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Text File | 1995-05-08 | 25KB | 501 lines

NOTE #2: I do not use a mouse. I have two active nodes for callers, and to use a mouse would require me to purchase a "com 5" card, or to put one of my modems on a non-standard IRQ, neither of which I care to do. Warp will work just fine without a mouse. The only feature I had trouble figuring out was how to "arrange" the Desktop without a mouse. To do this, make Desktop your active window, and press the spacebar to de-select any icon. Then press your Alt key, and you will get the menu to handle your Desktop. NOTE #3: I strongly urge you to get and use Ray Gwinn's SIO communications drivers. They are much, much better than the ones that come with OS/2. The settings I use for them are noted below. AUTOEXEC.BAT: I also recommend editing the path statement in the autoexec.bat that Warp creates to include everything you used to have in your path before. This is totally up to you, but I think you will be much happier if you do this step. Make sure you add and search paths AFTER the ones OS/2 made, especially if you include DOS.. MAKING A WWIV FOLDER: Once you get Warp installed, you will have to set up Icons, or folders as Warp calls them, for each node of your BBS. The process of how you set up your folders is completely up to you. This is the way I did it, and is the way I recommend you do it, at least until you are more familiar with Warp. Open up the "Templates" folder, and find the template called "Program". With your left mouse button (or arrow key) click on this folder to highlight it (don't open it, just highlight it). Next, press Shift-F10. You should get a menu. Click on (or use your arrow keys and press enter on) "Copy". Copy this template to the Desktop. Once you have copied this template over to the Desktop, press Alt-F4 to close the template folder. This should put you back on the Desktop. If you are not on the Desktop, get there. Alt-Esc will cycle you through the open folders (the Desktop is always open), or Ctrl-Esc will bring up a list of open folders from which you can select Desktop. On the Desktop, go to the folder called "Program", and highlight it (again, do not open it, just single click on it. If you are not using a mouse, arrow-key over to it). Once it is highlighted, press Shift-F10. This will bring up a menu. Click on "Settings". This will open up another screen. TEACHING WARP TO SPELL WWIV: The first thing we are going to do is define the path and filename of the program. In my case, it is D:\WWIV\BBS1.BAT. Don't put anything in the middle box (parameters). My BBS1.BAT looks like this: ostsr 3 /m SET WWIV_INSTANCE=1 BBS -I1 (OSTSR.COM is a TSR that I recommend running. It converts time slice requests in programs written for Desqview to OS/2. Mainly this will help you when programs like dsz and HS Link are running. The 3 sets the interval to give up timeslices (I recommend 3), and the /m puts a little smiley face with a spinning cursor in the upper left-hand corner of your monitor so you can see it working. NOTE!!! I have gotten reports from some people who have tried using OSTSR that it causes their machine to go into an endless loop when they start WWIV, having "Unknown Multitasker" displayed over and over again on their console. If this happens to you, try running WWIV and Warp without using OSTSR). In the bottom of this opening settings screen, you will put whatever the working directory is. In my case, it is D:\WWIV. We are done with that page (Leave the parameters field blank). Next, press TAB followed by PgDn. This will bring you to the "Session" page. How you have WWIV open is entirely up to you. I have mine open to a "DOS Full Screen" and do NOT have it "Start Minimized". Again, these are your preferences. Either use your mouse and click on what you want, or use your tab key and press the spacebar to toggle your choice. Next, tab to (or click on) the "DOS Settings ". This is perhaps the most important part. Some people will dispute the settings I am going to give you here, but as I said, these work great for me. I am using WWIV v4.24 here. I was using the standard settings (the ones most- recommended by others) and was not having what I would call good performance. I tried and tried different settings until I came upon these. Since I started using these, I have yet to have a lockup and my BBS runs much faster. Once you get your BBS up and running, you can play around with them and adjust them if you like. I recommend choosing "All DOS Settings" as you can set them all at once instead of having to constantly go back and open different pages. If I don't mention a setting here and you think you should change it, by all means play around with it some. I tried to make note of anything I changed from default though, so hopefully I didn't miss anything. :) (Side Note: The DPMI_DOS_API is a critical setting if you run Borland C. You will need to ENABLE it for the window you run BC in, or you will not be happy. 'Make' MAY run ok without it, but BC.EXE will not. I don't use Turbo C, so I don't know how it would be affected.) In the online documentation that come with Warp, there is a part that tells you if you run a DOS communications program, to turn the HW_TIMER on. Don't do that. (It may work ok for only one node, but with it turned on, I could only initialize one com port.) Here are the values I have in the Dos Settings windows in each of my three BBS windows. I will not guarantee you they will work for you, but before I made these changes, I was having intermittent lockups ALL the time with WWIV 4.24 and OS/2 Warp. Since I have made these changes, the BBS runs a LOT faster, and I have yet to experience a lockup. The only thing that differs between windows is the "Com Port Allow Access". For node 1 it is com 1, for node 2 it is com 2, and node three (my local node) none of them are enabled. These are three very important settings, as you WILL have lockups if you do not set these right. (Make sure you adjust them to the proper com port for your particular setup....some use ports other than com 1 and com 2. If you don't know which com port you are using, look in INIT or ask someone for help in finding out.) These are in order as they appear in the Dos Settings Window in OS/2 3.0. I have placed a <C> by the ones I think I changed, and either a setting or <Default> where I used the default value. I use the DOS Full Screen, but these should work under DOS Window as well. AUDIO_ADAPTER_SHARING NONE <C> DOS_AUTOEXEC <Default> DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION ON DOS_BREAK OFF DOS_DEVICE <Default> DOS_FCBS 50 <C> DOS_FCBS_KEEP 16 <C> DOS_FILES 100 (If you edited your config.sys file as indicated above, this should already be 100. If you did not, change this to 100.) DOS_HIGH ON <C> DOS_LASTDRIVE Z (You may not need this set up to Z.) DOS_RMSIZE 639 (Same note as the DOS_FILES statement) DOS_SHELL <Default> DOS_STARTUP_DRIVE <Default> DOS_UMB ON <C> DOS_VERSION <Default> DPMI_DOS_API ENABLED <C> DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT 4 DPMI_NETWORK_BUFFER 8 EMS_FRAME_LOCATION AUTO EMS_HIGH_OS_MAP_REGION 32 <C> EMS_LOW_MAP_REGION 384 EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT 0 <C> (See NOTE #7) HW_NOSOUND OFF HW_ROM_TO_RAM ON <C> HW_TIMER OFF IDLE_SECONDS 60 <C> IDLE_SENSITIVITY 75 <C> (See NOTE #4) INT_DURING_IO OFF KBD_ALTHOME_BYPASS OFF KBD_BUFFER_EXTEND ON KBD_CTRL_BYPASS OFF KBD_RATE_LOCK OFF MEM_EXCLUDE_REGIONS <Default> MEM_INCLUDE_REGIONS <Default> PRINT_SEPARATE_OUTPUT ON PRINT_TIMEOUT 15 SESSION_PRIORITY 2 (See NOTE #5) SIO_ALLOW_ACCESS_COM1 ON SIO_ALLOW_ACCESS_COM2 OFF (See NOTE #6) << All SIO Settings Left Default Except Below>> SIO_IDLE_SENSITIVITY 32 <C> VIDEO_FASTPASTE OFF VIDEO_MODE_RESTRICTION CGA <C> VIDEO_ONDEMAND_MEMORY ON VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION ON <C> VIDEO_ROM_EMULATION ON VIDEO_SWITCH_NOTIFICATION OFF VIDEO_WINDOW_REFRESH 1 XMS_HANDLES 32 XMS_MEMORY_LIMIT 1536 <C> (NOTE #7) XMS_MINIMUM_HMA 0 NOTE #4: I tried the suggestion everyone makes about disabling idle detection. At first, it appeared to me this was the best way, but once I started learning more about OS/2, I quickly found Idle detection is good, especially if you run more than one node. I have a program here that shows how much of the CPU's processor time is going to what. Without idle detection, with three nodes running, they hog nearly all the CPU's time. With two nodes running, they take about 33% each. (this is all while sitting at WFC). By enabling idle detection and idle sensitivity as I have here, WWIV will take from 1 to 6 percent of the processor's time sitting at WFC. That means if you have a caller on node one, and none on node two, the caller will get all the attention he needs from the CPU. With callers on each node, the CPU is still noticeably less-taxed, and both nodes seem to run faster and more efficiently than they did with idle detection disabled. NOTE #5: You can play around with this setting. On my system (486 DX-66, 8 Mb ram) I set all three WWIV Nodes, Borland C, Professional Write, and DOS Full Screen to a Session Priority of 2. Everything else is set to 1. I had a friend call and test the performance for me. With a caller on node 2, my local node going, him on node 1, and Borland C running, he saw no noticeable degradation in performance. Bear in mind I set the idle detection/sensitivity the same in all other windows as I did in the above settings. NOTE #6: Again, this should be self-explanatory to you. Do NOT allow ANY programs to access ANY com ports unless it needs it, and then only allow it access to the com port it has to have access to. NOTE #7: OS/2 loves memory. And it knows how to multi-task better than Bo knows tennis shoes. But it needs to be able to use the memory to work right. There is no sense to give WWIV the default OS/2 settings of 2 megs of EMS and 2 megs of XMS. I set the EMS to 0 and the XMS to one and a half megs. This is >plenty< for anything you will be needing to do in WWIV, including run WWIVEdit. You can use either EMS or XMS, but in my opinion XMS is better. The next two pages, "Association" and "Window" do not need editing. Just press "TAB followed by PgDn", twice, which will land you on the "General" page. Here is where you change the name of the window from "Program" to "WWIV", in the top box. It can be whatever you like. I use "WWIV Node One", "WWIV Node Two", etc. Also be sure to click on the "Template" box to turn off the ugly yellow background. Here is an icon for WWIV 4.24 you can use (courtesy of JAFO at Blue Thunder BBS). You can edit it to say 4.23 or whatever. UUDecode this and call it WWIV.ICO. section 1 of uuencode 5.10 of file wwiv.ico by R.E.M. begin 644 wwiv.ico M0TD:````"P`;`&H````,````(`!```$``0````#___]#21H````+`!L`:@$` M``P````@`"```0`$`````(````"``("`````@(``@`"`@("`@,S,S/\```#_ M`/__````__\`_P#______P`````````````````````````````````````` M```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` M```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` M```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` M```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` M```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` M````````````````````````#___________________\`______________ M______`/___________________P#___________________\`__________ M__________`/__S_____S\_,S,___\_P#__/S____\__S______/\`__S\__ M___/_\______S_`/_/_\_\S,S__,S,_,S,_P#_S__/_/_\_____/S__/\`__ M____S__/____S\__S_`/_____\__S__,S,_/_\_P#___________________ M\`____________________`/___________________P#_______________ M____\`__G_^?__^?_Y__G_^9__`/_Y__G___G_^?_Y__F?_P#_^9^9___YGY MG_^?_YG_\`_Y^9GY__GYF?G_G_G_G_`/^?^?^?_Y_Y_Y_Y_Y_Y_P#_G_G_G_ M^?^?^?^?^?^?\`^?____GY____^?GY__^?`/G____Y^?____GY^?__GP#Y__ M__^?G____Y^?G__Y\`____________________`/___________________P M#___________________\`____________________`/________________ 3___P```````````````````````` ` end sum -r/size 13563/1233 section (from "begin" to "end") sum -r/size 34101/874 entire input file Uudecode that file, and put it somewhere on your hard drive. On the current page (General) choose "Find" and tell it to look for WWIV.ICO (in the "Name" field). Don't worry about the "Start Folder". Once it finds it, you can "Cancel Search" and click on "OK" and the ugly Icon will be replaced with a bright shiny new WWIV 4.24 Icon. Again, make sure you click the check mark OFF in the "Templates" box on the General page. Congratulations! You are all done with setting up this node. All you will need to do is highlight this node (don't open it, just highlight it), press Shift-F10, and copy it to the Desktop. You will be prompted to rename it, which you should do at this time. It will retain all of the settings you identified when setting up the original folder, so be sure to go in and EDIT THE COM PORT ACCESS!! DON'T FORGET TO DO THIS STEP! If you have a local node, be sure to tell it that it cannot access any com ports. AUTOMATIC STARTUP: Now, if you are like me, you will want WWIV to automatically start up when your computer is turned on. Remember how we copied the Program Folder over from the Template to the Desktop? Well, you are going to do the same thing with the WWIV folder(s) you just made, minus probably any local instance. Find, highlight, and open the Startup Folder. It is probably in the OS/2 System Folder. Once you have it open, Press Alt-Esc until you get back to the Desktop. Highlight the WWIV folder you just made (don't open it, just highlight it) press Shift-F10, and Copy it to the Startup Folder. Do this for any program you want to open automatically on startup. I hope I have not overlooked any steps. I feel this should be helpful to people who are like I was and are finding themselves totally lost with OS/2 Warp and WWIV. ───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────── │ Type 2/0 Forum │ │ Edited by Sam (1@4051) │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Have a comment? Got a beef? Wanna issue long-overdue kudos? Here is the for it! Send your letters/comments/questions to Sam, 1@4051, for publication in WWIVNews. Here is a little something I picked up recently. Since I don't have any letters to put in here, I'll write a letter to y'all. Hope it helps someone! Dear Readers, Have you ever had a hard disk that had Track 0 go bad, rendering it unusable? Here is a fix for you! It will reduce (slightly) the size of your defective hard drive, but hey....part of something is better than all of nothing, right? To create a Primary DOS partition that starts on a different cylinder instead of 0. 1: Using FDISK, create a DOS partition that is three cylinders long. Load FDISK, choose "Create DOS Partition", then tell it not to use the maximum size. When FDISK prompts you for a partition size, enter 3 (in this case we are looking to skip three cylinders). Exit FDISK (you now have a 3 cylinder partition). 2: Make the partition a non-dos partition so we can go back to FDISK and create the DOS partition we really want, the one that extends from cylinder 3 to the end. (You have to make a non-dos partition because FDISK will not allow you to create more than one primary DOS partition). Boot from a floppy with Norton's on it and type NU. Once the main Norton screen comes up, choose "Explore disk", "Choose item", "Absolute sector", "C:", side = 0, cylinder = 0, sector = 1, number of sectors = 1, then "Edit/display item". 3: You should now be in the screen labeled "Partition Table Editor". The cursor will show "DOS-12" under the column labeled "System". That identifies the partition type. Press the spacebar, and Norton's will cycle through the partition types that it knows. You'll see "DOS-12" (a partition 16 MB or smaller), "DOS-16", "BIGDOS", "EXTEND", and some non-DOS types like "CP/M", "XENIX", "PCIX", and so on. Pick a non-DOS partition and tell Norton's to write it (you'll have to tell it twice). 4: Leave Norton's and fire up FDISK. Now create a primary DOS partition and if necessary, an extended DOS partition. Make sure it/they are active. and exit FDISK, reboot, and format the hard disk. You're done. Sam ───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────── │ Filo's Mod of the Month │ │ by Filo (1@4000) │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The Mod of the Month is selected by Filo and represents his choice of what appears to be the most promising mod posted during the past month on Mod Net (subtype 2370). UUencoded mods are not considered for selection as part of the mod of the month due to the difficulty of including them in the WWIVnews. Mods which involve the use of related files such as ENHANCE.C, or any of the various COMMON type files are also not considered due to the amount of space required to include them here. Many of these mods have NOT been tested by Filo and are selected based on their description as a promising, practical mod. This month's selection is written by Snorkel. Snorkel #1 @2100 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Mod Name : M&M008.MOD Mod Author: Snorkel 1@2100 WWIVnet │ │ Difficulty : █░░░░░░░░░ The M&M Factory [GSA] 1@3459 WWIVlink │ │ WWIV Version : 4.23 │ │ Mod Date : 1-1-95 │ │ Files Affected: BATCH.C, XFER.C, XFEROVL.C, VARDEC.H, BBS.STR │ │ │ │ Description : Make specific files "FREE". │ │ (Re-write of the "FREEFILE.MOD" by Simple Simon) │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I would like to thank Simple Simon for first writing this mod when 4.20 was released. I have found it very useful and have constantly strived to upgrade the mod as new versions of WWIV were released. If you wish to make not only specific files "FREE", but also would like to be able to make whole directories "Free Directories", then get a copy of M&M007A.MOD. This mod bypasses the ratio check, but still makes sure that the user has enough time to d/l the file. The mod of course doesn't add anything to the user's D/L K or number of files downloaded. The files are marked by using the //REN command. When you see a file you want to mark as free, do a //REN, enter the name or wildcards. If you press "F", the BBS will ask you if you want to make the file "FREE". If you answer "Y" and the file is already free, then nothing changes. If you answer "N" and the file is not free, nothing changes. The only time the status of the file changes is if you choose to make it "FREE" when it is not, or vice versa. If a file is "FREE", the directory list will display "FREE" instead of the file size. This mod includes additional code which should have been my initial "re-write" when I first revised it for 4.23. ============================================================================== ┌──────────┐ │ VARDEC.H │ └──────────┘ Step 1 ------ Add the following line: /* directoryrec.mask */ /* search for */ #define mask_PD 0x0001 #define mask_no_uploads 0x0004 #define mask_archive 0x0008 #define mask_pending_batch 0x0010 #define mask_no_ratio 0x0020 #define mask_cdrom 0x0040 #define mask_free 0x2000 /* ADD */ #define mask_extended 0x8000 Save VARDEC.H ============================================================================== ┌───────────┐ │ XFEROVL.C │ └───────────┘ Step 2a ------- Find "void relist(void)" and add the following lines: osan((okansi() ? "║" : "|"),&abort,&next); /* search for */ if (filelist[i].u.mask & mask_free) /* ADD */ strcpy(s1,"FREE"); /* ADD */ else { /* ADD */ ltoa(bytes_to_k(filelist[i].u.numbytes),s1,10); strcat(s1,"k"); } /* ADD */ /* if (!(directories[udir[i].subnum].mask & mask_cdrom)) { strcpy(s2,directories[udir[curdir].subnum].path); strcat(s2,u->filename); if (!exist(s2)) strcpy(s1,get_string(741)); } */ for (i1=0; i1<5-strlen(s1); i1++) s[i1]=32; s[i1]=0; strcat(s,s1); if (fc) if (filelist[i].u.mask & mask_free) /* ADD */ ansic(9); /* ADD */ else /* ADD */ ansic(2); osan(s,&abort,&next); Step 2b ------- Find "void rename_file(void)" and change or add the following lines: void rename_file(void) /* search for */ { char s[81],s1[81],s2[81],*ss,s3[81],ch; int i,cp,f; uploadsrec u; unsigned short om; /* ADD */ nl(); Step 2c ------- A little further down in the same function, add the following lines: /* see >NOTE< about string 830 at the end of this mod */ prt(5,get_string(830)); /* search for */ ch=ynq(); /* DELETE THIS LINE */ ch=onek("QNYCF"); /* ADD */ if (ch=='Q') break; else if (ch=='N') { i=nrecno(s3,cp); continue; } if (ch=='F') { /* ADD */ om=u.mask; /* ADD */ u.mask &= ~mask_free; /* ADD */ outstr("Make the file FREE? <CR>=N "); /* ADD */ if (yn()) /* ADD */ u.mask|=mask_free; /* ADD */ if (om!=u.mask) { /* ADD */ f=sh_open(dlfn,O_RDWR | O_BINARY | O_CREAT, S_IREAD | S_IWRITE);/*ADD*/ SETREC(f,i); /* ADD */ sh_write(f,(void *)&u,sizeof(uploadsrec)); /* ADD */ f=sh_close(f); /* ADD */ i=nrecno(s3,cp); /* ADD */ continue; /* ADD */ } /* ADD */ } /* ADD */ nl(); prt(2,get_string(72));