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┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ C A R R I E R D E T E C T │ │ │ │ The PC Communications Journal For Every Modem User! │ │ │ │ Issue #6, May 1992 │ │ │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Table of Contents: Welcome ............................................ 2 Product Evaluations ................................ 3 Offline Mail Reader Round-Up (Part 1) .......... 3 Bluewave v2.00 ................................. 7 OLX v2.2 ....................................... 11 Speed Read v1.00 ............................... 13 Sneak Preview ...................................... 17 Wildcat! BBS v3.5................................. 18 Writer's Roundup ................................... 20 Reflections 3 .................................. 21 Reflections 4 .................................. 23 ByteLine ........................................... 25 Feedback ........................................... 31 Distribution Sites ................................. 31 Product Information .............................. 32 Advertisements ..................................... 33 Carrier Detect is published quarterly by Michael W. Crosson. Contents may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. All brand and product names mentioned in this publication are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies. (c) 1992 Michael W. Crosson. All rights reserved. W E L C O M E Welcome to the Spring 1992 edition of Carrier Detect! Since the last issue circumstances in my life have changed a great deal and the journal got put on the back burner for awhile. I regret that this issue was so late and apologize for the difficulty that many of you have had in trying to contact me. The bad news is that my financial situation took a turn for the worse early this year and I was forced to disconnect my second (BBS) telephone line. As a result, the main distribution site of Carrier Detect will be The Hour Glass BBS in Tucson until I can set up my own BBS again. If you wish to contact me electronically, this is the place to do so as well. The Hour Glass BBS's phone number is (602) 326-2999 and its Fidonet address is 1:300/12. In the fall I will be an entering McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento assuming nothing traumatic happens to me between now and August. I plan on moving to Sacramento late June and hope to set up a BBS system at that time. I hope to continue the journal but the release schedule may become more erratic. Law school is going to take a great deal of my time and Carrier Detect will be worked on strictly on 'time available basis.' The number of reader submissions could make a BIG difference in the future release schedule for the next year or so. If you ever wanted to write an article or review, this would be the time to do it! In addition, as a student relying very heavily on financial aid, the operation of a BBS would be GREATLY assisted by a donation or CDR-Door registration. Thanks for all your support and continued interest in Carrier Detect. Look for a new issue sometime in July! Hopefully by that time my BBS will be online again - watch for it! Sincerely, Michael Crosson Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 2 P R O D U C T E V A L U A T I O N S Each month Carrier Detect contains several product evaluations. Most of these will be software reviews but from time to time hardware will be discussed as well. The opinions expressed in Carrier Detect are solely my own or the respective author of the article. Carrier Detect strives to be as objective as possible when evaluating software. Judgments to suitability are made with the typical modem enthusiast in mind and are not geared toward the complete novice nor the power user. Exceptions to this are noted as such in the article. * OFFLINE MAIL READER ROUNDUP (Part 1) OR Sociological Implications of Offline Messaging in Community Bulletin Boards! Article by Michael Crosson Offline messaging has been the hottest trend in the BBS world during the last couple of years. In addition, few trends will have as big an impact, because offline messaging represents a fundamental change in the way people use a BBS and what they expect from it. To understand why, let's go back a bit to what some old timers refer to as 'The Golden Days' of BBSes. Back in the early days of BBSing, messages were the main focus of activity. Slow modems and a low number of shareware releases were the main factors behind this fact. At this time, echomail and groupmail were also in their infancy. The result? A strong sense of community often emerged on local bulletin boards. Through the constant exchange of messages, the callers came to know each other and in many cases GTs or Get Togethers were frequently held. This lead to friendships beyond those formed strictly in the silicon chips. As time passed, the personality of bulletin boards began to change. Messages were not nearly as important as they once were to the majority of users. A steady stream of shareware began to trickle down the pike and faster modems made it practical to download it. Many callers were only interested in using the local BBS as a file exchange depot and never even explored the message areas. The problem was also one of time. Even if the caller did wish to read or write message, his daily time allotment might be used up after downloading (and maybe even uploading) all those files. I choose to call this problem the 'Lurker Syndrome'. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 3 Although the typical BBS may receive 20 or 30 calls a day, few callers actually do anything online other than download files. They may even explore the message areas, doors, or other features for a few moments but rarely if ever participate themselves in the activities. These types of callers, and I believe them to be in the majority, are best described as 'Lurkers.' The challenge facing BBS systems is how to shake the disease. Some BBS authors or utility programmers noticed this disturbing trend and Post/Call ratio enforcement was born. The Post/Call ratio, on systems that use it, typically prohibits file downloading unless the caller has posted a certain number of messages each call. This solution worked better in theory than in practice however. Many callers who were not really interested in messages would simply post a few messages consisting of a line or two of worthless dribble. The local spirit of comradeship was further eroded with the advent of echo and to a lesser extent groupmail. Echomail allowed local bulletin boards to communicate with other bulletin boards all over the country, (and in some cases the world). Fidonet is the most successful amateur network at this time, and it now contains over 10,000 nodes in nearly every part of the globe. No doubt echomail is a technological success, and it's usefulness is self evident in many situations. However, on another level, I think that echomail has been entirely unsuccessful and has unintentionally reduced message base participation on most boards. The reasons for this are numerous but many of the biggest problems with echomail are related to the sheer volume of the messages. While this may seem a contradiction at first glance with my statements above, with further explanation you will see it is not. I don't mean to imply that nobody at all is posting messages. On the contrary, tens of thousands of messages are processed each day by the various national networks that are currently in place. However, if you follow any net closely for an extended period you will often find that it is the same handful of folks posting over and over again. On any BBS system there is always a small minority that is inclined to post and when hundreds or thousands of these bulletin boards are linked (a la Fidonet) even these messages - produced by a very small minority of callers becomes unruly. As an example, my BBS was a member of Fidonet and I carried about 30 national echoes on a wide variety of interests. The traffic on many of these echoes exceeded 75 messages a day and few were less than 40. If we assume that the average caller calls his (one) favorite BBS three Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 4 times a week and tries to keep up with 5 echoes that interest him, he must read between 1200 and 2625 messages a week. To further drive the point home, if the calls spends just 30 seconds on each message, it will take him between 10 and 20 hours to wade through all this material! This leaves many users feeling overwhelmed and many seem to lose interest in echomail altogether. Those that do stick with it either narrow down the number of echoes they follow to just one or two or end up simply skimming over the vast majority of messages. There are other problems that contribute to the 'Lurker Syndrome' related to the unmanageable amount of messages. Large nets mean that many people can potentially participate in the conversations - or threads in BBS lingo. Some of these people will inevitable cause problems. For starters they may start or reply to off-topic discussions, reply to an old message that has already been answered 20 times or post a rude (flame) message. In Fido and most other sizable nets these types of concerns have become a real problem. Echo policeman called moderators are an ever increasing presence on the larger nets. The results in a high percentage of the echo's message consisting of inappropriate messages (as described above) and the moderator then warning the author of the post to cease and desist, hardly enthralling reading. Finally, (after this long winded introduction) we can return to the subject of offline readers. I feel offline messaging will play a fundamental role in the rejuvenation of BBS systems. It changes the way callers relate to BBS software in several important ways. First and foremost, (as the name suggests), it allows callers to peruse and reply to messages offline. This is important because the user now has an unprecedented degree of flexibility. He can choose a reader of his liking and configure it with the editor of his choice. There is a wide range of readers and editors available, each offering a unique set of features. The user can choose one that is relatively simple to use or a virtual powerhouse suitable to use by rocket scientists only. The important thing is that the choice is now theirs. Additionally, the learning curve is reduced since nearly any editor can be used with most offline readers. Chances are the user already has a favorite editor, be it Norton Editor, Qedit, or VDE. Even full fledged word processing programs such as WordPerfect or Wordstar may be used! A whole new toolbox is suddenly at your disposal. Text can be imported, specially formatted, spell checked and saved for future reference. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 5 Time, or lack thereof, to comfortably read messages no longer is a problem when offline readers are used. It takes only a couple minutes to create all but the largest mail packet and download it to your machine. At this point, you can spend as much time as you need browsing through messages at your own convenience. Sometimes, and this is especially true when dealing with conversations of a technical nature, a proper reply requires research or preparation. Offline messaging makes this feasible. If the call is long distance, an offline reader saves connection charges by allowing you to disconnect from the BBS as soon as you get your mail packet. Of course, the use of offline readers also allows you more time for other BBS activities such as file transfers, door games etc. Precisely the things that often took precedence before at the expense of messaging. Ironically, the actual design of the BBS's message facilities will become less and less important as offline messaging becomes the norm. In the past, cryptic BBS designs made reading messages a chore at best and a disoriented feeling that one was lost in a maze at worst. BBS editors often left a lot to be desired as well. Routine tasks such as editing a previously entered line proved to became a frustrating ordeal. Recent improvements in BBS designs and the advent of newer conveniences such as full screen editors help to improve the situation but still fall short of an ideal means to express one's thoughts. In contrast, the use of most offline readers is an amazingly simple, yet effective way to write. Message threads that previously were obscured by strange BBS conventions become clear and jumping back and forth between messages is easy. Using an offline reader allows BBS callers to entirely avoid the internal message system of the BBS software. BBS developers should keep this in mind when deciding where to spend programming resources. While a full featured and easy to use message system is still vital to any BBS software (since it isn't always desirable to use an offline message system), it's importance will diminish in the years to come. So what does it all mean? How will the popularity of offline readers affect the BBS community? - Participation in message areas will rise dramatically. Offline mail systems make reading and entering messages easier and more convenient than ever before. - Echomail will continue to grow and prosper. Offline mail systems make it easier to manage the large number of messages that are processed by the networks. Since messaging will become more popular, additional networks Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 6 will spring up. These new nets will be oriented toward special interests rather than the one size fits all approach of the past. - Expect to see offline mail readers become an integrated part of communication software. Mustang Software now includes the QWK reader OLX with Qmodem and although it isn't internal to Qmodem, it is a sign of things to come. - A greater sense of community will emerge from the increased number of messages. It is natural effect of writing more and in the process revealing more about yourself. The anonymous 'Lurkers' of today will be prevalent only on BBSes with massive numbers of files online where transfers are main emphasis. I see offline messaging as the single most positive trend in BBSing in years. For those that take advantage of it, it will open up a new realm of possibilities. The potential for both education and entertainment is tremendous and it awaits anyone willing to tap into it. * The Blue Wave Offline Mail Reader, Version 2.00 Reviewed by Lyn Borchert Pros: Very fast Clean, easy to read message screens Ability to "hook" your spell checker in Powerful file requesting Total offline configuration Cons: Needs more intelligence reading messages Very annoying 30 second + unregistered delay Cannot sort message bases various ways No bulletins, just a sysop created text file Setting up the Blue Wave Reader was a piece of cake. In a matter of minutes I was logged onto my favorite BBS and downloaded my first Blue Wave mail packet anxious to start reading and replying. The online interface was friendly enough and so there were no problems encountered. No lengthy configuration ritual or configuration uploads and downloads to be performed. Just go in, select your message areas and download them. There were many other more advanced capabilities, but that's for an article on the Blue Wave Mail Door program... Having configured the Blue Wave Reader with the appropriate file paths, editor, and the like, I was ready. I fired up the program and much to my disappointment was Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 7 stuck for 30 seconds or more looking at the "beg" screen. Pretty as it was, I was most discouraged by the fact that I could not abort it. Finally, after my seemingly lifetime wait, the main menu appeared. Five selections and all pretty straight forward. "Open the Mail Packet" was the most likely choice, so I made it. The cogs whirled and screens flashed and then a new menu appeared. Again with about 6 selections and all were easy enough to understand. I Selected "Read the Mail" and up pops the list of available areas and the number of messages in them. The first area is highlighted, but it had no messages in it. It would seem to me that the "mail read" portion of this program could have at least started the highlight out on the first area that actually had some mail to read. Oh well. After selecting the appropriate area, I hit enter and boom, there is the "Title Scan" screen. This is a one line listing of all the messages in that area with the first one highlighted. It also shows any message that are addressed to me or sent by me. This is similar to a browse mode on many BBS systems. I think I would have preferred to be put straight into the messages themselves with the option of switching to this browse window. Most of the time when reading mail, I think the user is going to want to go straight to it, rather than browse around. This is just personal preference here so I don't count against the program for it. Plus, you can turn it off in the configuration. I must say, I do like the look of the message display. The message header was very easy to read. The default colors were pleasing and everything that I needed or wanted to know about this message was readily available for my tired old eyes. Help was just an F1 key press away, message threads were clearly listed, as was the message number and total number of messages. I would have liked a "total remaining" count, but it was easy enough to get an idea of the remaining number from the "25 of 110" display. Can you tell how lazy I am? In this reader, the arrow keys are the primary mode of transportation. Left and right arrows take you backward and forward one message at a time. This was most acceptable and even enjoyable. The CTRL left and right arrow keys would move you through a thread. I Didn't find a key that takes me back to the original message that I started with though. So, here again, I have to use my limited brain power to remember the message that I was at before I started reading the thread. So far so good. I finally got to the last message in this first area. The program tells me so when I press the right arrow for the next message by making a pleasant Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 8 noise. Upon pressing the right arrow key one more time I'm presented with the list of available areas again with the area I just finished highlighted. I remember thinking that here, it would have been nice if the next area with unread messages would have been highlighted for me so that I could just hit the enter key and be reading again. This awkward highlight design really detracts from the overall navigation of the reader. Another feature that seemed to be missing was a special area that contain all messages from all areas that were address to me. This is a feature found on most QWK style readers and I find it to be a great convenience. It's a real timesaver to have all personal messages bundled in that one "Personal" area. Maybe this will appear in a future version. Replying to messages was easy enough. The Blue Wave Reader uses an external editor of your choice. It comes bundled with TED, a public domain text editor, but I configured it to use QEDIT, which is my text editor of choice. When replying to a message, Blue Wave asked me if I want to quote the original message. If I select Yes, it then swaps out to my editor with the quoted text already there for me to play with. Just as you would expect. Blue Wave does give you the power to create your own quote header. You know, that line that says something to the effect of; "-=> Quoting Lyn Borchert to Michael Crosson <=-". After creating my reply and saving it from my text editor, I'm whisked back into Blue Wave and asked if I would like to save the new message, abort it, or go back to edit it again. Selecting save brings up the Signature pick list where I can select a signature or have Blue Wave randomly select one for me. After reading my mail, I decided that I didn't want to get all these echoes from this board in the future. This seemed like the perfect time to change my personal setup using the offline configuration capabilities of the Blue Wave Reader. It operates just like the online configuration and making it easy to delete some of the areas that I had previously selected. Almost everything is menu driven and able to be changed. However, there is a thorn in this powerful feature. The shareware version only allows you to do 5 offline configurations. After the fifth one, the feature is totally disabled until you register the product! One of the nice features of the Blue Wave Reader is the ability to use password protection. The configuration asks if you would like to use to protect your access to either The Blue Wave Mail Door, The Blue Wave Offline Mail Reader, or both. The second option asks which type of password security you would like. You can select between Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 9 "None", which disables the password feature, "Door Only", "Reader Only", or "Both Reader and Door". You can Select the option you would like using the cursor keys, and press ENTER. Simple as that. You can also have Blue Wave select messages for packing based on Keywords or Filters. It's great if you are looking through a large message base for all occurrences of one or two things. It might be particularly well suited for use in large Fido echoes like HUMOR, PASCAL, or TREK. This is a powerful feature of the product, but it seems to me to be a bit specialized for everyday BBS use. For the most part, I don't believe many users will take advantage of this feature, so it's usefulness is questionable. For those that do need something like this, it's great to know it is there. The filter feature is not found on many other mail systems. Blue Wave incorporates a powerful File Request system to save online time and money. File request sessions are controlled by the Sysop of each individual BBS. Therefore, the BBS that you call may not support the file request procedure. File requesting is also limited in unregistered versions of The Blue Wave Reader. You will be given 5 opportunities to try the system's file request sessions if you are an unregistered user. After you have exceeded this limit, you must either discontinue file requesting, or register your copy. Registered users may file request any number of times, provided they do not exceed the Sysop's limit of files or the sysop defined upload/download ratio. A couple of other features deserve mentioning. The Blue Wave Mail Door allows you to define up to 3 Bundling Command Macros. These macros allow you to enter a bundling command that you frequently use with just 2 key presses while online. This option can also prove to be a time and money saver. Also, Blue Wave does have the ability to use a mouse. I did not use my mouse during the whole evaluation process. It just never dawned on me. I personally prefer keeping my hands at the ready on the keyboard. In closing, I must say that all things considered, the Blue Wave Mail Reader is a high quality product. I have no doubt that it will continue to grow and become more popular with sysops and users alike. Actually, the only thing holding it back is there are not enough sysops setting up the door. QWK mail readers are a dime a dozen, but the day may be coming when all the power users will be using Blue Wave. After all, Speed is important and Blue Wave blows QWK away in that department. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 10 * Offline Xpress, Version 2.2 Reviewed by Michael Crosson Pros: Easy to Use - very intuitive Included with purchase of Qmodem Excellent documentation & tech support Includes a simple text editor Cons: Expensive compared to other QWK readers Doesn't archive past messages in database Offline Xpress, or OLX for short, is a new QWK type offline mail reader published by Mustang Software, the authors of Wildcat! BBS system. The program is not completely new however, and was derived from a popular QWK reader called Silly Little Mail Reader (SLMR). Last year Mustang bought the rights to SLMR and renamed the program OLX. At this point there are few differences between the last release of SLMR, version 2.1a and this version of OLX, version 2.2. A major rewrite of OLX is currently in the works and I would expect that future releases will not resemble this version much. Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen because OLX, in its current incarnation is a winner. I believe that the biggest strength of OLX is its ease of use. The program is presented with a minimum of fuss and most of controls are obvious. OLX doesn't feature fancy pull down menus or Lotus style lightbars, but it suffers little for the omission. In fact, I believe the simple, yet easy interface is what makes it such a pleasure to use. I dare say that the user guide, (which is very good), will never be needed by the majority of users. Only those seeking to explore some of the more advanced customization functions will require it. When OLX is first fired up, a mail packet directory management shell is displayed. At this point you can choose the mail packet you wish to open, delete packets, rename packets or look in alternative directories in case you don't see the one you are looking for. This feature comes in handy for those who use the offline mail doors of several different BBS systems. After choosing the appropriate mail packet you wish to work with, OLX displays a short menu that allows you to choose between reading bulletins, files, mail, or newsletters. Most of the time you will choose mail, for that is the way to begin reading and replying to the messages in the areas you chose to download. Now we arrive at the core of Offline Xpress. All the conferences available on the BBS will be displayed and the Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 11 number of messages you downloaded in each are shown. Two special conferences appear in the upper left corner, replies and personal. Replies is an OLX work conference that holds the replies you create during this session and personal contains messages that are addressed to you personally. Both of these conferences are sure to be visited frequently by OLX users. After choosing a conference, the first message appears on the screen. The top of the screen shows message header information - who wrote the message, who the message is to, the date, conference, title of the message etc. In OLX, this information is quite colorful and the color schemes can be highly customized. Importantly, all this information is clear and easily understandable even at a glance. All the expected functions are available while reading a message. The commands are mostly mnemonic and available with just one keystroke. For example to go to the next message you would press the [Enter] key, to edit a message you press [E], to print a message you press [P], to reply you press [R] and to save a message, (you guessed it), the [S] key. In case you have difficultly remembering these keys, help is available throughout OLX by pressing the standard [F1] key. Offline Xpress is shipped with its own editor called OLXED. The editor is rather simple and seemed rather stark for my tastes. However, it does perform all the standard text editing functions including block operations and split screen use allowing you to work on two documents at one time. It does not make use of pull down menus but does support the basic set of Wordstar editing commands. OLX can be configured to use another editor if you have a personal favorite. I use Qedit, an excellent shareware text editor with OLX and find it more than suitable for BBS messaging purposes. However, OLXED has an advantage of being free while other packages like Qedit require a separate registration fee on top of the cost of Offline Xpress. OLX seems to be designed to appeal to both the novice and power user. Overall it succeeds well. For the novice OLX offers simplicity of operation without being a simplistic program. The clean design of the program is to thank for this. The novice should be up and running with OLX in a matter of minutes; installation is a breeze. In fact, all that is required is to unpack the self extracting distribution archive! No further configuration is needed and the first time user will find a short Welcome QWK packet that serves as a basic tutorial. If that isn't enough to get you going, there are over forty pages of well written and easily readable documentation. The docs explain the entire offline mail process, operation of OLX and OLXED and even touch on BBS message Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 12 etiquette. Advanced users that want to delve into the program will not be disappointed either. Several screens of configuration options and toggles are present for those that choose to experiment. Some of these include custom key assignments, pick lists and substitution variables to automate repetitive typing, custom colors, tagline management, reply quoting styles and many options that change the general behavior of OLX. Now that I've rambled on for several pages praising all the good points about OLX, in what areas can the program be improved? One area where Offline Xpress is deficient is saving messages. OLX does have a "Save Message" function but it is rudimentary. The program simply prompts you for a filename and then dumps the message and header information on your disk. Some programs like Speed Read (also reviewed in this issue) employ a database design that allows sophisticated archiving of old messages into a database format. This allows for industrial strength retrieval, sorting, and printing at a later date. Many allow the option to compress these archived messages as well. Tagline support could be beefed up as well. OLX does make use of taglines, but they are simply stored in a text file and advanced options such as those found in the John Hancock Tagline Manager are nowhere to be found. In addition, although OLX has an option to "steal" a tagline from the current message, it rarely works - forcing you to manually type in the tagline. Finally, on my machine, I found OLX to load and swap itself rather slowly. Users with older hardware and limited memory will find themselves with plenty of time to daydream between disk intensive operations. Taken as a whole, OLX is a fine choice for an offline reader. Its price, $40, is a little steep, but it is also available as part of the Qmodem communications package where it is included for free. Qmodem (suggested retail price $99) is frequently heavily discounted by the retailers that carry it, so that may be the better bargain. With registration, OLX users are also entitled to voice phone support from Mustang's technical support staff, a rarely among offline readers. * Speed Read, Version 1.00 Reviewed by Eric Hunt (reprinted with permission) Pros: Database design for storing messages Extensive, context sensitive online help Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 13 Automatic splitting of long messages Excellent RIME routing support Many tagline features Cons: Slower than traditional QWK readers Can't shut off taglines entirely Weak threading and sorting Offline mail readers have been around for several years now, and their novelty and newness is wearing off. From the original two or three readers to today's dozens of them, generally there has been room for improvement, room for distinct innovation. SPEED Read provides that improvement and innovation. Based upon what is commonly called the 'database style' mail reader, SPEED Read provides all the flexibility and power that one can expect from a traditional offline mail reader, while adding the capability to archive, or 'database,' entire message bases from reading session to reading session. One can now maintain an entire collection of messages from a particular conference and have them accessible at the touch of a key. SPEED Read has a proven capacity of between 3000 and 4000 messages, depending on local system configurations. That's a lot of messages, folks! Installing SPEED Read is very easy. After typing in the random 5 digit 'unregistered' code, you are presented with a short configuration screen that allows you to tell SPEED where to look for incoming .QWKs, where to place outgoing .REPs, what editor/command line combination to use, various utility programs you might wish to use, all the basics for getting any mail reader started. Opening and reading a packet is as simple as selecting the BBS with waiting mail in it and pressing <enter.> From there, SPEED unzips the .QWK, and builds the new BBS database. That takes a short while, and SPEED even has logic to detect if you have multiple packets from the same BBS waiting on you (i.e. BBS.QWK BBS.QW0 BBS.QW1). Then you are presented with a list of conferences. At first I found the conference list quite daunting, as ALL conferences are displayed, regardless of whether they have mail or not. But a quick press of F1, and I'm introduced to one of SPEED Read's strongest points: Extensive context-sensitive online help. In fact, I am told that the entire written manual for SPEED was developed primarily from the online help screens, they're that good. Help tells me that there are various easy to use keystrokes that will move me around in the conference area listing. No more anxiety. Conferences can be added/dropped from the main conference area listing. However, the QMAIL 4.0 add/drop commands are not supported directly, you'll have to generate those messages by hand. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 14 While every reader has its differences, the largest of all is the placement of keys to move around a message base. Every reader I've used has a different layout. With that said, SPEED Read has the standard controls for moving around a message base, with special keys to mark individual messages to either be KEPT no matter what, or KILLED no matter what in the message database. While reading messages, ANSI messages can be displayed on screen, but the ANSI support is NOT internal, ANSI.SYS or a compatible device driver must be present in your config.sys. This is not a drawback, however, as internal ANSI support would unnecessarily bloat the code for SPEED. And messages can be saved to text files for use elsewhere. The message header is also included on messages saved to disk (outside of the database, in other words.) SPEED Read can be configured to bring up the reply information dialogue box before, after, or before and after you write the reply. I have mine setup to show the box after I reply, but you can change it to whatever you like. Another strong point of SPEED Read is evident in the reply info dialogue: Picklists. Picklists allow you to press a key, and have a listing of possible values for that particular entry field be displayed. Taglines, TO:, FROM:, CONF#, all have picklists. They are very powerful, and very handy. You can 'tell' the TO: picklist to keep a list of commonly used TO: names that are persistent from session to session. And moving a reply to a message from one conference to another is as easy as popping up the conference picklist and selecting the conference you wish to move the reply. Searching for taglines/conferences is also very easy using the picklists. The support for long messages in SPEED is mixed. Users can enter long messages, and SPEED will break them into neat, nice, 100 line chunks as multiple messages. If you need to re-edit a long message, the split messages are invisibly recombined behind the scenes, and you are presented with the original message again. However, if you download a message more than 100 lines, SPEED will only display the first 100. RIME routing in SPEED is present, and done very well. The default is to insert the routing code on ALL RIME replies, which is nice, since deleting it takes one keystroke in the editor. What's even better is that a LONG (100+ line) routed message has the routing code inserted on EACH INDIVIDUAL part of the message, a godsend for those sending long messages on RIME. Taglines are handled exceptionally well by SPEED Read. The user can have any number of different tagline Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 15 'files,' each containing 100 tags. Switching between tag files is painless. SPEED also fully supports the add-in tagline manager, John Hancock II. Stealing tags is a breeze. Hit 't' while reading a message, and SPEED looks in the proper place for the tag. If you like what it thinks the tag is, fine. If you don't, you can scroll through EACH LINE of the message, stealing any line in the message you wish. Extremely powerful for those people with lists of tags inside messages, or those that don't use standard style readers. Keeping the message base up to date has been a problem with other database .QWK readers. SPEED Read has taken steps to minimize this problem. First of all, you can tell the reader how many old messages to retain in a conference. The default is 50, but that can be changed to whatever number you wish. I have some of the technical conferences set to 500 old messages, some of the chitchat to 100, and some of the 'I'm just glancing at it' conferences to retain *0* messages. Yep, that's right, you can tell SPEED not to keep any messages in a conference from session to session. In fact, you can effectively turn SPEED Read into a '.QWK-at-a-time' reader by setting ALL the keep old's to Zero. Handy. And if you're so inclined, you can set all conference keep old messages to one number with one keystroke. Purging (deleting the oldest messages as they get moved past the keep old number) is done automatically each time a new packet is imported, but can be done manually. The auto-purge is nice, you never have to worry about the message base growing out of hand. Also, the message bases can be stored in either compressed or uncompressed state. This is VERY nice for those out there with smaller hard disks. The compression is done with PKZIP, and is automatic, just say the word, and SPEED does it. Finally, SPEED has detection routines to prevent you from losing unsaved replies in the even of a power failure, system crash, etc. This feature has saved me several times! While I could go on and on about the good things in SPEED Read, there are some little annoyances. First of them is ironically the name! SPEED is not a speed demon when compared to traditional QWK-at-a-time readers. HOWEVER, when you evaluate the fact that an entire message database is being kept, SPEED works pretty darn fast! The importing of new messages into the conferences at the start of a session can become slow, even on my 386sx, as the number of old messages retained increases. Another minor annoyance is the lack of huge tagline support. Instead of unlimited numbers of 100 tag tagline files, 1 file containing unlimited tags would be better. QMAIL 4.0 ADD/DROP would be nice, in addition to the current MarkMail style add/drop. SPEED Read does not allow anyone, not even registered users, to completely suppress the Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 16 generation of taglines, including the SPEED stamp. This primarily prevents users with registration numbers from posting in conferences where their identity is best left unknown, such as the 12-step, or Recovery conferences. Threading and sorting in this release is also a bit weak, but I personally prefer to read messages in a straight line, like the old days, so that doesn't bother me much. The author of SPEED Read, Jim Smith, has directly addressed every concern I have above except the complete removal of all traces of a tagline and stated that the rest are slated to be fixed/added in a 'future version.' In addition, Jim has gone above and beyond the call of duty in providing product support for this offline mail reader. He has his own product support conference on the U'NI-net/US echomail network, and is active in the SHAREWARE and OFFLINE conferences of many other nets, including RIME, ILINK, U'NI, and soon FidoNet. Product Support is another gem SPEED Read can add to its hat. Another kudo for Jim is his decision to allow give ALL REGISTERED USERS of SPEED the chance to beta test new releases of the software as he writes them. Currently, version 1.20 is being pounded out of the compiler, and registered users now have access to new features such as RAM drive support for the workspace In short, SPEED Read is an innovative product in a sometimes stagnant shareware marketplace, and has an extremely bright future ahead of it. SPEED is easy enough for beginners and powerful enough for the old pro's. The database of messages can prove invaluable to many people, and makes life easier for those on erratic schedules. The reader is continually improved and the author is extremely receptive to suggestions and critiques of his product. Registration for SPEED Read is $25, a *very* competitive price in light of an extensive feature list. Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the February 1992 edition of The Birmingham Telecommunications New. (c) 1992 Since this review the author has released version 1.10 which includes several new features and bug fixes. S N E A K P R E V I E W Occasionally Carrier Detect will describe forthcoming releases of popular software. Often this information is difficult to obtain because some software publishers are reluctant to reveal the direction of their products. However, future enhancements should be of great interest to the end users running the program. It can help Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 17 determine whether or not a program will continue to meet an individual's future needs or if the upgrade will address a deficiency that the owner has perceived. In short, it can heighten anticipation or alert someone it is time to start shopping. The public release of the software may or may not be similar to what is described below. * Wildcat! BBS v3.50 Expected Release Date June 21, 1992 What follows is a listing of some of the major features and changes Wildcat! sysops can expect in the forthcoming release of Wildcat! 3.5. While this article will mostly be of interest to Wildcat! sysops and frequent callers, sysops of other BBS software may wish to take a peek to see if their software is "keeping up with the Jones". Wildcat! version 3.5 adds many new features. Sysops, mark your calenders; June 21 is the date Mustang's development team has slated for the unveiling of Wildcat! version 3.5. Copies will be mailed to subscribers of the Auto Update Plan beginning June 14 in an effort to have them delivered by the release date. The rest of the world won't be able to order the new Wildcat! until after June 21. Call 1-800-999-9619 to order the Auto Update plan now and be assured of getting Wildcat! 3.5 as soon as it is released! There's quite possibly "something for everyone" in this new release - read on... Security - Wildcards are now supported in the "filter" files BADKEYS, BADALIAS, BADFILES and BADNAMES. For instance, a sysop who wants to prevent uploads of files ending in .GIF could put *.GIF in BADFILES.LST - any file matching that wildcard would be rejected. Various misspellings of cuss words can also be filtered using wildcards. - Questionnaires now support "answered required" fields, which require the user to fill in a field before preceding to the next question. This saves sysops from the headaches of verifying new users who fail to answer important information such as telephone numbers or address. - Security specific display files are now supported allowing statements to be placed in display files such as @IFSEC=NEWUSER@. This construct indicates that text Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 18 following would be seen only by people with NEWUSER security profile. Also supported is @ELSEIF@ and @ENDIF@. The text between the @ macros is only displayed if your security level profiles matches. Files - External protocols which create a standard DSZ.LOG are now supported directly. This means that Wildcat! is able to maintain an accurate download count for callers who use external protocols. Many external protocols support the DSZ.LOG format, so this should make configuration easier than ever. By supporting DSZ.LOG, Wildcat! 3.5 can also utilize the HS-Link and Bimodem bidirectional protocols. - The [V]iew file option now automatically displays text files as well as compressed files directly, invoking the VIEWCOMP.BAT for compressed files only. - An external protocol may new be selected as a caller's default protocol. - Marked files are now denoted with an asterisk beside the line number when listing files. - A new configuration option in Makewild allows downloadable files to be copied to a local hard drive if the "On CD" flag in the database is set to "Yes". This helps speed up multi-user access to CD-ROM drives, and really improves performance with the new CD-ROM changers. Messages - Callers can now upload files via protocols into the message editor. This works locally also and is a great way to import text into a message from any file or directory. Long text files are automatically split into multiple messages if necessary. - Fast login switch via ! (exclamation point) now takes users directly to Tomcat. - The "Scanning Conference xx" prompt now self-erases, much like the file area prompt, when reading mail in "Selected" or "All" conferences. - Novell users will like the automatic mail notification and automatic login features - both make use of the "Full Name" field in Netware's user account. When a message is entered on the BBS to a user on the network, that user can be notified. Local logins can make use of the /B Novell command line switch to automatically fill in the user name, no password required. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 19 - Message threading based on subject field has been added. This allows messages imported by network mail programs to thread properly. - Point and crash mail support was added for Fido netmail. Chat - /Page option in multi-user chat now allows users to page others into chat. Configuration - The event scheduler has been revised considerable. Existing events can now be edited (rather than deleting, then reentering the event). Events are also automatically sorted by day and time, to prevent execution in the wrong order. - Support for newer modems capable of 14400, 16800 and other connect speeds has been added, by allowing a range of speeds to be entered for each baud rate. - Individual configuration changes in conference and security profile configurations can now be applied globally. For instance, when new nodes are added, access to that node can be added globally, rather than editing each security level profile definition. - Many other new features have been added - a complete listing will be posted as a bulletin at the MSI HQ BBS as the testing procedure nears completion. --- Editor's Note: This article was originally printed in the Volume I, Issue III edition of The MSI Monitor (c) 1992. Reprinted with permission. W R I T E R 'S R O U N D U P Writer's Roundup is a department that features creative writing submissions from readers. Essays, fictional stories, and poems are examples of the kind of reading that you might find here. However, each will share a common theme of computers and communications. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 20 REFLECTIONS 3 (C) 1986-87 by Steve Schneider (reprinted with permission) Dateline : The RainForest BBS Time : 2 am On a Friday NEWSLETTERS.... yep; newsletters. I have a rather unique distinction in the BBS world. I'm one of the few sysops that also publish a hard copy type Newsletter (bimonthly) with facts, blurbs and figures on paper for (in my particular case) paying Members of my system and a few honored guests and to anyone else that can scrape up a $.22 stamp. Every time I sit down to write the darned thing I learn to appreciate the people that are able to just whip up ten thousand characters of humor, information, fact and fiction with seemingly little effort. It all started out innocently enough; in fact, it was so easy to think of I never even considered the consequences. When we first started a BBS (in 84) my son had the idea of a Newsletter to accompany the message base. Naturally I said no. After all; why print something out on paper that could be stored on the BBS electronically?? After a few well chosen words (Because I'm the adult and you're the child; =THAT's= why!!) the discussion digressed to me throwing a box of disks at his head as he ducked around the corner. That's where the discussion stayed for almost a year..... then a rival BBS moved into the fray; previously on-line in west Florida the BBS hit the East coast with a vengeance. It was so unlike the local BBSes and yet so good. And for the first time in my life I paid for access to a BBS system.....yep; part of the advantage of being a Member (Sponsor) was a hard copy newsletter. I also became good friends with the sysop of the system and there is a bit of friendly competition amongst the two systems. Kids are welcome on both systems but since they are expected to act as adults (and are reminded with 'NastyGrams' which may be private or public) the flakes soon depart to kiddie systems leaving the more mature behind to share the warmth of the 'inner sanctum' so to speak. We have a lot in common, he and I; and the Newsletters (he claims the World's first... I've tried to explain the others.) are something we each publish in our own way that serves as a reminder to Members (both active and not) that our systems are something special as so are the people that call. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 21 In the past year or so I've also had the opportunity to capture (and store in my General files) all of Kent Fillmore's (DracoNET and GEnie NET) electronic newsletters, The Carrier. I wish I had the ability to write as he does... and to get involved in all that he does; The Carrier makes for a bit of nice reading. And since Kent passes it along electronically, it goes to a hell of a lot more people... 16,000 was the last official estimate I heard and by now I'm sure the number is very much higher. As you may, or may not have guessed, I write a bit (for pleasure, of course; who's going to =PAY= for this drivel?) as the mood hits and since the mood is not always reliable, I am left grasping for straws when I'm halfway through a newsletter and go brain dead at 2 am on a Thursday morning with the sounds of the national anthem on channel 33 winding down. You can never know the anguish of trying to fill in 90 more lines of text with a blank mind until =YOU= personally have to do it. , you ask; where's the number one son that came up with the original 'bright' idea of a newsletter in the first place? He's asleep without a care in his soul. (Kids!) What do I do for inspiration? I stew in my own juices for what seems like hours and then something always pops into my thoughts; a catalyst if you wish and BAM, the thoughts start to flow again... sometimes. (as for the other times....ppfffffffffffffftt; I save what I've done and hit the sack and pray like hell for better inspiration on the day after.....or the day after...or the day after...) ; I'm not actually getting paid to do this stuff so "what me worry'? I'm lucky, I guess. The type of work I do allows me to make copies for free and since I repair these machines I can play around with the copies to get the desired effect. It's been over a year now and I've given the responsibility of designing a permanent Logo / Letterhead to the third person I've contacted; geez; no one wants to do excellence for nothing. The other two artists said they would but never did...<sigh> And I'm not capable of doing it myself. My mom always thought I was a GREAT artist but it was all done with mirrors, you know? So anyhow; one of these days I'll have all my stuff together and then maybe the newsletter will match the rest of The RainForest... a consideration of excellence. As for these short stories on the various systems that I've uploaded to or those that may have done me the honor of downloading my stories to add to their Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 22 downloads/files I say =THANKS=... And I hope to do better with each I write. Have a wonderful evening.... REFLECTIONS 4 (C) 1986-87 by Steve Schneider Dateline : The RainForest BBS Time : 1130 PM On a Thursday Where have all the good ones gone; I can hear you asking... (sung to the tune of 'Where have all the flowers gone...). You know the ones I'm talking about. The users that make the BBS what it is. The user that is a talkative son of a gun and leaves twenty interesting messages a call; the user that doesn't say much but when he (or she) does you read every word and nod your head; the user who leaves a posting or two that continually leaves you in stitches gasping for air.....anything said is guaranteed to brighten your day (or evening); the user who says things so naive or even stupid that you automatically cringe when reading the message; the sultry writer that has your wife so jealous when you read a post who is really 300 pounds and homely; the kid (or adult) on the system that continually leaves e-mail asking for personal answers to things on the system for which there are already easily read, extensive HELP files; the one user that is positively guaranteed to upset you when you see the name on a message header; the user that always has the answer to the technical question another user has posted..... the people... Where do they go when they disappear? Some users simply scroll off the screen forever.. you never see them again on any system. They disappear! Did their computer blow up? Did their modem fry? Did their mother catch them phreaking and take the computer away for good? Did they die? Did they move?? Did the police finally catch up with them? Did they become system operators incognito on a system of their own? Or did they =JUST= say "To hell with it!!"? For most users on a BBS there is a bit of give and take; you give whatever knowledge or wit or pleasure you can to a system and in turn you take back a bit from the system and it's users. A majority of the ones that disappear forever though constantly gave and never received... I almost took that route a long time ago. I used to write between thirty and fifty messages a day spread out on the seven to ten BBSes I called daily. In the beginning the mystique of the data flow and the green glow in the night were rewards enough... every word I wrote a gem (or so I thought)... I always wondered if those sysops missed me when I was on vacation. After a bit of time (a year or so for me) I started 'burning out' and could no Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 23 longer write those 30-50 twenty line messages a day and I became negative in my attitude towards the BBSes. I was already running the RainForest so I'm not sure, in my case, whether I felt a tinge of guilt at supporting my competition and slowed down or whether I really felt I had given all I could. I think in most cases of the really GREAT users though (and I wouldn't presume to count myself as being among them) they reach a point of having done so much for so long for so many that they can't accept the fact that they can't keep the flow going.. and rather than admit, and accept, being a 'normal' user they quit it altogether. Or sometimes we, as sysops, drive them away with an innocent show of anger. I did that to a user I'll call the 'Laughing Alien' who wrote messages so complicated in context yet so damned humorous that he kept me in stitches for hours when I'd read his messages and comments. The guy was a natural; I had him on my system when ten other systems in town wanted him; he only called a couple and expended all his literary talents on the few (and the lucky). He made a public comment once about a feature on my system and I ask him for clarification in e-mail which he decided to ignore and bring public again. As it were, I then left a message explaining the ignorance of his idea (which I would have worded a bit nicer if he had left an answer in e-mail) and I lost him. Oh; he writes every now and then but not like before and certainly not with the passion he once did on this system.... yes; on a competing system he does what he used to do on mine. (And I accept full blame; after all, system operators aren't supposed to lash out at users... that's not the way the game is played.) I miss him and his humor....somehow it's just not the same reading it on another system. I digressed; I apologized... I was lamenting the ones that disappear that we =DON'T= know what happened to. As a sysop (I like the term, system manager better...) I feel that in most cases we grow to expect too much from some of those users and when they feel they can no longer deliver they duck out so they don't fail. As for the others; some never really did fit in a BBS environment and they soon leave for greener pastures; some die; some go to jail; some lose their computers to momma or papa; some fall in love; some grow up; some put up their own systems.... and some disappear with no explanation. As a sysop I miss them all. =EVERY= user is a part of a BBS (both the good and the bad users) and what they contribute is immeasurable. When I -kill- a user for not being on in the past 60 days I really do wonder what Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 24 happened to them...<sigh> and then I hit the switch to make room for more users... and if I'm really fortunate, I find a gem or two along the way. Unfortunately, misfortune strikes more often than fortune; Much more often.... May all your users be with you forever! --- Steve Schneider is the System Operator of RainForest BBS in Cooper City, Florida. He can be reached at his BBS, (305)-434-4927. B Y T E L I N E Fast facts, tips, comments and rumors on all kinds of computer related topics. * BYTELINE By Michael Crosson and Tom Garcia dBase IV ver. 1.5 beta is out there. [It will be] The first offering from Borland, aimed at the existing user base. (New data base buyers probably buy FOX PRO). Ver. 1.1 is what you can buy right now. 1.5 is mostly Ashton-Tate code revamped. IS THAT EVER BETTER! Go into your WIN.INI file and comment out PROGMAN.EXE and insert in its place MSDOS.EXE. Back to the real world! TO RUN WINDOWS you need at least a 386/33 in my humble opinion. It's just too slow any other way. OUR SECRET SOFTWARE lab in North Dakota is still on the job even though everyone else in the state has moved to Nevada, Idaho, or Arizona. They recently purchased a "trial version" of GEOS ENSEMBLE for $9.95 which does most everything but let you save files. There is an 800 number but I lost it. Watch for their ad. THE NEWEST GEOS, known as GEO PRO incorporates BORLAND's slimmed down version of QUATTRO PRO, the SE (Special edition) version. SE alone is available from various sources for $49. QUATTRO is one of the few programs that is actually fun to use. JUST DOWNLOADED the new CIM software from CompuServe. It costs $10 but download time is free and you get a $10 Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 25 usage credit for your next bill. Latest version of CIM is ver. 2.01. GEE WHIZ DEPT. My Seagate SCSI drive has been in service for about a year and hasn't crashed yet. Good thing 'cause my old rescue standby SPINRITE won't work with an SCSI drive/card combination. BUILD A COMPUTER? Checked with LIGHTNING re. their motherboards. Which are: 386/40 at $495 and 486/33 at $995. (Anyone know a discount source for LIGHTNING motherboards?) No extras on their boards such as VGA or HD/FD controller. Maybe better that way? (see next para.) Advantage to building up your own computer out of parts: You know what's in it and you know that it's all standard parts. Standard parts and cards are easy to replace. Replacement often costs less than repair and you don't have to deal with repair persons. Many name brand computers (latest models, anyhow) have VGA, HD/FD, etc., on the motherboard but they also have proprietary parts such as power supplies that you HAVE TO BUY from them when replacements are needed. Not good. The names ALR, AST, COMPAQ, EVEREX and NEC come to mind. SO, WHAT is the logic behind not wanting the extras on the motherboard? Well, when you decide to upgrade to that latest "must have" cache controller or 99,000 color 2,048x2,048 Super-Super VGA card you will want to disable the onboard electronics anyhow. You can disable it can't you? It does have jumpers to do that (you hope) and you can find them? LESSONS LEARNED: When shopping for a laptop (or notebook) think about memory expansion. The magazines are full of ads for such memory. An ad recently seen gives prices of $119 for two megs for a TI Travelmate 3000 and $199 for two megs for a Zenith MasterSport. Looks like the TI is a better candidate for upgrade. A Tandon upgrade of two megs is $139. That's the Tandon 386 notebook, not the earlier 386 laptop. The laptop (which I have) needs a two meg package sold (so I'm told) only by Tandon at $325! Ouch.....(For just $650 (($325x2)) I can have 5 megs. I wonder if theyever sold any of that expensive memory to anyone but the government? THERE IS A PROGRAM OUT there called MEMKIT from Biologic. With some trial and error (an hour or so) I got it installed and ended up with almost 600K (8 bytes short) of memory for programs.... The commercial program 386MAX gives me 598,528 free memory with the same TSR's & drivers installed. Maybe MEMKIT could be tweeked some to make it do even better... Look for it on the BBS. It's shareware & costs $39 for the Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 26 latest version (without the sales pitch which requires you to "press any key" several different times as the shareware version loads.) CROSS TALK for WINDOWS free "working model." To get yours call 1-800-348-DCA-1, ext. 83U. GEOWORKS PRO (with QUATTRO PRO SE) demo disk costs $9.95 (refundable if you buy it). Call 1-800-772-0001, ext. 202C. FREE DEMO DISK for MATHCAD (for WINDOWS) 1-800-MATHCAD. ANOTHER FREE ONE: dBFast (WINDOWS) 1-800-645-3003. HERE IS a goodie - HARVARD DRAW for WINDOWS (doesn't anything new come out these days that isn't for WINDOWS?) Free demo disk - Call 1-800-336-8360, Operator 656. M.Y.O.B. WINDOWS Accounting demo ($5), 1-800-237-8400, ext. 586. Q&A 4.0 free demo disk - 1-800-228-4122, ext. 104-D. MapInfo (Desktop mapping, whatever that is?) A free copy on 3.5 inch disk (HD?) call 1-800-358-7676 Ex. 200. LEGACY 2.0 demo, 1-800-NBI-1111. AMI PRO 2.0 demo, 1-800-545-6116. ANOTHER way to get rid of The WINDOWS logo on startup: Go into WIN.COM and find LOGO. Change it to lOGO (lower case L). QUICKEN (5.0 - maybe earlier versions) undocumented options: While at the main menu try hitting V,H, and M. "M" is the most interesting as it tells you how much memory is left. NEXT YEAR'S release of DOS 6.0 will be bundled with WINDOWS 4.0 and they will be tightly integrated, so the rumor source sez. BEFORE THEN Microsoft should have their database program out the door ( by the end of this year.) What with a spread sheet and a word processor it's about all they need to fill out their product line. Of course, it will be a WINDOWS program. HAVE YOU HEARD good things about STACKER 2.0? They are all true. My laptop was getting a case of severe HD overload. The 40 meg HD is now (it thinks) a 79 meg HD. I see very little degradation in program load/save speed. It is Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 27 costing me some RAM overhead but it's worth it. If I had EMS in the laptop STACKER would use about 18K. Without EMS it uses about 40K. PC SOFTWARE & SUPPLY sez: Many virus like to attach themselves to COMMAND.COM. You can copy your COMMAND.COM to BACKUP.XXX (or some such) and then place a command in AUTOEXEC.BAT to copy BACKUP.XXX to COMMAND.COM which places a fresh new copy of your command interpreter in your root each time you boot. MORE FROM the VIRUS front: Four disks arrived from a writer's round table I belong to. Two were infected with the STONED virus. I cleaned them up before sending them on. Someone in the round table has a problem. STONED (from New Zealand, I'm told) gets in your boot sector on both hard and floppy disks. The first time I found STONED I checked some floppies and found an old one (really old, DOS 3.2) that was infected. What does STONED do? It has never displayed anything on my screen.... I haven't seen any really bad stuff unless some of those old unexplained crashes were the result of STONED? I have also come up with STONED II on one occasion. None of my 3.5 inch disks have been infected, just the 5 1/4 and my hard drive. LOTS OF computer mailorder firms give you free software with their computers. (Of course, whatever computer you buy will be superseded by a better model at a lower cost the day your machine arrives.) Well, right now I'd suggest you hold off buying 'till WINDOWS ver. 3.1 is the included software. That may even happen between now (Feb 5th) and when these NOTES are uploaded on about March 1st. [April is the current rumor date.] YOU PROBABLY remember to de-frag your hard drive every now and then. How about re-running MAXIMIZE or whatever program came with your memory manager? After complaining about how much memory the STACKER driver took I re-ran the 386MAX reorganization program and was able to put most of STACKER's overhead up in extended memory (or upper memory or high RAM or somewhere.) I now have 620K available for programs (before I load NORTON COMMANDER). ONE MUST WONDER if there will ever be a MS WORD version beyond ver. 5.5, a WORD PERFECT version beyond 5.1, etc.... New DOS versions, that is..... WORD for WINDOWS came out on top in a late Feb. issue of PC MAGAZINE that tested most of the WINDOWS word processors. ..... Interesting how WORD for WINDOWS 1.0 runs (one of the few) in WINDOWS real mode. WORD for WINDOWS 2.0 won't run in real mode. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 28 THE SECRET software testing lab in North Dakota sent me a program purchased in that area at a retail price of $3.33. It's from Vision Software, has a 1988 copyright date, and is called Carol White's Office Manager. Lots of "menu" style features such as a calculator, appointment scheduler, alarm clock, etc. The ROLLODEX is particularly nice. Well, the price is right. Major problem: The memory resident program takes up 135K of your conventional RAM. Guess that's why Peter Norton is a household word and Carol White isn't. THAT'S INTERESTING: My TANDON laptop doesn't want (won't) format a 720K disk but it will take any DD 3.5 inch floppy and, without a need for the extra hole, format it at 1.44 megs. I AM UPLOADING to the BBS several Russian programs. One is a Cyrillic keyboard and display driver. With EGA or VGA you can toggle between Cyrillic and Roman characters by just hitting <left shift> <right shift> keys simultaneously. Unfortunately I have not found a way to send the Cyrillic output to my Epson printer. And, the keyboard does not transliterate Cyrillic and Roman characters. That is, the Roman "K" which is the same character and the same sound in Russian and in English (more or less) does not come up on screen when you hit your QWERTY keyboard's "K" letter. Instead you get the Cyrillic letter that is the equivalent of (but is written differently) of the Roman "L". What this boils down to: Their typewriters evidently are not based on QWERTY or any modified version of it. So, Cyrillic is interesting to look at on the EGA/VGA screen but I don't see much of a practical application. If there were a companion printer driver it would be worth my while to make a keyboard overlay and then. I could mix Roman and Cyrillic. A friend overseas does write to me in mixed alphabets but I haven't asked him how he does it..... There is also a game called "Perestroyka" that has as its object - Keep the little man in a circle. The circles get smaller and smaller and you have to use the direction arrows to move him to a safe area. Some of the circles have symbols and landing on one of these circles gets you points. ... There is also a humorous text about the famous Russian movie spy Shtiritz. It has a Preface, ten chapters, and a Conclusion. Be sure and have the screen driver RK.COM loaded before you view (by TYPING) the story, SOVIET.DOC. This is all public domain stuff from a Russian citizen via a U.S. type who received it on disk and uploaded it to CompuServe. For those SYSOPS who are not enamored of games, this one is a demonstration of Russian programming rather than anything else (I hope you will agree). BACKUP PROGRAMS - You can have them. Just tried a well known one. I told it to back itself up to a 1.44 disk. The Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 29 program (about 12 files) was a 900K job. It tried. The floppy drive made lots of grinding sounds. Things seemed to be progressing (slowly) but I finally got a message, "disk is defective" and the backup came to a halt. There wasn't anything wrong with the disk. So, I went to Plan B which is my usual plan. ZIPPED the 12 files (to 450K) and moved the ZIP to the floppy. No problem there. WENT BACK and tried Microsoft WORKS (Ver. 2.0) again. Hadn't looked at it since I bought it two years ago. I liked it even better this time. Would save a lot of disk space (it takes about 1.44 megs without the tutorial) if I replaced QUATTRO PRO and MS WORD with WORKS. But, a big problem soon presented itself. You can't LINK cells from various files into other files in the spreadsheet, something I have come to rely on. Wonder if there will ever be a Ver. 3.0 of WORKS? GOTTFRIED LOPEZ with an answer to the above question about WORKS. There is an upgrade for WORKS "in the works" at Microsoft. (That is, if my source isn't confusing WORKS for DOS with WORKS for WINDOWS). A few people are supposed to have the beta version. Microsoft tells me they didn't include spreadsheet linking in WORKS because linking is an advanced feature and they want to keep WORKS simple. If you want linking Tom, you should upgrade to EXCEL which has every feature you might ever need. SURE, I'll run right out and buy (assuming I don't already have) EXCEL 3.0, WINDOWS 3.0, and while I'm at it I might as well get a 486 so it will run almost as fast as 1-2-3 on an 8088 XT. Trying to keep it simple? For simple minded users? It's quite a jump from the $99 [street price] WORKS to WINDOWS/EXCEL, etc. Another plan, if I really need spreadsheet linking: Stick with QUATTRO PRO, which I already have. NORTON COMMANDER needs 15,888 bytes while loaded. Unload it via <F10> to recover that memory before running an application if you need the extra memory. TOO BAD Q&A Write never got past Version 1.01 because I still like it as well as any of the "big name" products. Maybe better than them. It's small (less than a meg of disk space), fast, and has an easy to use macro system. Doesn't have a graphics mode and it's hard to see some of the menus on a LCD panel. SYMANTEC has no interest in the program. There is no info on it in the SYMANTEC Forum on CompuServe.... You could buy Q&A Ver. 4.0 for SYMANTEC's latest DOS wordprocessor but the WP is not the major part of that database program... You could buy JUSTWRITE (for WINDOWS) from SYMANTEC I suppose, and have a modern word processor. Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 30 ANOTHER UPLOAD now in the BBS files area: R.ZIP (R.COM), a Russian EGA/VGA screen/keyboard driver. Resident and unloadable via the R/U command. It was written by Herman Dovzhenko, a Moscow programmer. You may like the screen display of R.COM a little better than that of the RK.COM driver. ALSO, VOPRINT.ZIP, a printer driver (Epson/IBM) that allows you to print a Cyrillic or mixed Cyrillic/Roman file. It does its thing via graphics so the best you can get with a dot matrix printer is "draft" quality. It does make RK.COM and R.COM much more useful. A FREE copy (demo) of CROSSTALK for WINDOWS is yours for a telephone call. 1-800-348-DCA-1, Ext. 83A. F E E D B A C K I am interested in getting as much feedback as possible regarding Carrier Detect and welcome suggestions or any other comments you may have. If you are a software publisher or shareware author and want to submit your program for possible inclusion in future issues you are welcome to do so. Finally, if you are interested in writing an article or review, please let me know! Prospector BBS - The Home of Carrier Detect (916) 921-9949, 24 hours, 2400 to 14.4K (v.32bis) First call access to Carrier Detect Related Files and shareware programs reviewed in the current issue. Home Mailing Address: 811 San Juan Road #199, Sacramento, CA 95834 D I S T R I B U T I O N S I T E S Carrier Detect Distribution Sites are BBSes that make all issues of Carrier Detect, the Carrier Detect Reader, and the Carrier Detect Reader Door available for download. If you are having trouble finding a BBS carries the journal, try one of these sites! I am looking for a additional distribution sites. If you enjoy the journal please consider becoming a site. BBS Name Sysop Phone Number Baud Prospector BBS Michael Crosson (916) 921-9949 14.4 Hour Glass BBS Lyn Borchert (602) 326-2999 14.4 Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 31 P R O D U C T I N F O R M A T I O N Following is product information for the products reviewed in this issue of Carrier Detect. If you are interested in purchasing or evaluating any of the products please note the publisher's address listed below. In addition, all current shareware programs featured in Carrier Detect will be made available to first time callers on the Carrier Detect Support BBS. BLUEWAVE OFFLINE MAIL READER distributed as shareware version 2.00 registration - $25 published by - Blue Wave Software PO Box 1057 Flint, MI 48503 - The Blue Wave Software Support BBSes The Wild! Blue BBS The Flight of the Raven 1-313-743-8464 1-313-232-7815 Flint, Michigan Flint, Michigan 2400 Baud N-8-1 9600 HST/v32 N-8-1 FidoNet 1:2240/176 FidoNet 1:2240/107 Sysop: George Hatchew Sysop: Fred Rappuhn OFFLINE XPRESS distributed as a commercial product fully functional "test drive" version is available version 2.2 price - $40 (also included as part of Qmodem 5.01) published by - Mustang Software Post Office Box 2264 Bakersfield, CA 93303-2264 support BBS - (805) 395-0650 SPEED READER distributed as shareware version 1.00 price - $25 published by - J.E. Smith 344 Observatory Drive Birmingham, AL 35206 support BBS - (205) 744-8546 WILDCAT! BBS distributed as a commercial product Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 32 fully functional "test drive" version is available version 3.5 price - varies with number of nodes desired published by - Mustang Software Post Office Box 2264 Bakersfield, CA 93303-2264 support BBS - (805) 395-0650 sales hotline - (800) 999-9619 A D V E R T I S M E N T S Advertisements cost $15 dollars for a each issue (3 months). If you are interested in placing an advertisement, please contact me through the US Mail or my BBS system. CHANNEL ONE BBS SYSTEM ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ 80 Lines * 2000 Conferences * 8.0 Gigabytes * 60,000+ Archives │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ▀▀▀▀▀█ █ █ █▀▀▀▀█ ▀▀▀█ █ ▀▀▀█ █ ▀▀▀▀▀ █ ▀█ (R) █ █▄▄▄▄█ █▄▄▄▄█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █▄▄▄▄ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀ ▀ ▀ ▀ ▀ ▀▀▀ ▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Channel 1 Communications (R) * Cambridge, MA * 617-354-8873 │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ 617-354-7077 2400 617-354-3137 HST 617-354-3230 V.32bis Carrier Detect - Issue 6 - page 33