three different flavors.
Doors for PCBoard V 11.x will run just fine unmodified in any way.
Doors for PCBoard V 12.x REQUIRE the presence of two files called
PCBOARD.DAT and PCBOARD.SYS in your WILDCAT directory AND the
PCBOARD.DAT MUST be in 12.x format. Both of these files are created
on the fly by LiveCat as need in response to a door marked as a 'P'
type door with LsEdit.
Doors for PCBoard V 14.x generally REQUIRE the presence of three
files, PCBOARD.SYS, PCBOARD.DAT and USERS in your WILDCAT directory
AND the PCBOARD.DAT MUST be in 14.x format. All three of these
files are build on the fly by LiveCat in response to a door marked
as a '4' type door with LsEdit.
MOST PCB doors regardless of the type code, 2 or 4, require that
the door itself have a configuration file created it for it and
present in the directory with the door. This is where most people
run into trouble.
I always refer to these door specific configuration files as .CFG
files so I'll refer to them like from now on.
Here is what could be called a 'common' procedure for running any
type of PCBoard door in your system using LiveCat, although there
really is no such thing as a 'common' way. This will work on a LOT
of them but not all.
Create a .CFG for the PCBdoor according to the authors
instructions.
Most always these .CFG files will ask for a line telling the door
WHERE to locate the PCBOARD.SYS and .DAT files that it should read
when it starts up.
LiveCat ALWAYS creates these files in the NODE HOME directories
and thats where you should tell the .CFG file they are at. If
your NODE 1 directory is named: C:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1 then the path
line in the .CFG for the door would read:
C:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1\PCBOARD.SYS
In your LiveCat execution script to RUN this door you generally
must give the name of the .CFG file that the door is supposed to
use when it starts up. A popular PCBoard door to use as an
example is Card Guppies by Doug Peterson, an excellent door author
by the way. Guppies is started in the following way by the
script:
CD \DOORS\GUPPIES
GUPPIES GUP-1.CFG
LiveCat Version 3.1 43 06-09-91
The GUP-1.CFG file has a line in it that says:
C:\WC30\WCWORK\NODE1\PCBOARD.SYS
This door should run without problems using the above steps.
Other PCBoard doors can require MUCH more work to get running than
this and you will be on your own to experiment with these since I
could fill volumes on the variations you will encounter. Some
PCBoard doors you will simply NOT be able to run because they tie
to tightly to the BBS for them to be supported in NON PCBoard
environments.
In some cases, the PCBoard door MAY require that the files be
located a bit more specifically than the above example illustrates.
Some of them might actually REQUIRE that the DIRECTORIES for these
files conform exactly to the PCBoard standard.
If this is the case, you might need to make a PCB directory
someplace on your disk, put a copy of the appropriate PCBOARD.DAT
file in it and manually edit it with a text editor to change ALL of
the path names in the file to reflect x:\PCB instead of the
directories defaulted to by LiveCat when it creates these files.
In this case, your door script to run these types of doors must
COPY the PCBOARD.SYS and USERS file _NOT_ PCBOARD.DAT from the
NODE1 directory, into this dummy set of directories before running
the door. The .CFG for the door would of course point to this
dummy PCB directory to find it's files.
In other, more extreme cases it might be necessary to do the same
as above but put the PCBOARD.DAT directly into the directory with
the DOOR, manually configure it with an editor to change the path
names to the point to the doors own directory, and THEN in your
script, copy the new PCBOARD.SYS and USERS file from the WILDCAT
directory, _NOT_ the PCBOARD.DAT, directory into the doors own
directory. The .CFG for the door would of course have to look for
it there.
As you can see, running PCB doors under some circumstances can
become quite involved. Only experience and experimentation will
allow you to develop the techniques to quickly get the different
variations going.
Remember that all doors that require a .CFG, MUST have a separate
.CFG for EACH NODE in your system or they will not function
properly.
** RBBS-PC DOORS **
LiveCat automatically supports doors for RBBS-PC Version 15.1c and
up. These doors require that a file name DORINFO1.DEF or
DORINFO2.DEF be available when the door is run. The DORINFO1.DEF
file will be required if your system runs on COM1 and the
DORINFO2.DEF will be required on a system running on COM2.
Most RBBS-PC doors that use DOORINFO1.DEF will NOT look down any
path to find the .DEF file. In your script you must first copy the
DOORINFO1.DEF file from your NODE HOME directory where LiveCat
placed it in response to an 'R' type door code, to the directory
where the RBBS door is at before changing over there and running
the door.
LiveCat Version 3.1 44 06-09-91
LiveCat only produces the DORINFO1.DEF file for com1 systems. If
your system is running on com2, you must rename the dorinfo1.def to
dorinfo2.def during the copy operation from the NODE HOME directory
over to where the door is located.
** WILDCAT DOORS **
Wildcat doors come in three different flavors now. Doors for
Wildcat version 1.10 and 1.11 can be marked in the ATTRIBUTE screen
of the editor as 'W' type doors. Some newer Wildcat doors are
specific to Wildcat Versions 1.12 and 1.13. To run these, mark
them as a '2' type door with the editor. The latest type of
Wildcat door is the one created for Wildcat! 2.0 and above, mark
these as a '3' type door.
In all cases, unless the door documentation TELLS you SPECIFICALLY
which type it is, mark it as a 3 type door, if it won't run that
way, THEN mark it as a 2 type door and try again and if it still
won't go, mark it as a 'W' type. If after all this it still won't
go, toss it!
* HOW LIVECAT RUNS A DOOR *
The conversion process that LiveCat goes through to build the
conversion files for the different types of doors are this:
Doors marked as a 'P' or '4' type door get a files created called
PCBOARD.SYS, and PCBOARD.SYS and optionally, USERS. These files are
created in your NODE HOME directories and the door .CFG must look
for them there.
Doors marked as a 'W', '2' or '3' type door get a file created
called CALLINFO.BBS in specific format of the indicated version of
Wildcat!. This file is placed in your NODE HOME directories and the
door .CFG must look for it there.
Doors marked as an 'R' type door get a file created called
DOORINFO1.DEF. This file is placed in your NODE HOME directories
and MUST be copied by your script into the directory where the door
is at BEFORE you try to execute the door. If you happen to be
running on COM2 instead of COM1 then you must also rename the file
from DOORINFO1.DEF to DOORINFO2.DEF.
This of course can be accomplished during the copy operation from
the NODE HOME directory to the target door directory.
Doors marked as a 'G' type door get a file created called
DOOR.SYS. This file is placed in your NODE HOME directory and the
door must look for it there.
In any door that has a MULTI BOARD interface and you get to choose
which interface you'd like to run, the order of preference is this:
Wildcat = 1st Choice DOOR.SYS = 2nd Choice
PCBoard 12.x = 3rd Choice PCBoard 14.x = 4th Choice
RBBS = 5th Choice.
LiveCat Version 3.1 45 06-09-91
Always use the interface for the BBS system you are running if you
can. In other words, if you are running PCB 14.0 then choose the PCB
14.0 interface for the door, NOT something else.
Experience has taught me that the Wildcat CALLINFO.BBS and the GAP
DOOR.SYS interfaces are the most reliable and easy to use, choose
them whenever you can.
LiveCat Version 3.1 46 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX G - RUNNING SECONDARY COPIES OF WILDCAT AS FORUMS ]]
** DISCLAIMER ** ** THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED FOR WILDCAT 3.0!!!!
The descriptions that follow for running secondary copies of
Wildcat! as sigs under LiveCat 3.1 have been tested in SINGLE NODE
environments only. NO guarantee is made as to the accuracy of the
descriptions as related to multi-node operation.
The descriptions of scripts and operations are single user, you
will be on your own to figure out the variants related to
Multi-Node operation of these sigs.
The 3.1 release of LiveCat has gone to some lengths to make it
possible for you to run secondary copies of Wildcat! as forums
underneath LiveCat.
For the most part this is quite easy to do and MAINLY involves
quirks in how you configure the second thru x copies of WILDCAT.
LiveCat, in and of itself has very little to do with the secondary
copy of Wildcat!
Running a second copy of Wildcat! is done in almost exactly the
manner as you would run any other door. You install it, set the
attributes, write the script and let it run. There are some things
that you MUST be aware of however in configuring your second copy
of Wildcat!
1.) You MUST disable the Goodbye to Logoff feature in the second
WC.
2.) You MUST force the user of the second copy of WC to exit back
to LiveCat.
3.) You MUST NEVER invoke LiveCat again from the second copy of WC!
This means you CANNOT run doors out of the secondary copies of
WC unless you install a completely seperate livecat directory
that will be used ONLY by that second copy. I DO NOT recommend
that you do this and I do not support LiveCat running in that
manner.
4.) LiveCat nor the second copy of WC will automatically log
activity of the user in the MASTER ACTIVITY.LOG, only in the
ACTIVITY.LOG of the second copy. If you wish the activity
while in the second copy of WC to be propagated back to the
master ACTIVITY.LOG you are on your own in figuring a way to do
this.
* INSTALLING THE SECOND COPY OF WILDCAT AS A FORUM *
Step 1: Use LsEdit to CREATE A NEW MENU to hold the selections
of forums you will be offering.
Step 2: Install the second copy of WC into the above menu exactly
as if it were any other door. Mark it as a '3' type door
so that the CALLINFO.BBS created by LiveCat is WC 2.xx
compliant.
LiveCat Version 3.1 47 06-09-91
The ONLY field that has special meaning when installing a
forum is the TIME ALLOWED field. With a normal door this
field tells how LONG you will allow a user to be in this
door. You can limit the user to a specific time if you
want just by putting in the time limit as you would for
any other door.
More realistically though you want the FORUM to be treated
more like an extension of the BBS rather than as a routine
door. This means you will probably NOT want to place any
time limit on the user as to how long they can be in the
forum, within normal BBS time limits of course.
If you enter the number 0 (zero) in the time allowed
field, LiveCat will give the user entering the FORUM, ALL
THE REMAING DOOR TIME THE USER HAS LEFT for the day!
Step 4: Enter the rest of the attribute fields as requested.
Step 5: Prepare the execution script.
The execution script for running the second copy of WC is
NOT complicated BUT it IS critical that it be absolutely
correct! Below is an example script that probably can be
used almost 'as is' on your system.
COPY C:\WILDCAT\CALLINFO.BBS C:\CAT2\CALLINFO.BBS
CD \CAT2
WILDCAT
CD \WILDCAT
In the above example, the name of the directory that holds
our second copy of WC is: CAT2
In line 1 of the script we COPY the freshly created
CALLINFO.BBS file that LiveCat just gave us into the CAT2
directory.
In line 2 we simple change over to that directory
Line 3 is CRITICAL!! You will notice that we do NOT start
this copy of Wildcat! with a batch file. We invoke
WILDCAT directly without use of the normal CAT.BAT file.
In line 4 we simply change back to the original Wildcat
directory after the user exits the second copy of WC!
Thats all there is to configuring LiveCat to handle the
second copy.. Wildcat! setup in this second copy is a
little different however than what you are used to.
Understand that when the second copy of Wildcat! starts up, it
THINKS it's returning from a door! This is because the modem is
already ON-LINE and a CALLINFO.BBS is present. The second WC
reads in this CALLINFO.BBS to find out WHO it is that's returning
LiveCat Version 3.1 48 06-09-91
from doors! If you want a fancy welcome screen to appear similar
to the WELCOME file they see when the first log on to the BBS, you
must put it in the file that is displayed when returning from a
door.
From this point on, operation of the second copy of WC is
identical to the first. LiveCat is out of the picture at this
time and is not in control.
Now comes the point in time when the user wishes to either
A: Logoff
or
B: Return to the Main Board or join another forum.
Configuring WILDCAT to handle this correctly is important and MUST
be done in MAKEWILD.
Makewild allows you to change the KEY STROKES required to activate
any Wildcat command. What we want to do is CHANGE the G command
so that it does NOT LOG OFF, and, we want to HIDE the D that is
normally used to display the DOORS.BBS menu.
Basically what we want to happen is when the user press G, we want
the DOORS.BBS menu to display because we are going to let them out
of this copy of WC ONLY through the DOORS function of WC.
Heres now you do all this in Makewild:
Step 1: Start Makewild and go to the screen panel that has the
commands keystroke for the WC main menu, the one that
displays both G for goodbye and D for doors.
Step 2: Move down to the G field for goodbye and CHANGE the
keystroke from G to V. (or ANY key that is not already in
use by the menu). Next move over the security level
field and change the security level to your sysop level,
so nobody can execute this hidden command but you. Since
you set the level this high, this dummy entry will not
appear in the main menu the user sees.
Step 3: Move down to the D field for doors and change the
keystroke from D to G. Move to the level field and
change the level to you systems lowest security level.
Change the description of this command, whatever it is
to:
Go back to LiveCat
Step 4: Go to the last sceen of Makewild and tell it that you
1 door running.
Step 5: Go to the Makewild screen panel in which your Modem
Setup parameters are displayed. BLANK OUT EVERYTHING
having to do with modem startup and initialization
strings EXCEPT the comport number the system is running
on, the startup baud rate and the DTE locking status.
LiveCat Version 3.1 49 06-09-91
Step 6: Exit Makewild and save the changes.
Step 7: Only two more steps and we'll be done. You must now
create a DOORS.BBS file that will be seen by the user
when they Press G from the main menu. This file can be
formatted anyway you want but it must contain ONE line
that tells the user to:
Press 1 to return to LiveCat or Press ENTER to stay here.
The wording can be whatever you want but the idea is that
we want the user to have only two choices, leave this
forum or stay here.
Step 8: Last step. In the CAT2 directory, create a file called
DOOR1.BAT. In this file you put ONE LINE ONLY and it
is simply: CLS
Thats it, your second copy of WC is configured and should run
exactly as you want it too. You can configure as many secondary
copies of WC as you want to in this manner.
LiveCat Version 3.1 50 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX H - LIVECAT AND LSEDIT FUNCTION KEYS ]]
When LiveCat is actually running the following functions are
active:
F1 Key:
When LiveCat is running, pressing F1 will send the user a
message that the sysop is dropping to DOS. You may do what
you need to do at DOS and then type EXIT to return back to
monitor.(make sure you CD back to the \WC30\LIVECAT
directory before typing EXIT).
F7 Key
A new function key command has been added when LiveCat is
running. The F7 key can now be used to change the live
program time for the user currently on line. This includes
YOU as the sysop. If you find yourself running short on time
while installing and testing doors, just hit F7 and give
yourself more time.
F8 Key
Pressing the F8 key while LiveCat is running will IMMEDIATELY
terminate the session and return the user to WILDCAT
F9 Key
Used by the SYSOP to enter CHAT mode with the user currently
on line. The user is NOT charged time while in the chat
mode.
ESC Key
WHEN USING LSEDIT THE FOLLING FUNCTIONS ARE AVAILABLE:
COMMAND DESCRIPTION KEY STROKE
Backspace Or Delete Previous Character Backspace
Carriage Return Or Next Line <CR>
Change a String (All,Range,Block) F6
Change a String With Verify (All,Range,Block) Shift F6
Copy a Highlighed Block of Text Alt C
Delete a Highlighted Block of Text Alt D
Delete Current Character Del
Delete Current Line Shift F9
Find a String (All,Forward,Backward) F5
Help Screens F1
Highlight a Line Block F8
Highlight a Character Block F7
Insert a Line After the Current Line F9
Insert a Line Before the Current Line Ctrl F5
Join Next Line At The End Of The Current Line Alt J
Memory Status Display Shift F5
Move a Highlighted Block of Text Alt M
Page Down PgDn
Page Up PgUp
Position At the Beginning of the File Ctrl Home
Position At the End of The File Ctrl End
Position At the Beginning of the Line Home
Position At the End of The Line End
Position Down One Line Cursor-Down
Position On the Next Character Cursor-Right
Position On the Previous Character Cursor-Left
Position On the Next Word Ctrl ->
LiveCat Version 3.1 51 06-09-91
Position On the Previous Word Ctrl <-
Position Up One Line Cursor-Up
Quit the Current File Ctrl F3
Save the Current File and Continue Editing Shift F3
Save the Current File and Quit the file F3
Split Current Line At Current Position Alt S
Tab Toward Right Tab
Tab Toward Left Shift Tab
Toggle Between Insert/Replace Mode Ins
LiveCat Version 3.1 52 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX I - USING OPTIONAL ANSI AND ASCII MENUS ]]
With version 3.1 you may now create Ansi color, and Ascii menus
for LiveCat with THEDRAW or some other ansi drawing program and
with a standard text editor.
The naming conventions of these menus are what is most important,
and you may have either/or/both ansi and ascii menus for EACH of
your LiveCat menus.
As an example, lets say that you wish to create both an ANSI and
an ASCII menu file for a LiveCat menu name WARGAMES:
1.) The files names must match the name of the MENU. and MUST have
the proper file name extensions. For instance, for your
WARGAMES menu your ANSI COLOR menu file must be named
WARGAMES.SCR and MUST be present in your LIVECAT directory.
The name of the ASCII menu file would be WARGAMES.BBS
2.) When you create your external menus, they should be NO LONGER
than 21 or 22 lines and should be no wider than 78 or 79
characters so that they will format correctly when displayed
so the user doesn't have to deal with unsightly pauses to
press enter to continue the menu display.
Use of these menus are optional and you need NOT have one for EACH
of your menus. If there is NOT an external menu file present for
the menu, LiveCat will use the standard format internal menus. If
there ARE external menu files available, LiveCat will sense them
and pick them up and use them when and where they are needed.
LiveCat Version 3.1 53 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX J - LIVECAT UTILITY AND SUPPORT PROGRAMS ]]
For a variety of reasons, system crashes, hung doors etc etc,
your LiveCat Doors Database may become corrupted and inaccessible.
This is usually manifested by either LiveCat or LsEdit giving
Error #14 when trying to start up.
This is really not cause for alarm, it generally just means that
the Isam Database was left in an ambiguous condition the last time
it was used.
Registered users receive a utility program to assist in the
repair of a corrupted Doors Database, LSRBLD.EXE.
LSRBLD.EXE is a utility program that should be run ONLY if LiveCat
or LsEdit begins reporting error #14 on file xxx during startup.
If LSRBLD.EXE needs to be run, you MUST do it from a NODE HOME
directory, NOT the LIVECAT directory, always run ANY .EXE program
associated with LiveCat from a NODE HOME directory, the directory
where a MONITOR.CFG file is located OR, the program run will fail
at best, and at worst can make an otherwise simple corruption
problem much worse.
LiveCat Version 3.1 54 06-09-91
[[ APPENDIX K - DOOR HINTS AND TIPS ]]
Because of the 'tricky' nature of some doors, it's pretty much
impossible to say that LiveCat can run them ALL, but it DOES come
close. The unfortunate reality is that many doors out there are
written by amature programmers who many times are just learning
programming and as a result, many of the doors you will work with
won't behave in a totally predicatable manner. Each type has a
particular set of quirks associated with it and until you've used
doors long enough to recognize the ones done in various door kits,
and the inherent problems built in to them, doors can be a bit
frustrating.
If I happen to mention a door in this document as being 'tricky',
'quirky' or 'difficult', it is NOT a slam at the author OR the door
and does NOT mean you should not consider it for use on your BBS.
It simply means that it doesn't behave in exactly the manner you'd
expect and some special tricks have to be employed in LiveCat to
get it running. With some persistance, I've not yet found a door
that I couldn't get running provided of course the door is a
working piece of software.
I don't recommend that you use 'carrier watchers' in your system
such as Watchdog because the reboot forced by them does not allow
any user information to be updated. My opinion is that you are
better off to take those doors completely out of your system that
hang themselves up on a carrier drop. BUT, if you wanted to
run watchdog in the above script it would look like this:
watchdg1 ON
cd \doors\tw500m
tw2
watchdg1 OFF
Again, very simple! Remember, any DOS command can be included in
the script such as commands to copy files back and forth and so on.
NOTE: If you DO run watchdog with any of your doors you will NOT be
able to run them in LOCAL mode from LiveCat.
NOTE:
In the case that a user should drop carrier while inside one
of the doors, LiveCat IS smart enough to catch them at it and
still get their time use records updated if Watchdog is NOT
used. As the door program senses that carrier was dropped and
shuts itself down, LiveCat intercepts the exit and recognizes
that carrier was dropped and goes ahead and updates the users
time record and then recycles WILDCAT. If you use watchdog
this feature is defeated. Be aware however that are conditions
under which a door can lock up and not release itself from
memory. This happens most often to doors that are written in
Basic. They will hang up when the BRUN runtime support
package reports an error and will not release until a carriage
return is entered from the local keyboard. This is the kind
of thing that Watchdog can catch and LiveCat cannot, although
many times even Watchdog is unable to act when this happens.
LiveCat Version 3.1 55 06-09-91
I get asked many questions about 'How can I run non-door programs
as a door?'. This CAN be done in many cases, but NOT directly by
LiveCat. LiveCat does NOT provide external comm port services to
other programs. In order to run non-door software as a door, I'd
strongly suggest you investigate the use of an excellent piece of
software called Doorway. Doorway provides many features, one of
which is External Comm Port services and it can be configured to
run a surprising number of non-door programs in an on-line
environment. I strongly recommend it as a companion product to
LiveCat. If you elect to use Doorway to run this type of
software, Doorway is run from a standard LiveCat script as is any
other door program in your system. A bit of experimentation will
get you going, ALTHOUGH, I don't really recommend trying this if
you have not had a lot experience with doors. Get your knowledge
base built up a bit and then have a go at it. The results can be
quite surprising.
LiveCat Version 3.1 56 06-09-91
[[ COMMON PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ]]
Q: When I or a user preses Z for a menu change all they see is a
blank screen.
A: You have either not created or you have misnamed your MENU.BBS
and MENU.ANS menu screens. These two menus are what are
displayed to users as the menu category choices when the Z key
is pressed.
Q: I have the door marked Y to UNLOCK the DTE when it runs but when
door tries to run it gives the user garbage, or it errors with
an error message saying it cannot place modem in command mode.
A: Your modem is configured incorrectly. Make sure that if you are
using an HST that dip switch #9 is DOWN. AND that you have
included S2=1 in your modem setup string, and if necessary,
saved it to your modem NRAM with AT&W. OR you did not enter the
correct LOCKED DTE RATE in the CONFIGURATION menu of LsEdit.
Q: If I drop to dos from the BBS or LiveCat and try to run LSEDIT
it gives error messages.
A: LsEdit requires approximately 340k of free memory to operate.
If you do not have AT LEAST this much free memory available when
you drop to dos, you will NOT be able to run LsEdit in this
manner.
Q: My PCBoard doors won't run.
A: This is a tough one since so many things effect the running of
PCB doors. First things to check are that you have the
LSFIP.EXE program located in either the WILDCAT directory OR a
directory that is in a dos search path. If LSFIP.EXE cannot be
run by LiveCat, none of the pcboard support files will be
created and your PCB doors will not function. If this does not
solve the problem, go back and reread APPENDIX F carefully.
Q: When either LiveCat or LsEdit startup they give an ERROR #14 on
FILE x message.
A: Something has corrupted your Isam database. Run LSRBLD.EXE from
the WILDCAT directory and then immediately run LSPACK.EXE to
reconstruct the corrupted database. Some data loss may have
occurred.
Q: When I install a new door into a menu, it goes into the menu
somplace other than at the end and I have to edit all of my ansi
an ascii menus.
A: This is an unavoidable side effect of the Isam Data Base in use.
Doors are inserted into the menus usually on an Alphabetical by
door name basis but this is not TOTALLY predicable because of
the way the system reuses index nodes.
LiveCat Version 3.1 57 06-09-91
[[ LIVECAT REGISTRATION INFORMATION ]]
Steve Cox
Flite-Line BBS
3800 Old Cheney Road
Suite 101-133
Lincoln, Ne. 68516
FLITE-LINE BBS
DATA 402-421-2434 300/1200/2400/9600 USR (NODE 1)
DATA 402-421-1171 300/1200/2400 (NODE 2)
DATA 402-421-1376 300/1200/2400 (NODE 3)
Registration: Single User WildFire 3.5 for Spitfire 3.x $30.00
Single User LiveCat 3.5 for Wildcat 2 & 3 30.00
Single User LivePro 3.5 for GAP 5.x 30.00
Single User SuperDor 3.5 for PCBoard 14.x 30.00
LiveCat 3.5/M2 (2 node Wildcat 2.xx & 3.xx) 40.00
LiveCat 3.5/M5 (5 node Wildcat 2.xx & 3,xx) 45.00
LiveCat 3.5/M+ (99 node Wildcat 2.xx & 3.xx)50.00
LivePro 3.5/M2 (2 node GAP 5.x ) 40.00
LivePro 3.5/M5 (5 node GAP 5.x ) 45.00
LivePro 3.5/M+ (99 node GAP 5.x) 50.00
SuperDor 3.5/M2 (2 node PCB 14.x) 40.00
SuperDor 3.5/M5 (5 node PCB 14.x) 45.00
SuperDor 3.5/M+ (99 node PCB 14.x) 50.00
WildFire 3.5/M2 (2 node Spitfire 3.x) 40.00
WildFire 3.5/M5 (5 node Spitfire 3.x) 45.00
WildFire 3.5/M+ (99 node Spitfire 3.x) 50.00
UPGRADE PRICES:
LiveCat 3.5s to LiveCat 3.5/M2 10.00
LiveCat 3.5s to LiveCat 3.5/M5 15.00
LiveCat 3.5s to LiveCat 3.5/M+ 20.00
LivePro 3.5s to LivePro 3.5/M2 10.00
LivePro 3.5s to LivePro 3.5/M5 15.00
LivePro 3.5s to LivePro 3.5/M+ 20.00
SuperDor 3.5 to SuperDor 3.5/M2 10.00
SuperDor 3.5 to SuperDor 3.5/M5 15.00
SuperDor 3.5 to SuperDor 3.5/M+ 20.00
WildFire 3.5 to WildFire 3.5/M2 10.00
WildFire 3.5 to WildFire 3.5/M5 15.00
WildFire 3.5 to WildFire 3.5/M+ 20.00
LiveCat Version 3.1 58 06-09-91
[[ LIVECAT REGISTRATION FORM ]]
Registration Information
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Live Systems Registration Form
Name : _____________________________________________________
Address : __________________________________________________
Address : __________________________________________________
City,State,Zip : ___________________________________________
Voice Phone : ______________________________________________
BBS Name: __________________________________________________
BBS Number: ________________________________________________
Comments: --------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
Version of Wildcat! you are running? __________
Live Systems product you wish to register from the price list:
Quan: Description Price
------ --------------------------------- ----------
------ --------------------------------- ----------
------ --------------------------------- ----------
Total ----------
Allow 2-3 Weeks for Delivery
Shipped on 1.2m HD 5 1/2" Floppy unless otherwise specified
------------------------------------------------------------
Payment may be made by check or money order
------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Cox
Live Systems
3800 Old Cheney Road
Suite 101-133
Lincoln, Ne. 68516
LiveCat Version 3.1 59 06-09-91
LiveCat Version 3.1 60 06-09-91