Modem Daemon ßeta 1.0 © Copyright 1989 C&P Software All Rights Reserved! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PRELIMINARY RELEASE What is Modem Daemon? Modem Daemon was born from a real need. Budgeting money. I (as are a lot of other computer buffs) am a telecommunications nut. But I don't have unlimited financial resources (the Air Force is fun but doesn't pay its E-force extreemly well ;-) ) so I have a telecom budget. Being the forgetful person that I am, I would regularly forget to keep track of the online time spent. Net result.....2 to 3 times the budget and an irate wife. But......Modem Daemon to the rescue! This program will keep track of 8 of your favorite long-distance BBSs minute rates and give you an on-screen synopsis of money spent. How does Modem Daemon work? Magic....well not really, All Modem Daemon does is sit quietly in the background and wakes up every 1 to 1.5 seconds and checks if you have a modem connection. If you do it will pop itself to the front and prompt you to tell it which BBS you are connected to. Then it will scrink back down, go to the back and count 'dem quarters. When you are done, with all your modem work, just click on the close gadget and Modem Daemon will attempt to write a (170 byte) configuration file to the current S: drawer with the corresponding amounts just spent. Its that easy. How do I set Modem Daemon up? Glad you asked, the eight string gadgets (long boxes) on the left-hand side of the MD window (labeled oddly enough BBS) are the names of the BBS you wish to keep track of. Just click within one of the boxes and type in a BBS name. The only other gadget you need to work with is the "cents per minute" (¢/min) gadget. To figure out this value, simply pull out last months telephone bill. Look at each one of the BBSs you wish to figure out the ¢/min value for, then divide the money charge by the number of minutes you were connected on one of the calls. Example: To Number Place MINS AMOUNT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 222-333-4444 Anywhere CA 10 1.71 1.71/10 = .17 cents per minute. This is all assuming you call the same time, all the time. If not just take the mean average of several calls (figure the ¢/min for 5 calls, add up the ¢/min values and divide by 5). Remember you are trying to keep an APPROXIMATE idea of total moneys spent. Now when you have all the values you need filled in, just click on the close gadget and the info you just gave will be saved to disk! Simple 'eh! How do I use Modem Daemon? This is the best part, you may either run Modem Daemon by itself (run md). Or you may give it a terminal program as an argument and Modem- Daemon will startup and at the same time run your terminal program (run md dh0:comm/jrcomm). If you forget just type 'MD ?' for a quick usage screen. ENVIRONMENT ~~~~~~~~~~~ _________________________________________________________ 1---> | . | Modem Daemon | | | <---2 |~~~~ ~~~~~~~| | BBS Last Total ¢/min Total $ | | | | BBS #1 10 10 17 1.71 OFF | <---3 | | | BBS #2 20 30 17 5.10 OFF | | | | BBS #3 10 10 17 1.71 OFF | | | | BBS #4 12 12 17 2.04 OFF | | | | BBS #5 0 0 17 0.00 OFF | | | | BBS #6 0 0 17 0.00 OFF | | | | BBS #7 0 0 17 0.00 OFF | | | | BBS #8 0 0 17 0.00 OFF | | | | ° Clear ° Cancel! Grand Total $ 10.56 | |- | - - - - - | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -| --|-----------|-----------|------------------------------ | | | 4 5 6 This is the window you are initially presented with before it shrinks down and goes away. The important gadgets you need to be concerned with are labeled 1-6: 1. Close Gadget this will quit Modem Daemon and will cause MD to write its config file. 2. Back/Front Gadget this will push/pull MD to the back/ front. 3. BBS On/Off Gadget this is how you choose a BBS for charge/cancel/clearing. 4. Clear Gadget clicking on an On/Off gadget then on this one will clear the minutes/ totals on the chosen BBS. 5. Cancel Gadget when connected MD will pop to the front and ask you to choose a BBS (On/Off) or cancel. If you are calling a local (non-charge) BBS or just do not want to make this call count, click on the cancel gadget. 6. Scrink/Expand Gadget when you click on this dashed line, it will cause MD to scrink/expand depending on its current state. When your favorite terminal program connects to a BBS, Modem Daemon will pop to the front and ask you to tell it which BBS you are connected to or to cancel altogether. To select a BBS, merely click on one of the On/Off gadgets immediately to the right of the BBS you are calling. If you wish to cancel the request just select the Cancel! gadget at the bottom of the screen. Thats all there is to it! If you need to do some modification to the BBSs or the ¢/min values or you just want to look at all that money you are spending, just click on any windows front to back gadgets until Modem Daemons window is visible. Then click on the scrink/expand gadget and Modem Daemon will spring open ready for use. When you are finished, click on the scrink/expand gadget a second time and Modem Daemon will scrink to the lower right corner of the screen, and after 10 seconds will push itself to the back. If you want to zero all the totals (a new billing period for example), just call run Modem Daemon with the -z option (run MD dh0:comm/jrcomm -z, or run MD -z). HINT: If you want to keep track of more than 8 BBSs, just edit the BBS gadgets to contain two or more BBS with the same ¢/min values! Also the MD.cfg file in your boot disks s: drawer is saved in ASCII format so you can edit it with your favorite text editor! It is in the following format: BBS name Last Total ¢/min Total $ (with *NO* decimal place) Possible Enhancements: I'm considering adding a gadget to keep track of what day each month to zero the totals (need your input on this!). Also am considering checking to ensure 2 copies of MD are not running at the same time (its possible with this release). This is a beta test of Modem Daemon and the program may contain bugs. C&P Software takes *NO* resposibility for loss of data/equipment as a result of the use of the aforementioned software. Additionally, the data displayed is only as accurate and the values input into it. IE the money shown is only an APPROXIMATE value! I have used MD for more than two weeks on a 2.5M A1000 without problems, and I belive it to be reletively free of undocumented features (bugs ;-) ). We hope you find Modem Daemon as useful as we have. We need your input to make this a better product! If you have any comments/suggestions/bug reports we would be more than glad to hear from you! We can be reached at: People Link PLink ID: Tony*S CAAUG NAME: Tony Solomon/Paul Fortin We thank you for your support! Tony Solomon & Paul Fortin C&P Software