****************************************************************************** * * * * * TeLiX dialer for PC Pursuit v1.0 * * ^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ * * ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * * TLXPCP10.ARC * * * * * * Copyright (c) by Charles Lee, November 1988 * * * * * * * ****************************************************************************** WHY? I started using (and registered!) Telix shortly after version v3.1 came out and found that there was a void that existed when I wanted a *good* PC Pursuit dialing script. There were scripts available and a dedicated external dialer or two, but either they didn't do things the way that I thought they ought to be done or they didn't have the features that I wanted. So, I wrote these scripts. After using them for a while, I decided to share them. FEATURES Almost all user interface to these scripts is done by pointing a menu bar and hitting enter. The city menu is easily updated. You merely change the contents of a text file containing the city list. The script takes care of the rest. You can log on to your local PC Pursuit number at either 1200 or 2400 baud. The scripts make the adjustment to the dialing directories for you. You can tell the scripts to try to connect to as many cities as you want. The dialing queue is deep enough that you can select all of the PC Pursuit cities if you want. The dialer will keep dialing until a connection is made. The next time you bring up the dialer menu, all of the cities that you didn't connect to will still be selected. If one of the cities you select is not operating or is for some reason not recognized, the dialer will automatically remove the city from the queue and then continue dialing. Ever make connection to a city only to find a bad modem there? The dialer will recognize this situation and disconnect the city for you. Then it goes back to dialing. If you dial a city that you have never dialed before, the dialer will detect that you don't have a .fon directory and it will create one for you. You can log into the Network Exchange the same way you dial into one of the cities. The dialer is smart enough to deal with Net Exch's nasty habit of disconnecting you after being connected for only five seconds. SHAREWARE Nope, this package isn't shareware or public domain. I own the rights to it, but I'm distributing it for free non-commercial use. However, Telix is shareware. If you're using it and haven't registered it yet, please give it some thought. Let me know what you think about these scripts, what features you would like to see in future editions, what problems you've had, and where you got your copy from. You can leave me a message in the National Telix Echo or the National PC Pursuit Echo. Alternatively, you can leave me a message on the Net Exchange. I even check that periodically. Massage my ego a little bit. CONTENTS This archive should contain the following files: citydial.slt -- This is the script that handles the selection of cities, and the city dialing procedures. dialbbs.slt -- This is the script that handles dialing the BBS's in the city that you are connected to. cities.pcp -- Is the text file that contains the PC Pursuit City mnemonics. empty.fon -- This file is used as a template by citydial.slc to create *.fon directories when they don't exist. options.slt -- Most of the user interfacing to PC Pursuit is done through this script. pcp1200.slt -- This is the script to connect to PC Pursuit at 1200 baud. pcp2400.slt -- This is the script to connect to PC Pursuit at 2400 baud. TLXPCP10.doc -- You're reading this one. INSTALLATION To install the TLXPCP10 scripts do the following: Please note that I'm assuming that you are familiar with DOS, Telix, and know how to compile Telix scripts. If you aren't, here is a fine opportunity to learn. 1. Make a subdirectory named "PCPFON" off of your Telix directory. If your Telix directory is named "TELIX", you can do this by typing the following: cd/telix mkdir pcpfon 2. Copy empty.fon into the pcpfon subdirectory. copy empty.fon \telix\pcpfon 3. Copy cities.pcp into your script subdirectory. copy cities.pcp \telix\script 4. Edit citydial.slt to include your PC Pursuit password and user ID. These lines are the first two of the script. Make sure that you don't hurt the grammar of these lines -- you'll confuse the SALT compiler if you do. Also, if you don't like programs that beep at you, change the tone strings to "n". This will result in this script being quiet. These are the next three lines of the script. Compile citydial.slt and place the resulting citydial.slc in your script subdirectory. 5. Edit the message tone string in dialbbs.slt to reflect your taste. If you want a silent program, change this string to "n". This string is located in one of the first lines of the script. Compile dialbbs.slt and put the resulting .slc file into your script subdirectory. 6. Edit pcp1200.slt and pcp2400.slt to contain your local PC Pursuit phone numbers for 1200 and 2400 baud, respectively. You may also want to edit the tone string in the first line of the script to disable any beeps that may happen. This is done by changing the "y" to an "n". Compile these scripts and place their resulting .slc files in your script subdirectory. 7. Edit the tone string of options.slt if you want to disable the noises that it can make. This is done by putting an "n" in the place of the "y" in the first line of the script. Compile options.slt and put the resulting .slc file into the script subdirectory. 8. Assign options.slc to one of your keys. I recommend one of the keys near your arrow keys. This will make it more convenient to use. You may need to make reference to your Telix manual to see how to do this. 9. You may enter your local PC Pursuit numbers into your dialing directory if you want. For the 1200 baud number, the linked script would be pcp1200. Use pcp2400 for the 2400 baud number. You must use 8 bits, No parity, and I recommend 2 stop bits. This should complete the installation procedures for TLXPCP10. USAGE Please read the following carefully. If something doesn't seem to work the way it is expected, please re-read these instructions again. Yeah, I know -- if all else fails, read the instructions. I'm guilty of that too. 1. DIALING PC PURSUIT The first thing to do when using TLXPCP10 is to dial your local PC Pursuit number and connect to PC Pursuit. You can do this a couple of different ways (See #9 above). You can dial the Pursuit entry from your dialing directory or you can execute one of the dialing scripts, pcp1200 or pcp2400. These scripts were written so they can be used from the dialing directory as linked scripts or as stand-alone scripts. I did this to allow users to decide how they want to do it. Either way, you will get logged on to PC Pursuit with these scripts. With TLXPCP10, the baudrate that you use doesn't matter. If you used PC Pursuit at 1200 baud yesterday, you can use 2400 baud today. "Why should it matter?", you ask. Well, if your dialing entries in your Pursuit fon directories were made at 1200 baud, your trying to dial a BBS when connected at 2400 baud would cause confusion. To remedy this, you would have to go back to your fon directory and change the entries from 1200 to 2400. Well, don't bother. These scripts do it for you. It is almost transparent to the user. I say almost transparent -- see the "**READ THIS**" paragraph in #4 below. Problems may arise if you make entries into the dialing directory after the baudrate conversion has already taken place. 2. SELECTING CITIES After getting logged on, the city dialer script is invoked. You will see the city menu. Just use your up and down arrow keys until you move the menu bar to the cities that you want to select. Hit the space bar to select. Don't worry about selecting too many cities, the dialing queue is very deep. At this release of TLXPCP10, you have enough room that you can select all of the cities if you want. The Net Exch entry is PC Pursuit's BBS, the Network Exchange. I didn't make entries for the other direct connect services you can get via PC Pursuit because I don't use them. You are on your own here. After all selections are made, hit and the dialer will start its work. 3. CONNECTING TO CITIES The city dialer script will continue to dial all of the entries in the dialing queue until connection is made. If you have selected a city that is not operating or for some reason is unrecognized, the dialer will remove it from its dialing queue for you and then continue dialing the rest of your entries. If you get an unrecognized error, the script will recover by allowing itself to time-out (in 10 seconds) and then continuing on. Every time the dialer detects a busy city, a beep will sound unless you compiled the citydial.slt script with the busy_tone string set to "n". I did this so I could go away from the computer and do something else and still keep an ear on the script's progress. While the dialer is operating, you can abort it by hitting the space bar. You may have to hit the space bar a bunch of times to get the script's attention. This is a function of where it is in the script. When a city is connected, the connect tone sounds. You can shut this one off too by changing the citydial.slt script. 4. THE BBS DIALER After connection is made to the city, the script ensures that the modem is in the Hayes mode and that the modem is functioning. If you're unlucky enough to connect to a nonfunctioning modem, the city dialer script disconnects the city and goes back to dialing. When a functioning modem is detected, the dialing directory is adjusted to whatever baudrate that you're connected at and then is loaded into Telix. Control then is passed to the BBS dialer. The directory for the city that you are connected to is then placed on the screen. You should create the dialing directories for each one of the cities before you try to dial the city. You do this from the Telix dialing directory menu. The naming convention is city.fon example: MNMIN.fon is the directory name for MNMIN After entering all of the BBS's for that city into your fon directory, the fon directory must be put into your pcpfon subdirectory. **READ THIS** If you connect to a city and you don't have a dialing directory already made, the BBS dialer will create an empty one for you. When you put your BBS phone numbers into this directory, you *must* ensure that you the baudrate you select for each entry is the baudrate that you are connected. Otherwise, when you attempt to dial the numbers, Telix will change its baudrate and things will get confused. You will have to manually change it back. This applies *whenever* you enter new numbers into a city fon directory when you are already connected to that city. Be careful! You select the BBS's that you want to dial the way Telix normally expects you to. Then you follow normal Telix procedures to start the dialing process. Pressing will get you back to PC Pursuit -- you need to envoke the options menu (see #5 below) if you do this. After connecting to a BBS, the BBS dialer checks to see if there is a linked script to run and, if so, executes it. Then all scripts are exited and you are back completely in control of Telix. When you disconnect from the BBS that you dialed, you get back to PC Pursuit. ****** At this point, you must bring up the options menu. ***** This is done by pressing the key (you did do this, didn't you?) that you assigned options.slc to. **** Almost all interfacing with PC Pursuit must be done through the options menu from this point on. **** Don't fall to the temptation of bringing up the dialing menu by alt-d. You may cause some headache if you have the autobaud detect turned on. (If you do this, you may have to manually reset your baudrate to whatever it was before you made your next BBS connection.) Play it safe and use the options menu. 5. THE OPTIONS MENU You make selections from the options menu by using the arrow keys and hitting . The options are: Goto BBS dialer -- Brings back the BBS directory menu. Use this instead of alt-d and save yourself some confusion and headache. Goto City dialer -- Invokes the city dialer menu so you can connect to a different city. Disconnect city -- Logs you out of the city and back to the Telenet prompt. Log off of PC Pursuit -- Tells PC Pursuit to hangup. Also reloads the default dialing directory. Return to Pursuit Prompt -- Simply exits the options menu and gets you back to the Telenet prompt. UPDATING THE CITIES It seems that every time we turn around there is a change to the cities that are Pursuitable. Either there are new cities, new baudrates available, or mnemonic changes to be made. TLXPCP10 allows these changes to be easily made. Simply edit the file named "cities.pcp" and incorporate the changes. Use a text editor that uses pure ascii and you should have no trouble. The format in cities.pcp is simple. For example: MNMIN/12 The city is MNMIN. The baudrate is 1200. If you want to make an entry for MNMIN that is 2400 baud just insert MNMIN/24 into the file. Keeping the cities in some sort of order is up to you. Also spaces in the file are not allowed. The same goes for blank lines. Just look at the format of the file before you edit it and you'll get the idea. After editing cities.pcp, you need to delete queue.pcp from your script subdirectory. This is the file that the city dialer creates to keep track of your dialing queue. Since you have changed the cities that are availible, queue.pcp is no longer valid. Deleting it tells the city dialer that a new cities.pcp is availible. With this release of TLXPCP10, the maximum number of entries allowed into the cities.pcp file is 125. If the number ever gets larger than this, you will have to edit the dialing arrays' size in citydial.slt to something bigger than 1000 and recompile. This isn't too hard to do. DISCLAIMER Telix is copyrighted by Exis Inc. PC Pursuit is a service of Telenet, a US Sprint Company. I am not associated with either of these companies. They and they alone are responsible for the performance of their products and services. I make no warranties either expressed or implied as to the suitability of TLXPCP10 for any applications. This package is the result of my efforts to make my hobby a little bit easier on myself. These scripts work great for me. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee anything for your machine. The only application they might be able to fill for you is to take up space on your hard drive. I have done my best to debug them, but no software package should ever be considered to be 100% bug free. Feel free to distribute TLXPCP10 whenever and where ever you like. Just upload TLXPCP10 in its complete, unmodified form and we will all sleep better at night.