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1991-02-04
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353 lines
RAMail DOOR 2.0
Copyright 1990, 1991 by Randy Blackmond
All Rights Reserved
Welcome to RAMail, the mail system exclusively for RemoteAccess!
THE DOOR
--------
The RAMail Door is only half of the complete system. The other half
is a reader. You, as a sysop, don't need a reader for your door to
function, but your users will so they can read and reply to the mail
in the packets the door produces. I recommend The Silly Little Mail
Reader, but Session Manager, Qmail or EZ-Reader will also work.
The RAMail Door accesses MOST of your RA system files. All reasonable
precautions have been taken to ensure that RAMail will not damage any of
these files, but it is recommended that you backup all of your BBS system
files before running the RAMail Door for the first time.
INSTALLATION
------------
The first thing you need to do is to create a RAMAIL.CFG file by running
the RAMCONF.EXE program. You must supply the name of the CFG file you wish
to create/edit on the command line with RAMCONF. If you are upgrading from
a previous version of RAMail, delete your old RAMAIL.CFG first.
The format of this file is as follows:
SYSOP NAME
0000000
BBSCODE
C:\RA\
C:\RA\
C:\UTIL\PKZIP.EXE
C:\UTIL\PKUNZIP.EXE
C:\UTIL\DSZ.COM
1 2 3
300
50
100
200
300
ZIP
Y
N
100
Line 1 : Your name (sysop's name) goes here.
Line 2 : Your Registration Number (or 0000000 if unregistered) goes here.
Line 3 : The codename you wish to use when naming your mail packets. This
codename should be 8 characters or less in length. It is best to
use a codename that somehow incorporates the name of your BBS.
Line 4 : The path to your RA system files, e.g. CONFIG.RA. NOTE the
trailing backslash.
Line 5 : If you are running multiple nodes, this line should be the node
directory with the same format as line 4. If you are not running
multiple nodes, it should duplicate line 4.
Line 6 : The path and name of PKZIP.EXE. NOTE the EXE extension IS used.
Line 7 : The path and name of PKUNZIP.EXE. NOTE the EXE extension IS used.
Line 8 : The path and name of the DSZ protocol engine. NOTE the extension
is also included on this filename. You can replace COM with EXE
if you use the EXE version. If you don't have the DSZ engine, you
will have to obtain it to use this door. it is available from
most BBSes as DSZxxxx.ZIP where xxxx signifies the month and day
of the version. Try to obtain the latest version.
Line 9 : Board numbers to force into the users' configurations. Separate
each board number with a space. If you don't wish to force any
boards to be configured, leave this line blank or enter a 0.
Line 10: Maximum number of messages to be "downloaded" locally in 1 run
Line 11: Maximum number of messages to be downloaded at 300 baud in 1 run
Line 12: Maximum number of messages to be downloaded at 1200 baud in 1 run
Line 13: Maximum number of messages to be downloaded at 2400 baud in 1 run
Line 14: Maximum number of messages to be downloaded at 9600 baud in 1 run
Line 15: Default extension on your BBS downloadable files.
Line 16: Enable File Download Function (Y or N)
Line 17: Enable Hi-Bit ASCII filter for uploaded mail (Y or N)
Line 18: The security level at which the user can receive any private mail
regardless of to whom the message is addressed.
There are 3 display files that are included in the QWK packet for the
offline readers. One is a welcome screen, one is a news screen and the
third is a goodbye screen. In previous versions of RAMail, the screens
used were your WELCOME.A*, NEWS.A* and GOODBYE.A* files. In this version,
your can elect to provide separate screens for the QWK packets. If you
choose to use this option, the file names you must use are HELLO, INFO
and BYE for the ASCII version and HELLOG, INFOG and BYEG for the Ansi
versions. These files, if used, must reside in the same directory as
RAMail. If these files are not found during packet creation, the BBS
screens will be used as before.
Code 7 Setup
------------
Put RAMAIL.EXE and RAMAIL.CFG in your RA system directory. The menu entry
for RAMail should be as follows:
Optional Data: RAMAIL.EXE RAMAIL.CFG
You might want to use RA's swapping to ensure there is enough memory
for RAMail to run. To do this put *M after RAMAIL.EXE RAMAIL.CFG on
your Optional Data line, i.e.
Optional Data: RAMAIL.EXE RAMAIL.CFG M*
Code 15 Setup
-------------
First, create a directory on your hard drive in which RAMail will reside.
Place the RAMAIL.EXE program and the RAMAIL.CFG files into that directory.
Create a batch file like the one below:
@echo off
cd \RA\RAMAIL
RAMAIL RAMAIL.CFG
cd \RA
Note that the name of the CFG file you created is passed to RAMAIL.EXE on
the command line. Also, ANSI.SYS or some facsimile must be loaded to
enable you to see the ANSI colors the door uses locally. Loading ANSI.SYS
is not necessary for successful operation of the door, however.
Place the batch file in your RA directory and add the door to your menu
the same way you add any level 15 door.
Please realize that the QWK mail packet format is based on the PCBoard
message standard. What RAMail is basically doing is translating your RA
messages into PCBoard messages. One annoyance that will probably occur
is that your board names (referred to as "conferences" in the PCBoard
world) will be truncated to 10 characters when listed in the readers since
that is the limit to conference names for PCBoard! You could let your
RAMail users suffer through this minor annoyance, rename your boards OR
set up RACONFS.LST.
RAMail will look in the current directory for a file named RACONFS.LST
to use when inserting conference names into the QWK packet. This allows
you to retain your 30 character board descriptions in RA and still have
short, meaningful names for your users' readers! The format of this file
follows (NO BLANK LINES):
Conf#
ConfName
Conf#
ConfName
etc...
Example:
1
Main Board
2
Games
3
Telecom
4
Private
NOTE!
-----
The TMUSER.DAT is no longer used in version 2.0 and above. It has been
replaced with RAUSER.DAT. The included program USRTRANS.EXE will allow
you to copy the information from your old TMUSER.DAT to the new RAUSER.DAT
file. This is optional. You can just delete TMUSER.DAT and RAMail will
create a new RAUSER.DAT upon its first execution.
USAGE
-----
The menu for RAMail is straightforward. You have 13 options: Configure,
Download, Upload, Modify Last Read Pointer, File Areas, Page, System Info,
Bulletin Toggle, Transfer Protocol, Help, New Files, Quit and Goodbye.
Configure allows your users to decide which message boards they wish to
be included in their downloaded mail. It will display all available
message boards and allow them to pick which ones they want. The config-
uration the user chooses will be saved in a mini user file maintained by
RAMail. They can change their configuration at any time. Users will
not be allowed to choose boards for which they do not have a high enough
security level and/or a set Read Flag to read.
The Download option extracts all new mail for the configuration the user
h