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Cedar Island Link ============================================================================ Features: Extensive mouse support, including our exclusive "Mouse Pass-through". AutoZmodem download. UnZips compressed files. Ease of installation and operation. Support of all of the popular file transfer protocols. Support for external protocols. Split-screen chat mode. Communications using COM1 through COM4 Data rates from 300 baud to over 100 Kilobaud. Easy-to-use script language for automated logons. ANSI/BBS and VT100 terminal emulations are implemented. DeskView, TaskView, and OmniView and aware. Product support is just a phone call away for registered users. ============================================================================ Required Hardware: IBM PC clone. Any Video card. 360k Ram free. Hayes compatable modem. Suggested Hardware: Mouse. Hard Drive. Required Software: DOS 2.1 or better. ============================================================================ 1) About Mouse Pass-through. This feature allows you to send keystrokes back to the host BBS without touching the keyboard. It is implemented through clicking the mouse on any character in the terminal window. The character under the mouse cursor will be sent back to the host bulletin board. This is a truly useful feature which will make your modeming a pleasure. Mouse Pass-through has been expanded to allow for pass-through of strings. Just hold the left mouse button down on the first word in the string then move the mouse to end of the string to be sent and release the mouse button. The string will be sent to the host BBS without ever touching the keyboard. An option in SETUP allows you to choose wheather you want a carriage- return to be automatically sent following your mouse pass-through selection. This feature is handy for BBS's that don't support "Hot-Keys". You may also force the mouse to send a carriage return by clicking on a blank section of the terminal window. 2) About Auto-Zmodem download. Cedar Island Link implements Auto-Zmodem download as a useful feature found in very few other communications packages. What this feature does is to automatically start the PC end of a Zmodem filetransfer without any intervention from you. This feature makes downloading a breeze - All you have to do is to setup a Zmodem transfer from the BBS and then CILINK automatically displays its filetransfer status screen and shows the Zmodem transfer in progress. Note: Auto-Zmodem download is only in effect if Zmodem is selected as your default filetransfer protocol. 3) About setting up Cedar Island Link. Setting up CILINK is easy. As a matter-of-fact, if your modem is attached to COM1, you shouldn't have to setup CILINK at all. If you do not set up CILINK, however, you will see a message when CILINK starts up that says "No configuration file found - using defaults.". To get into Setup, hit F10 or click the right mouse button so that the menu bar pops up over the terminal window. Click on Setup. Now you may modify your configuration. o Default download directory - This is the directory where your file transfer uploads and downloads will go to if you dont specify a complete path on the transfer. It defaults to C:\CILINK\FILES, you may wish to change it to another directory like C:\BBS if that is where you would like to keep your BBS files. If no default directory is specified or an invalid directory is specified, the transferred files will go to the current directory. o Modem init string - This is the command that will be sent to your modem when CILINK starts up. It may usually be left blank, but in some cases, you may wish to set up your modem with a special config- uration. A good command to place here is ATM0. (Turn off the modem's speaker.) o Com Port - Set this to the port to which your modem is attached. Do not set it to your mouse port, or, as they say in the IBM main- frame world, "Unpredictable Results May Occur". o Baud Rate - Set the to the default baud you wish to use. (See the section "About Slower PC's) o Data Bits - Set this to the default number of data bits to use. (Usually 8) o Parity - Set this to the default parity to use. (Usually NO PARITY.) o Stop Bits - Set this to the default number of stop bits to use. (Usually 1.) o Protocol - Set this to the default file transfer protocol to use. (Usually Zmodem.) o Save Setup - Save the setup information in a configuration file so that the next time you load CILINK, you will have all the setup information included automatically. You will be asked for the name to save it under. Normally you would save it under CILINK.DAT. o Load Setup - Load a setup from disk. If you had previously saved a configuration to disk, you may load it into CILINK using this entry. Normally you would not need to do this because CILINK.DAT is loaded automatically at start-up time. o Display Setup - This shows the current settings that are being used by CILINK. You may get the same information from within the term- inal window by pressing F2. o Toggles - Click on this entry to see a list of the following toggles. o ANSI - Select either ANSI/VT100 terminal emulation or no terminal emulation. (Usually ANSI on) o ECHO - Select either ECHO ON to display outgoing characters on the screen or ECHO OFF to not display outgoing characters. (Usually ECHO OFF) o CR/LF - Select either Carriage Return only at end of line or Carriage Return and LineFeed at end of line. (Usually CR only) o RTS/CTS - Turn on or off sensitivity to handshaking signals on the wires connecting your computer to your modem. RTS = Request to Send. CTS = Clear to Send. (Usually RTS/CTS off) o XON/XOFF- Turn on or off sensitivity to handshaking signals sent as data between your computer and your modem. XON = Transmit on. XOFF = Transmit off. (Usually XON/XOFF off) o DIAL- Select between Tone, Pulse and Default telephone dialing methods. Tone = Dial using "Touch-Tones". Pulse = Dial using "Rotary dial pulses" Default = Use whatever the modem defaults to. (Usually Tone) o MouseCR- Select either: send no carriage return after Mouse Pass-Through or: send a carriage return after Mouse Pass-Through (Usually No Carriage return) 4) About the Dial List. This is where you setup and select phone numbers of BBS's to dial. Simply click on the item you want and that phone number will be dialed. If the number which you dialed was busy, you will be asked if you want to automatically re-dial that number. You will have the opportunity to select the time between redials. If you just hit enter CILINK will redial every 60 seconds. To modify a script, first make sure there is a script entry for the phone number you are modifying. Next press F7. Your are in the script editor. Add your script commands and press ESC when you are done. To delete an entry, cursor to the line to be deleted and press F8. To add or revise an entry, cursor to the line to be modified, and press F9. This will pop up a data entry window which asks for the BBS name, phone number, parity, databits, stopbits and data rate for the entry. Fill out the fields in the data entry window and press CTRL-Enter to save the entry to disk. Now you can use that entry to dial your favorite bulletin board. The dial list is so simple to use that the best way to learn how it works is to use it. You may select the DialList from the terminal window by pressing the Alt-D hot key. 5) About the File Transfer selection. This selection is where you select either upload or download. You are then asked which filetransfer protocol to use. Use this entry to tran- sfer a file using a protocol other than your default protocol. Normally you would not use this entry. You would instead press the PGDN or PGUP buttons to transfer using the default protocol. You can also click on the "Mouse Hot-Box" in the upper right corner of the menu bar. The Mouse Hot-Box will pop up a box which will let you transfer using the default protocol. The simplest way to do a download, however, is to set Zmodem as your default protocol. That way you don't have to do anything to download a file. As soon as Cedar Island Link detects a Zmodem download in progress it automatically starts the PC end of the Zmodem transfer. 6) About the HangUp selection. This selection will cause your modem to hang up. You may also hit the Alt-H hot key to hang up the phone from the terminal window. You will be asked if you really want to hang up. Just press enter or click the mouse to hang up. 6) About the Capture selection. This selection toggles on and off the capture file. You may use the capture file to save the information which scrolls across your terminal window for use later. A typical reason to use a capture file is to capture help information from the host BBS into a file that you can later print out. Choosing the Capture file selection will display a prompt that asks you which filename to save the capture file under. Choosing the Capture file selection again will cause the capture file to be turned off. You may also hit the Alt-C hot key from within the terminal window to turn on and off the capture file. 7) About the Utilities selection. (UnZip Edit Browse) This is a pull-down menu that allows you to Shell to DOS, Enter an Editor, or view the files in a directory. If you Shell out to DOS, remember to type "EXIT" to return to CILINK. With this handy feature you can get out to DOS and do a few commands, like TYPE CAPTURE.FIL, and then exit back to CILINK without hanging up the modem. CILINK swaps most of itself out to Expanded, ExTENded memory or disk as available. If Expanded is installed it will be used in preference to ExTENded memory or disk. If neither Expanded or ExTENded memory are installed in your machine CILINK will swap itself out to disk. The Directory selection puts up a display of the current directory. You may jump around directories by pressing enter on any directory name in the list. Press enter or F1 to browse a file. Press F2 to delete a file. Press F3 to UNZIP a File. Press ESC or hit the right mouse button to end the Directory. The Editor selection requires a second of explanation. All this entry does is to send a single command to DOS. This command is "EDIT". If you have an editor in your path called EDIT it will be executed. When you are through with your editor you will be given back to CILINK. You may also create a batch file that calls your editor. For example EDIT.BAT could contain these two lines: ECHO OFF CIEDIT Start your favorite editor. You must have enough free memory to load and execute your editor or you will given immediately back to CILINK. 8) About the Help selection. This entry puts up a simple help panel which displays the Hot Keys you can use within CILINK. You may also bring up the Help panel by hitting F1 from within the terminal window. 9) About the Quit selection. This entry allows you to quit Cedar Island Link. You will be asked if you really want to exit CILINK. Press Enter or hit the mouse button to quit. A ShareWare banner is then displayed. Hit enter or hit a mouse button to return to the DOS prompt. (The ShareWare banner is not present in the registered version of Cedar Island Link). You may also quit CILINK by pressing the hot key Alt-X. 10) About Split-Screen Chat Mode. This is a handy feature that makes connecting with your friends over the phone lines a pleasure. Press the hot key Alt-C to enter Chat mode and two windows appear. The top window is Received data and the bottom window is for Transmitted data. To leave Chat mode, hit Alt-C again and the two Chat windows will go away. You will be back then in the terminal window. 11) About the Mouse Hot-Button. The Mouse Hot-Button is a small box located at the far right of the Menu Bar. It is intended to allow the mouse to simulate some of the hotkeys that would normally be entered from the keyboard. Click on the Mouse Hot-Button and a small pop-up window appears which allows you to: DOWNLOAD using the default protocol (like PGDN) UPLOAD using the default protocol (like PGUP) CHAT Toggle split-screen chat mode. (like Alt-C) 12) About Auto-Logon Scripts: The implementation of logon scripts within CILINK couldn't be simpler. If you have specified a logon script to be executed, and if you have created that script file with an ASCII editor, it will be automatically started when your modem connects with the host BBS. Script filenames should end in ".SCR" ie "RBBS.SCR". There are only 4 script commands which are recognized by CILINK. The commands may be entered in mixed-case. Other text will appear as comments to CILINK. The valid script commands are: Delay, WaitFor, SendTxt, and SendChr. Here is an example script: *-------------------------------------------------- * Wait for a string to be sent to you from the BBS *-------------------------------------------------- WaitFor What is your name? *----------------------------------------------- * Send back a response to the previous question *----------------------------------------------- SendTxt Mike Caughran *---------------------- * Pause for 5 seconds *---------------------- Delay 5 *---------------------------------------------- * Send two ESCape characters * Note that you may use either a hex * or decimal representation of the character *---------------------------------------------- SendChr 27 SendChr $1A That's all there is to it. If you have any problems, take a look at the provided sample scripts. Registered users may always call us for assistance. 13) About start-up parameters: Normally you would start CILINK by just typing "CILINK" at the DOS prompt. If needed, you may also start CILINK with parameters. Any combination of the following parameters may be entered. For Example. CILINK MYSETUP.DAT - Start up with a configuration file different than CILINK.DAT. CILINK /HideMouse - Start up CILINK and hide the mouse cursor in the terminal window. CILINK /CheckSnow - Start up CILINK and turn on "Snow" suppression for older CGA cards. CILINK /CheckBreak - Start up CILINK and allow the customer to abnormally terminate CILINK with a CTRL-Break. CILINK /NoAlert - Start up CILINK with sound effects turned off. CILINK /COM1 - Force CILINK to start up using COM1. CILINK /COM2 - Force CILINK to start up using COM2. CILINK /COM3 - Force CILINK to start up using COM3. CILINK /COM4 - Force CILINK to start up using COM4. (Note: Sometimes CILINK cannot detect COM3 or COM4 so these command line parameters will force startup using the selected port after CILINK is started you can go into SETUP and save the desired port. You should not have to use these start up parameters after you have saved your setup.) CILINK /PS2 - Force PS2 definitions of the addresses of COM3 and COM4. 14) About the available hot keys: F1 = Help. F2 = Display configuration. F10 = Display the pop-up menu bar. Alt-C = Toggle split-screen chat mode on or off. ALT-H = Hang up. Alt-G = Capture the current terminal window to disk. Alt-D = Pop up the phone number pick list. Alt-X = Quit CILINK. PGUP = Upload using the default protocol. PGDN = Download using the default protocol. HOME = Clear the terminal window. ESC = This is the abort key. It may be used while a file transfer is in progress to abort an upload or download. It may be used to abort the dialing or auto-redialing of a number. The menu bar, the phone number pick list, as well as any pop-up window may all be exited by using this key. If you are in the terminal window, connected to a BBS, the ESC key will just be passed-through to the BBS. Left MouseButton = Perform the action under the cursor if in a pop-up window. If in the terminal window, this button sends the character under the cursor back to the BBS. Right MouseButton = Exit from the current window. If in the terminal window this button displays the menubar. Left ClickAndDrag = If in the terminal window this button sends the string which has been dragged over back to the BBS. 15) About the protocol transfer status screen: This screen gives you all the statistics you would ever want concerning your filetransfer. The most useful items are the time to completion, and the percent completed graphic bar. When the transfer completes, the status screen will close and you will hear an attention signal. For you experienced communications software users: The efficiency percentage appears lower than that seen in some other software packages. This is because we measure the statistics from the start of the transfer including all initialization handshaking which takes place. Other com programs just measure the efficiency after the first packet of data has been passed. We feel that the efficiency numbers which CILINK displays are more realistic, if not as dramatic. 16) About external protocols: External Protocols are implemented by shelling out to DOS and executing a batch file which has your protocol in it. For example, if you selected an external protocol download, CILINK would execute EXTDOWN.BAT. You should place your external protocol commands in that .BAT file. External protocol upload commands would go in EXTUP.BAT eg. ECHO OFF PCZ 1 2400 sz You may also use the external protocol facility of CILINK to start the PC end of a BBS DOOR game. eg. ECHO OFF GWterm 17) About "Screen-Scan" : Normally you will use a batch protocol like ZMODEM. These protocols pass the name of the file as part of the handshaking they do as they start up. You may, however, have to use a non-batch protocol like Xmodem or ASCII to do your your download. Typically this is what would happen : First you would ask the host BBS to initiate an Xmodem filetransfer download. The BBS would then ask you for the file name of the file to transmit. Next, you would be told to start the PC end of the file transfer. You would then start an Xmodem download on the PC and retype the filename which you had just entered on the BBS. As you can see, there can be a lot of manipulation just to do a download. Screen-Scan makes things just a bit easier by scanning the terminal window from the bottom line up until it finds a valid filename. It then grabs the filename from the screen and supplies it for you on the PC end as a default. 18) About slower PCs. PCs which have an 8088 processor running at 4.77 MHz will be limited to 9600 baud. If you have turned on the /CheckSnow command line switch to eliminate snow on older CGA monitors, then you will be limited to operation at 4800 baud. If you have selected Zmodem as your file transfer protocol you will be limited to 4800 baud. You may transfer files at 9600 baud using YModem or Xmodem as these non-streaming protocols pace themselves to the speed of the recieving PC. 18) About CILINK and DeskView. Cedar Island Link is DeskView aware. That is, it will run successfully in a DeskView window. Cedar Island Edit is NOT DeskView aware and will overwrite other DeskView windows unless special actions are taken within DeskView. Note that the mouse will not work within CILINK when you are running in a DeskView window. Note also that shelling out to DOS or shelling out to your editor will not work under DeskView. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are sure you will find Cedar Island Link a pleasure to use. We have come to expect the features found in CILINK in a communications package and we hope that you will find CILINK as indispensable as we have. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the author: Mike Caughran is an IBM mainframe systems programmer for the State of Alaska. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. He has been working with microcomputers since the last days of CPM. His hobbies include microcomputers, cross-country skiing, swimming, and ham radio. He has a sweetheart of a wife and a boy that any man would be proud of. Finally a note from the author: Thank you for taking the time to look at CILINK. I have spent many, many hours developing it. I am not donating CILINK to the public domain, nor am I distributing it as Freeware, however, it is my wish that you use and enjoy CILINK even if you can't register it today. I truly dislike ShareWare notices that make you feel like you are stealing a product if you don't immediately send in its registration. So, use CILINK and get comfortable with it. When you do send in the ShareWare registration of $15.00 you will give me great pleasure and encourage me to continue to bring products to the ShareWare market. Live Long and Prosper, Mike Caughran. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send your comments, suggestions, and $15 registration to: Cedar Island Software 9018 Division St. Juneau, Alaska 99801 Phone (907) 789-9030 before 10 PM Pacific. Make checks payable to Mike S. Caughran To recieve the latest version of CILINK by mail, send an additional $3 to pay for the disk, stamp, and mailer. You may download the latest version of CILINK or leave us a message on the: Juneau RBBS (907) 789-1694 2400,8,N,1 (907) 789-7499 9600,8,n,1 SYSOP Matt Anderson If you phone or write to us, we can supply you with an instant registration procedure which makes you a registered user and instantly gets rid of the shareware notices.