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Text File | 1990-07-13 | 12.6 KB | 271 lines

Osiris is a fast, responsive, flexible system which allows the owner to design much of his own CBIS without having to write any program code. Osiris comes in an economical single line version, as well as multiple line versions supporting up to 255 lines. NOTE: Versions supporting up to 5000 lines available on request. Pricing is based on the number of lines supported starting at $119.95 for a single line system and goes as high as $5000.00 for a 255 line system. Only pay for what you need and upgrade for the price difference WHEN you need it. Osiris requires a PC XT/AT, 80386, or 80486 class machine. Osiris requires a multi-tasker for multiple lines such as Desqview or a Network such as Lantastic, Novell, or 3Comm. It is suggested that a Network be used for multiple lines to decrease the chances of ALL your lines going down at once in case of equipment failure. Something you can not afford to have happen if your using Osiris as a customer support and product distribution system. Networking also affords you the luxury of using slower and less costly computers for the other lines. You really only need an XT motherboard, power supply, modem, and disk drive for those additional lines. Networking also means there is no decrease in performance no matter how many lines your running or how many file transfers happen to be in progress. Add the correct Front-End mailer and/or secondary processing programs and you have a complete Fidonet, UUCP, or PCrelay compatible system. First time sysops can build a system to carry out their communications needs quickly without being burdened with complicated setups and designs. Advance sysops can modify the system to suit their personal tastes so quickly you can not believe it until you try it. Osiris has power, speed, responsiveness, and flexibility which have never before been seen in the micro-computer world. What do we mean by speed? The measure of a systems speed is how close it approaches the ideal of being limited only by the data transmission rate. Osiris is capable of driving the serial port in excess of 38,400 bps using a 10 Mhz AT. This means if you timed the transmission of a 192,000 byte file, it should take about 50 seconds. On a single user system running on a 6 MHZ AT, Osiris was clocked at over 20,000 bps! This included reading from the harddrive, writing to the LOCAL screen, and sending the data out the serial port. We are not going to say there is no other CBIS software capable of achieving this feat, we just have not found one yet. What do we mean by responsive? Osiris can accepts commands at ANY time. On menu displays or command prompts you do not have to wait for the prompt or even the end of the line. Your callers have the option of using advanced command stacking or HOTKEYS. Using command stacking, they can enter commands that may be found 40 sub-systems away. As amazing as Osiris is to operate when you call in, the SYSOP side has to be seen to be believed. Osiris is configured and maintained using a series of GUI programs and a text editor or ANSI draw program. Using OSM you can define from 1 to 32000 message boards, and from 1 to 32000 file boards. You can choose the command keys, types of areas, access levels for the commands, flags for the commands, default logon access levels, time limits, private system or public. There are NUMEROUS other options that would take to many pages to list. Your file areas can be in individual directories, grouped into one directory and LOGICALLY sub-divided by Osiris. You can have your file list in one directory, the physical files in another directory, and have the uploads for that area go to still yet another directory, you decide. Creating menus is a breeze. Use any text editor and just draw it! Better yet, use a program like THEDRAW. Thedraw is an ANSI "what you see is what you get" drawing program. Select the layout, colors, and even the command line prompt. When your finished, compile the ANSI drawing and you have a colorful menu ready to be used by those that support ANSI and those that do not. Create one menu or a series of menus and use the ITP Random command and show randomly selected menus for the same area! Osiris allows you up to 32,000 message boards. Each board may be optionally setup for E-mail, public messages only, private messages only, read-only, Echo, echo-pass though, public or private, or word wrap on/off. Many of the above can be mixed to custom tailor the area. For those who want more flexibility in system design and do not mind a little simple programming, Osiris provides the In-Line Text Processing Language (ITP) compiler. This compiler allows you to use commands, source libraries and many other features to build very sophisticated menus, additional sub-systems, access external programs, data entry control, loop control, conditional testing, string management, define and manage Btree databases, use floating point math formulas and much more. While you do not have to use it to get much of the power of Osiris, it allows you to go much further in system design than was previously possible! If that was not enough, Osiris provides an almost unlimited number of HOOKS for attaching external programs. If you can write it, you can add it. Complete file structures distributed with the program. Got a Q&A type of file you need to add, no sweat! ITP allows you to create VERY advanced questionnaires. Your questionnaires have access to over 200 ITP commands including sysop definable databases or external programs. ITP can even alter the systems appearance by changing commands, menus, switch in a totally different set of message areas and/or file areas for individual callers. Want to it to look like a family system for some or a business system for others, ITP can do it! The ITP language currently supports over 200 commands. The system allows up to 32,000 levels for user privileges including individual time limits per day, per call, file ratio levels, and down load limits. There are also over 40 authorization flags to allow various features and areas to be used only as the sysop desires. Osiris provides hooks for over 30,000 file transfer protocols. Why settle for outdated and slow protocols like Xmodem, Ymodem, Kermit, and SEAlink when you can use faster and more popular protocols like Tmodem, Zmodem, Jmodem, and Bimodem. You have a proprietary protocol you want to use, just add it in. Osiris provides full archive support for viewing and extracting individual files with re-archiving for downloading. Archive formats supported include Arc, Zip, Lzh, zoo, and pak. Osiris also has CD-ROM and WORM drive support, Unix style file locking as well as time slicing for Desqview and DoubleDos. Osiris has an advanced virtual memory manager, VMS, that gives your system as much memory as it needs for running external programs such as archivers, protocol drivers, games, add-on dbase systems, or anything else you care to call using the ITP [SHELL] command. You can call external program that require in excess of 512K of memory to function, including batch file. You can also pass information to the external programs using command line arguments and/or a special exit control file. You may also test return codes and process accord to the return code following any ITP [SHELL] call. If you have EMS memory, VMS will shift Osiris up into high memory before the call and shift it back down afterwards. If you don't have EMS memory available, we'll use your Hard disk instead. Osiris has a special built in ON-LINE product databases for integrated On-Line Shopping. You customers can shop from the comfort of their homes or businesses 24 hours a day with less COST overhead than conventional VOICE order lines and without the hassels of TIME ZONES. Osiris uses compressed databases to hold product information with highspeed indexing, multiple find features, ability to tag items for reviewing, forward/reverse movement, listing functions, multiple departments, customized order forms, help screens, variable length description fields up to 1,000,000 bytes per record, and much more. Supports over 5 billion products PER STORE. Up to 32,000 different departments PER STORE. NO LIMIT on the NUMBER of DIFFERENT stores. Osiris has one of the best user interfaces in the industry. You'll find your callers whizzing around the system at break neck speed completing tasks in a fraction of the time required under other programs. In some cases, Osiris can reduce your in-use time per line by as much as 50 percent over traditional BBS programs. In a twenty four hour time period, a four line Osiris system can generally handle as many callers as an eight ( ten if those lines are 9600 bps) line TBBS system. This can save you over 1600.00 dollars a year in commercial phone line rental fees, enough to PAY for your entire setup within two years (depending on the brand of computer your using). Osiris was selected as the CBIS system they most like to call in a poll of over 1000 BBS users. Need statistical information? Osiris keeps complete statistical information at your finger tips, using colorful bar charts in most cases, concerning in-use time per line, average in-use time per line, top ten files downloaded on the system, top ten uploaders to the system, connect baud rates, message area information, file area information, and protocols being used. Each individual file listing contains information about WHO uploaded the file, when it was uploaded, when it was last downloaded, and how many times it has been downloaded. Need tight control over who downloads a specific file? Osiris allows you to PASSWORD protect individual files in PUBLIC download areas. Not only can you PASSWORD protect an individual file, you can also instruct Osiris to delete the file once it has been downloaded. Osiris is much more than a mere Bulletin Board System. It is a Computer Based Information System, a personal communications tool with incredible power. Its uses are limited only by your imagination! If you would like to give Osiris a try to see if it fits your needs BEFORE you buy, the complete program can be downloaded from our customer support system at 1-314-334-6359 (1200, 2400, 9600, 19200 bps using a USR HST). It is full functional with only a restriction placed on the number of users.