PCBoard 15.1 Demo

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5 ============================================================================== PCBSetup Command Line Parameters Exiting And Checking Your Configuration The PCBOARD.DAT File Specifying File & Paths SysOp Information File Locations Modem Information Node Configuration Event Setup Subscription Configuration Options Security Levels PCBSetup is a utility designed to configure the operation of PCBoard. With PCBSetup you can define new conferences, add more file directories, and even change configuration options which determines how your system operates. There are three ways to access PCBSetup: From the call waiting screen, select PCBSetup. While logged in locally (not with the /LOCALON switch for PCBoard), you can press ALT-S and select PCBoard Configuration (PCBSETUP). From the DOS prompt you can load PCBSETUP.EXE. If a PCBOARD.DAT file cannot be found in the current directory and you have not used the /FILE command line parameter, you will receive an error message stating that PCBOARD.DAT could not be found. If you need to specify a different location for your PCBOARD.DAT file, use PCBSETUP /FILE:[location of PCBOARD.DAT]. For example, to load PCBSetup and tell it to use the data file located in C:\TEMP\, you would type: PCBSETUP /FILE:C:\TEMP\PCBOARD.DAT Once PCBSetup is running, you will see the Main Menu (shown on the previous page). The various functions of PCBSetup are available from these menu options. To select a particular option you can press the letter at the beginning of the line, or you may move the currently highlighted option using the cursor keys and press R. If you make a mistake, press E to return to the previous menu. To get help with a particular screen or option, press F1 to access the online help. Command Line Parameters PCBSetup has two command line parameters that you can use when executing PCBFiler to determine how it should behave. To use a command line switch you must execute PCBSetup from the DOS command prompt and you need to specify the command line parameter after you enter PCBSETUP at the command prompt as shown in the following example: PCBSETUP /CNAMES If you need to enter more than one command line parameter, separate each parameter with a space. PCBSETUP /FILE:H:\TEMP\PCBOARD.DAT /CNAMES /CNAMES Previous versions of PCBoard wrote conference information to a text file called CNAMES while the current version of PCBoard writes this information to CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD. These two files are binary data and consequently are not as easy to edit manually as the older CNAMES file. When this command line switch is used, PCBSetup will reread the CNAMES file instead of using the information stored in CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD. There are advantages and disadvantages to using this switch. First, the advantages: Files that are in text file format are easier to edit with a wide range of editors. If you are adding a lot of conferences, you can easily pattern the new conferences after an existing conferences by cutting and pasting text. The following are the disadvantages to using this switch: The CNAMES is not updated by PCBSetup unless you do a full save when exiting. If a quick save is used, the CNAMES file will not be updated. If you are not careful, you could use a CNAMES file that is not up-to-date and consequently alter your system configuration in an undesirable manner. The CNAMES file does not contain all of the information that the combination of CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD does. In fact, nearly all of the fields listed in the second conference setup screen are not stored in the CNAMES file. This means that if you have PCBSetup re-read the CNAMES file, the default values will be used for all fields that are not written to the CNAMES file. This command line switch is not designed for use by novice SysOps. If you do not have a good knowledge of text file editing, you can really foul up your system configuration by using this switch. If you use this command line switch, begin by making backups of your CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD files. Next, load PCBSetup without the /CNAMES switch and then immediately exit answering Y when asked if you want to save configuration files. This will insure that the CNAMES file is up-to-date. Once you have done these steps, you may proceed to make the changes you need to make to the CNAMES file. /FILE:[filename] Normally, PCBSetup requires that a PCBOARD.DAT file exists in the subdirectory where you load it. If you want to use a PCBOARD.DAT in a location other than the current subdirectory, use this command line switch. To use the /FILE parameter, you need to specify the location of the PCBOARD.DAT after you enter /FILE:. For example, if you want to use a PCBOARD.DAT that is stored in C:\PCB\NODE1\, enter the following to have PCBSetup use that DAT file: PCBSETUP /FILE:C:\PCB\NODE1\PCBOARD.DAT Exiting And Checking Your Configuration To exit PCBSetup you need to press E at the Main Menu. When you do, you will be asked if you wish to save your configuration. The following describes each option available to you: N Do not save any changes you have made to your PCBOARD.DAT file and exit. Any changes you have made to the fields in your conference configuration are automatically saved whenever you exit the conference screen. Q Save all changes to your configuration without checking the validity of the paths and drives in your configuration. This will probably be the selection you will use most, because it is quicker then checking your entire configuration each time you exit PCBSetup. Y Saves all changes to your configuration and checks all paths and drives to make sure they exist. In addition, your CNAMES file will be updated for those utilities that use CNAMES instead of CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD for conference information. If you have any conferences that do not have message bases, the message bases will be initialized for you. The following section describes in more detail what will occur when you select either Y (full save) or Q (quick save) when asked if you wish to save your changes. Full Save PCBoard divides the checking of your system into four sections. At any section you can press E to skip over any of the following sections: Checking Directories While Saving Files At this junction, PCBoard is going to check the drives and paths in your configuration to make sure they are all valid. All filenames and paths listed in all setup screens will be checked to make sure they exist (including conference information) If a path does not exist, you will be shown the path that does not exist, and then asked if you wish to create it. If a drive does not exist, you will be shown which invalid drive you had in your configuration. If the invalid path is in one of your conferences, you will be told what conference and what question has the invalid path. With this in mind, you can quickly and easily fix your configuration to point to a proper path if you need to. Checking BLT.LST file(s) When you see this on your screen, PCBSetup is checking the bulletins defined in each conference's BLT.LST file. Only the paths to each bulletin are checked for validity. If the actual bulletin does not exist, nothing is printed to the screen by PCBSetup. To help speed things up, PCBSetup is smart enough to know when it has checked a BLT.LST before and will skip it. This will save you an immense amount of time especially if you have numerous conferences using the same BLT.LST file. Checking DIR.LST file(s) When you see this on your screen, PCBSetup is checking the file directories defined in each conference's DIR.LST file. Only the paths to each DIR (description) file and attached subdirectory are checked for validity. If the DIR file does not exist, nothing is printed to the screen by PCBSetup. To help speed things up, PCBSetup is smart enough to know when it has checked a DIR.LST before and will skip it. This will save you an immense amount of time especially if you have numerous conferences using the same DIR.LST file. Checking SCRIPT.LST file(s) When you see this on your screen, PCBSetup is checking the scripts defined in each conference's SCRIPT.LST file. Only the paths to each script are checked for validity. If the actual script file does not exist, nothing is printed to the screen by PCBSetup. To help speed things up, PCBSetup is smart enough to know when it has checked a SCRIPT.LST before and will skip it. This will save you an immense amount of time especially if you have numerous conferences using the same SCRIPT.LST file. Checking DLPATH.LST file(s) When you see this on your screen, PCBSetup is checking each path listed to insure that they are valid paths on your system. If you have specified an index file in your DLPATH.LST file, it will only check to insure that the path that points to your index file is valid. To help speed things up, PCBSetup is smart enough to know when it has checked a DLPATH.LST before and will skip it. This will save you an immense amount of time especially if you have numerous conferences using the same DLPATH.LST file. Quick Save A quick save is by far the quickest way to save your configuration. When you choose to save your configuration in quick mode, your configuration is not checked to make sure that all paths are valid. Instead, it simply copies the values that were in memory at the time you exited the program and writes them out to memory. The PCBOARD.DAT File The PCBOARD.DAT file is the main configuration file for PCBoard. In fact, all fields in menu options A-H from the Main Menu are stored inside of this file. If you are running multiple nodes, you probably have a PCBOARD.DAT file for each node. If each node has a separate configuration file, you may change the way the node operates dramatically. For example, you could change one node to point to a different PWRD file. This would allow you to limit access to this node without effecting the other nodes on your system. The disadvantage of having separate PCBOARD.DAT files for each node is quite evident when you have a lot of nodes. If you have 20 nodes operating and each has a separate configuration file, you could spend a lot of time updating all 20 nodes to change the location of a file. You are not forced to use a PCBOARD.DAT for each node. With the ability for PCBOARD.EXE and all of the supporting utilities (PCBFiler, PCBSetup, etc.) to utilize the /FILE command line parameter, you can share data files between nodes. If you choose to share data files between nodes, remember that node specific information such as node number, serial port to use, and other items are all stored in the PCBOARD.DAT file. Therefore, you may want to take advantage of the command line and environment parameters of PCBOARD.EXE to over-ride information that is stored in the configuration file. Specifying File & Paths Throughout PCBSetup, you will be specifying where PCBoard should find filenames and what paths should be used to store files. Because of this, you should have a good knowledge of subdirectories and how they are used by DOS. If you do not, you will most likely have a hard time configuring your PCBoard system to operate the way that you want it to operate. There are two ways that you can specify a path or filename -- absolute and relative. The following sections describe the difference between absolute and relative naming. Absolute Naming Conventions You are probably most familiar with this method of specifying a filename. For example, if you tell someone to view C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT, you have given them an absolute filename. In other words, you told them the drive, the subdirectory (in this case the root directory), and the filename. If they view that file they are guaranteed to view one and only one file because you told them exactly where the file is. To relate this to your PCBoard configuration, you would want to specify absolute filenames when configuring the locations of files that should be shared by all nodes (e.g., user file). That way, you can be assured that the proper filename will be accessed by all nodes. Relative Naming Conventions Specifying a filename in a relative fashion is, for some, a more difficult concept to understand. Relative addressing will take into account the current drive and directory rather than having that information provided via absolute addressing. For example, if you know the file is in the current directory then you could simply reference the filename. You would not need to specify the drive, path, and filename as it would be a waste of time. Another example would be if you wanted to see a directory of all files in your C:\PCB\GEN\ subdirectory while you are sitting at the C:\PCB> DOS prompt. You could type DIR C:\PCB\GEN but it would be even faster to type DIR GEN The reason that you can get away with this is because you are already in the C:\PCB\ subdirectory. Why type it in again? Remember that relative addressing takes the current directory into account and adds the relative information to the end of the filename. When you typed DIR GEN you forced DOS to look for a GEN subdirectory underneath the current subdirectory. If you were to change to your DOS subdirectory and then type DIR GEN you would receive an error message that no files were found because you do not have a C:\DOS\GEN subdirectory, but you do have a C:\PCB\GEN subdirectory. At this point, you have to be asking yourself what good will this relative filename information do for my PCBoard configuration? The answer to that question is "quite a bit" if you are running multiple nodes. Most likely all of your nodes will point to the same CNAMES file. Inside of the CNAMES file more filenames are specified that relate to each conference on your system. For example, the location of the NEWS file for each conference is located in the CNAMES file. If you wanted every node to have an individual NEWS file then you could change the location of the file to point to NEWS instead of something like C:\PCB\GEN\NEWS Because no path or drive information is specified, PCBoard is going to look in the default directory for a file called NEWS. If that file is found, it will be displayed. What really makes all of this work is the fact that no two nodes will use the same default subdirectory. Therefore, you can have node specific NEWS files by using relative addressing. SysOp Information This menu option will allow you to define information about the sysop. You can specify if you wish to let users see your real name among other settings. If you are looking to control the security level of SysOp related functions then you should select the Security Levels option from the Main Menu instead. The following describes each field on the Sysop Information screen: Sysop's Name (when NOT using Real Name) In this field, enter the first name of the SysOp. Enter a name in this field only if you do not wish to use your real name as defined in record #1 of the users file. This field is used in some of the following areas: When entering chat mode with a user. The user will receive a message that says "Hello, this is..." When using F5 to shell to DOS the user is informed who has dropped to DOS. When you are logged in, this will be used for your first name or any time the @FIRST@ macro is used. NOTE: This field is not recognized if you have answered Y to the Use Real Name (Yes=Use name found in USERS file) option. Local Password (used at the Call Waiting screen) The local password gives you the ability to password protect the following buttons on the call-waiting screen. Sysop - Busy Sysop - Not Busy PCBSysMgr PCBFiler PCBSetup and optionally (if you have answered Y to Require Local Password to Exit PCBoard) DOS - Busy DOS - Not Busy If you leave the local password field blank, no password will be asked. If you do enter a password, enter the proper password to access the restricted buttons on the call waiting screen. Entering an invalid password will recycle the modem and return you to the call waiting screen. Require Local Password to Exit PCBoard If you want to protect people from dropping to DOS from the call-waiting screen you can enable this option. One thing you need to keep in mind that is that if someone has access to the keyboard they also have access to reboot the computer and optionally abort the AUTOEXEC.BAT to access DOS. Enabling this option is not a fool-proof way to protect others from accessing DOS on the machine, but it will make it more difficult and maybe discourage an unauthorized person from accessing DOS. N Do not ask for the local password when attempting to exit to DOS. Y Ask for the local password when exiting PCBoard. Use Real Name (Yes=Use name found in USERS file) This option gives you the ability to determine how PCBoard refers to the SysOp defined in record number 1 of the user file. The user defined in this count can use their real name or the name SYSOP depending on how this question is asked. Valid options for this field are: N Any messages that you leave will be shown as having been left by SYSOP regardless of the name in record #1 of the user file. In addition, the Sysop Name field on this screen will now become active. Disabling this function has an additional benefit. A user cannot login to the system using the name SYSOP. Hence, the user name in record #1 must be known to access that particular account. If you decide not to use the name located in the user file, your users will not know the name of that account. Not only would a user that is attempting to hack your account have to get your password right, they would also have to guess your name as well. Y The user name that is found in record #1 of the user file will be used for the operation of the bulletin board. When you leave a message, the user name in record #1 will be stored in the FROM: field, etc. Use Graphics When Logged On Locally When you access the bulletin board by using the Sysop - Busy or Sysop - Not Busy buttons on the call-waiting screen then PCBoard will skip the question that asks which type of graphics you wish to use, your name, password, etc. This option will let you choose if you wish to default to color graphics mode when logging in using the previously mentioned buttons on the call-waiting screen. Valid options are: N Do not use graphics mode when logging in as the SysOp. You may want to choose this setting if you are using a monochrome monitor on your system. Y Assume graphics mode when logging in as the SysOp. File Locations When you select this menu option, you will be presented with an additional menu that separates the file locations into categories. Select the category of file locations that you wish to modify. System Files & Directories From this screen, you can edit the file locations of the most commonly accessed files (often referred to as system files). In each of these fields on this screen, enter the file and/or location where a particular configuration file will be found. Each field and how it relates to your system configuration is explained in the following sections: Name/Loc of Conference Data PCBoard stores the conference information (including the Main Board) in what is referred to as the conference data file. Any fields in the conference configuration screens (Main Board Configuration and Conference Configuration is considered to be conference data. The default filename is CNAMES, but a CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD file are also created in the same location as the CNAMES file. The CNAMES file is a simple text file that contains most, but not all, of the conference configuration information. This file is used by a lot of third-party programs who wish to access configuration information about a particular conference. The CNAMES file is only updated when you exit PCBSetup and answer Y to the Save configuration files question. CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD are the primary files that are used to store conference information. These files are random access to increase the speed that information can be looked up for conference information. These two files are updated automatically by PCBSetup. Location for multiple nodes If you are running all of your nodes from a single machine using a multitasker, then you may store this file in any location, but you should make sure that all nodes point to the same location. On a network, you will want to store the CNAMES file on a server so that all nodes may access it. It is perfectly valid for each node to point to its own CNAMES file, but if you use this type of configuration you will have to update each and every node's CNAMES file whenever you make a change the configuration for a conference. Name/Loc of User File The user file stores the majority of information about each caller on your system. For example, the actual user name, password, and city data is just a small sample of the data that is stored in the user file. Location for multiple nodes If you are running all of your nodes from a single machine using a multitasker, then you may store this file in any location, but you need to make sure that all nodes point to the same location. On a network, you will want to store the user file on a server so that all nodes may access it. Make sure that all nodes access the same user file. Name/Loc of User Info File The user info file contains additional information about each user. This is the file where any TPA or PSA information will be stored about each caller. Basically, you can look at this file as an extension of the user file. Location for multiple nodes Since this file is an extension of the user file, you should treat it in the same manner. This means that it should be stored in a single shared location where all nodes can access it. Name/Loc of Caller Log The caller logs record information about each session on your system. From viewing the caller logs you can determine when a particular user successfully logged in, the major functions that they performed while online (entering messages, transferring files, joining a conference, etc.) If you are running more than one node, the node number will be added to the end of the filename you specify for the caller log. Therefore, if you were running three nodes and you specified C:\PCB\MAIN\CALLER for all nodes then you would find a CALLER1, CALLER2, and CALLER3 file in that subdirectory: If you are running the /100 node version or higher, you should change the name of your caller logs to something like CLR instead of the default (CALLER). The reason you should do this is because CALLER100 would not be a valid DOS filename. The following is a sample log entry (when viewing online): ************************************************************** 09-06-93 (12:47) (3) RAY COOK Off Normally Minutes Used: 15 Back from DOS at 12:47 Opened Door (MAIL) at 12:46 Batch Dnld: 1 Bytes: 76526 Avg. CPS: 1877 (D) SHOWFR11.ZIP Completed using Z (B) T/E=1 CPS=1877 Chatter (6) Conference Joined Support (1) Conference Joined Caller Security: 30 Caller Number: 1,061,432 => CONNECT 14400/ARQ/V32/LAPM/V42BIS 09-06-93 (12:32) (3) RAY COOK (14400E) (G) JACKSON, TN ************************************************************** Location for multiple nodes When running multiple nodes, you should store your caller log files in a common location for all nodes to access. If you are multitasking multiple nodes on a single machine, this means that you specify the same location for all nodes. For a multiple node installation on a network, all caller logs should be stored in one common location on the server with each node pointing to the same location. If all nodes do not write their caller logs to the same location, SysOp command 13 will not function properly because it will not be able to access all files. Name/Loc of Group CHAT File When callers use the CHAT command to communicate with one another, PCBoard uses the Group CHAT file to handle the communications between the various nodes and chat channels. This file will be a fixed size with the actual file size being determined by the total number of nodes your package supports. For example, the group CHAT file for a 250 node version of PCBoard would be larger than the group CHAT file for a 10 node version. Location for multiple nodes Like the user file, your group CHAT file must be stored in the same physical location on disk for group chat to function properly. Location of Group CHAT .CAP files If you have enabled the option in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Configuration Switches which deals with capturing the group chat session to disk, this field will specify where the capture files will be. The contents of the capture files include date and time stamps, the node number of the caller, the caller's name, and the text of the complete line of information typed. Each channel has its own filename. The filename will be created in the subdirectory that you have specified to store the group chat .CAP files. The actual filename is [node#].CAP. For example, you may have a 1.CAP, 2.CAP, etc. Also, any information such as when a caller joins the channel, leaves the channel, makes it private, etc., will also be captured. Location for multiple nodes It is not required that you specify the same location for the .CAP files on all of your nodes. However, it would be desireable to do so in case you want to use a text search utility or something similar. You could then easily find all of the .CAP files in one single location. Name/Loc of Statistics File This file is used to record the statistics that are shown on the call waiting screen such as the number of calls to the system, the number of uploads and downloads, the number of messages left, and the most recent caller information. Location for multiple nodes Because the call-waiting screen allows you to switch between local and system statistics, you will want to specify the same location for your Statistics file. Otherwise, your system statistics will not be accurate. Name/Loc of USERNET.XXX File You can think of the USERNET.XXX file as the messenger between nodes. If you are running a single node system, then you do not need to worry about this file as it is not accessed. This file is used for some of the following features in PCBoard: Request node chats with other users Send node broadcasts with the BR command from within PCBoard. Protect users from logging in multiple times Display information about who is online and what they are doing. Drop nodes to DOS or logoff users from another node. Location for multiple nodes It is essential that all nodes point to the same physical file for your USERNET.XXX file. If they do not, you will see a situation where a particular node will be isolated from the rest of the nodes (they will not be able to see a list of other users that are online, etc.) Name/Loc of Transfer Summary File This file is created by PCBoard detailing the files that have been downloaded or uploaded on your system. If the callers to your system transfer a lot of information you may find that you have to periodically delete this file to reduce the amount of disk space that it uses. The information about each file transfer is stored on a single line in the transfer summary file. Each item on the line is separated by a comma and contains the following information: Whether the transfer was an upload (U) or a download (D) The name of the user who transferred the file The date that the file was transferred The time that the file was transferred The filename that was transferred File transfer protocol letter that was used The number of transfer errors that occurred Finally, the last item is the transfer rate in characters per seconds (cps) NOTE: You may choose to not keep a record of file transfers that occur by leaving this field blank. Location for multiple nodes This is another one of those files that it is not essential to have all nodes point to the same file, but it is desirable. If you need to keep the file transfers for a particular node seperate from the entire system then go ahead and have that node point to a different location. Name/Loc of Swap File When PCBoard is configured to swap itself out of memory during a shell (PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control), it will normally be swapped out to memory (EMS or XMS). If there is insufficient free memory to hold the PCBoard memory image, it will instead be written out to disk. In case the memory image has to be swapped to disk, you need to enter the filename where you want the file to be stored. The default is to store it in a filename called PCBSWAP.$$$ in the current directory. Location for multiple nodes Because the PCBSWAP.$$$ contains a memory image, it is critical that no two nodes share the same PCBSWAP.$$$ file. Location of PCBTEXT Files Virtually all of the text and prompts that PCBoard displays are contained in a PCBTEXT file. Each language on your system will have a different PCBTEXT file that you can customize to suit your own needs with MKPCBTXT.EXE. In this field, enter the drive and subdirectory where your PCBTEXT files will be stored. If you are not using more than one language on your system, you will have only one PCBTEXT file. Location for multiple nodes For the sake of speed you could have each node point to local copies of your PCBTEXT files. You may find, however, that pointing all nodes to one location and pre-loading your PCBTEXT files (PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Configuration Switches) will increase performance. This gives you the speed advantage and also the advantage of editing one set of PCBTEXT files when you need to make a change. Locations of User Index Files The user index files are used to quickly access the name of users on the system and to point to their actual user record number. These files are essential to the operation of your system. In this field, enter the drive and subdirectory where you wish to store your user index files. PCBoard will maintain an index for each letter of the alphabet (PCBNDX.A through PCBNDX.Z). Location for multiple nodes As with the user file, all nodes should point to the same physical location for storing the user index files. If you are running a network, make sure that all nodes point to the same location on the server (since drive letters may vary from workstation to workstation). Location of Temporary Work Files While users are logged into the system, it is quite likely that PCBoard will need to create some temporary files along the way. Each node has a temporary work directory where these files will be placed. This short list shows just a few things that are stored in the temporary directory: QWK mail packets (compressing and uncompressing) Message capture files Temporary storage (upload description until posted, etc.) In this field, enter the drive and subdirectory where you want the temporary files to be stored for this particular node. An ideal location for temporary files is on a RAM drive. Location for multiple nodes Each node in your multinode setup must specify a unique location for their temporary work directory. The directory that you specify must not be the current or default directory. Usually the best solution is to add a TEMP directory underneath the current directory. Therefore, if you are running PCBOARD.EXE from C:\PCB\NODE1 then your temp files may be stored in C:\PCB\NODE1\TEMP. Location of Help Files There are numerous help files for PCBoard. These help files detail information about commands or areas of the system that have need a more thorough explanation. The format for PCBoard to look for a help file is HLP[option] where option is the command or topic that is being discussed. You can also create help files for your doors or other new commands that you add via CMD.LST (PCBSetup | File Locations | Configuration Files). To accomplish this, create a text file in the directory that you specify for help files that has the same name as the command or door. For example, if you have a door called MAIL and you wish to create a help file, you would create a text file called MAIL in the location you specify for your help files. Then when your users ask for help with H command they can type MAIL and have the text file that you created displayed to them. Location for multiple nodes If you do not plan to update your help files frequently it may be a good idea to have local copies for each node if you are running on a network. That way you can reduce un-necessary traffic. If you are running all of your nodes on a single computer it does not matter where you store your help files as long as all nodes point to a valid copy. If you can see that you will be updating your help files frequently then you should store your help files in a single shared location to reduce the amount of maintenance on your system. Location of Login Security Files When a user logs into the system, PCBoard has the capability of displaying security specific files. These files are displayed to the user just after they complete their login but before the conference news file is displayed. The filenames for the login security files are simply the security level of the caller. For example, if you want to create a file that only security level 20 would see, then you create a file named 20 in the location that you specify for the login security files. Because these files are normal display files you can also make them graphics or language specific if you wish. Location for multiple nodes Because these files are only accessed once per login, it might be best to store these in a single location where all of your nodes can access the files. This will help reduce the amount of maintenance you will have to do on your system. Configuration Files Name/Loc of PWRD/Security File The PWRD file defines the security levels that you will use on your system. For each security level you can specify the following information: Daily/session time limit Daily kilobyte limit Batch file limit File and byte ratios Maximum total file and byte limit Initial file and byte credits Time limit for session or entire day Allow alias usage Allow multiple logins To edit your PWRD file, press F2 while you have the Name/Loc of PWRD/Security File field highlighted. When you do, you will see the following screen: There are several keyboard commands that are active when you are editing your PWRD file. These keyboard commands allow you to delete entries, insert entries, etc. The following are valid: ESC Exit the PWRD editor. If you have made any changes to the PWRD file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the PWRD file and the various fields that you can edit. F2 Rotate screen views. There are 16 fields that you can edit in the PWRD file. Not all 16 can be placed on one screen. To access the other fields, you need to press F2 to rotate to the next set of fields. ALT-R Repeat currently highlighted line. If you are creating entries for security levels that are very similar in definition, you can use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. ALT-I Insert a new security level. If you need to add a new security level between two existing security levels then you would using this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current security level. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted security level. There is no undo function to get the original line back so if you make a mistake, exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. There are several fields inside this file. These fields allow you to control time limits, byte limits, and more. The following describes each column in the PWRD file in detail: Password In order for a user to be assigned the values for a line not only does their security level have to match, but also their login password must match the one that you enter in the Password field. If this field is blank, then the password of the user is not checked. Do not get confused and assume that if a user enters a password that is in this field that they will be assigned the security level and options that you have defined. This field does not work that way. Sec This field determines the security level that you are defining. When a user logs into the system, PCBoard will lookup the security level of the user in the PWRD file. You need to have one entry for each security level that you have given to a user. In other words, if you have assigned security levels 5, 10, 20, 30, 110, and 120 to actual user records then you must have a corresponding entry in the PWRD file. If you do not, PCBoard will print No security level match in PWRD file and default their time to 10 minutes and 0 bytes when they login. Time The amount of time, in minutes, you wish to give a user per day or per session. If you have answered Y to the Enforce Time Limit field, the time limit you enter will be for each day. If you answered N to that question, the time limit will be renewed each time the user calls. If you enter a time limit of 0, it will cause PCBoard to think that the user has accessed a Closed node or system. A lot of systems have public and private nodes. To make a node private, you would need to create a second PWRD file that had a time limit of 0 for each of the security levels that you wish to lock out. Daily Bytes The number of kilobytes (K) that you want each security level to have available per day. If you enter 0 for the number of bytes available then it effectively disables downloads unless they are defined as FREE or NOTIME downloads by the FSEC file To give a security level unlimited download bytes you can enter 32767. A user who has unlimited download bytes can download files until they run out of time. Base Baud This field allows you to adjust the maximum daily download "K-Byte" limit based on the speed of the caller. For example, you may want to allow 2400 bps callers to download 400k per day. You could set the kilobytes per day to 400k per day. However, to your high speed callers who may have the same security level, 400k may not seem to be enough. By setting the base baud rate to 2400 and the kilobytes per day to 400 you will be giving your 9600 bps callers 1600k. They get four times the amount of bytes because they are calling in at a speed which is four times greater than 2400. As a general rule, you will want to enter the base baud rate as the lowest bps rate that callers will be calling in. In the previous example the base baud rate was set for 400k if a 2400 bps caller and at 1600k if the user was a 9600 bps. This is more desirable than defining it at 1600k for 9600 bps and letting PCBoard size it down. Batch Limit This field defines the number of files that a user can transfer in a batch transfer. For example, if you want a user to download a maximum of 5 files in each batch, enter 5 in this field. You may enter any number from 0 to 99 in this field. If you enter 0, the maximum batch is set to a default of 30 files. You can disable batch transfers for all users on your system with the Disallow BATCH Uploads switch in PCBSetup | Configuration Switches | File Transfers. File Ratio If you want to control the number of files that a user can download based on how many files they have uploaded to the system, you want to enforce a file ratio. In this field, enter the number of downloads that you want the user to be able to download for each file that they upload. For example, if you enter 4.0 in this field, a user must upload 1 file for every 4 files they download. Entering a value of 0.0 will disable the file ratio. Byte Ratio If you want to control the number of bytes that a user can download based on how many files they have uploaded to the system, you want to enforce a byte ratio. In this field, enter the number of bytes you want to allow the user to download before they must upload another byte. In other words, if you want your users to be able to download 20 bytes for every byte they upload, enter a value of 20.0 in this field. Entering a value of 0.0 will disable the file ratio. File Limit If you wish to control the total number of files that a user of the security level you are defining can download, you want to impose a file limit. In this field, enter the maximum number of files that a user can download from your system. Once this limit has been reached, the caller cannot download any more files. This type of limit would be ideal if you are using a "pay-as-you-go" type system where you allow a user to download a certain amount of files for some sort of compensation. When the file limit has been reached, you can reset the total files downloaded field in System Manager (while editing a user record) once more compensation has been received. As with the other limits that you can define in the PWRD file, entering a File Limit of 0 will disable the limit checking. NOTE: Any file that is specified as a FREE or NOTIME download in the FSEC file will not be counted as a file downloaded by a user. KByte Limit If you wish to control the total number of bytes that a user of the security level you are defining can download, you will be enforcing a byte limit. In this field, enter the maximum number of bytes a user can download from your system. Once this limit has been reached, the caller cannot download any more bytes. This type of limit would be ideal if you are using a "pay-as-you-go" type system where you allow a user to download a certain amount of bytes in exchange for some sort of compensation. When the byte limit has been reached, you can reset the total bytes downloaded field in System Manager (while editing a user record) once more compensation has been received. As with the other limits you can define in the PWRD file, entering a kilobyte limit of 0 will disable the limit checking. NOTE: Any file that is specified as a FREE or NOTIME download in the FSEC file will not be counted as bytes downloaded by a user. The rest of the fields that you can define in the PWRD file must be accessed by pressing F2 to rotate the screen view. Once you have pressed F2, you will see the following additional fields: File Credit This field gives you the ability to implement a grace period if you are enforcing a file ratio. The value that you enter in this field will be seen as an upload credit as if the user had really uploaded this many files. Sometimes it takes users a while to become familiar with a ratio system. In a situation such as this, you may want to give your users an initial upload file credit. For instance, if the File Credit is set at 10 then the caller may download 10 files before reaching a 1:1 ratio. A total of 20 files can be downloaded before a 2:1 ratio would prevent the downloading of a 21st file. K-Byte Cred. This field gives you the ability to implement a grace period if you are enforcing a byte ratio. The value that you enter in this field will be seen as an upload credit as if the user had really uploaded this many bytes. Sometimes it takes users a while to become familiar with a ratio system. In a situation such as this, you may want to give your users an initial upload byte credit. For instance, with a byte ratio of 10.0 a brand new caller would be able to download, at most, a single 10-byte file. To make it more fair, you could give the user an initial credit of 20 kilobytes. Then the caller would be able to download as much as 200 kilobytes before they would exceed their ratio. Enforce Time With this setting you can choose if the time limit that you defined is a daily time limit or a session time limit. A setting of Y enforces the time limit to be a per-day limit. A setting of N would enforce a session limit letting the user log back in immediately and get the time limit defined for their security level each time they call in. Allow Alias If you have installed the Alias PSA, you can control which security levels will be able to use Alias names in those conferences that allow aliases. If you want a security level to be able to use an alias, this option must be enabled. Force Read For some security levels, you may want to force callers to read mail that they have been notified is waiting for them. If you do, you should enable this option. As soon as the user of this security level receives a you have mail waiting... message, PCBoard will force the user to read this mail in read-only mode (will not update the last message read). For the user to be notified, their message waiting flags have to be set. NOTE: Not all third-party software will update the message waiting flags, but PCBoard always will. Demo Acct. Setting this answer to Y will allow a user at this security level to log into the system multiple times. In other words, you could have an account on your system that you could use for demonstration purposes. With this setting, you could have several users logging into your system using that account whereas PCBoard normally disallows users of the same name from logging in at the same time. If you use accounts with this security level for demonstrating then you may want to clear out the password field in your demonstration accounts. With a blank password, PCBoard will not prompt the caller to enter a password. NOTE: When set to allow multiple logins, PCBoard protects the W user command and also resets the last message read pointers because they are seen as demonstration accounts. Name/Loc of FSEC File The FSEC file gives you the ability to control the following: Protecting files for download by security level or by password Determining what files are free downloads Whenever a user attempts to download a file, PCBoard will first check your DLPATH.LST for the current conference to see if the file can be found. If the file is found, then PCBoard will check your FSEC file to make sure that the user has sufficient security or knows the correct password to download the file. To edit your FSEC file, press F2 while you have the Name/Loc of FSEC File field highlighted. When you do, you will see the following screen: There are several keyboard commands active when you are editing your FSEC file. These keyboard commands allow you to delete entries, insert entries, etc. The following are valid: ESC Exit the FSEC editor. If you have made any changes to the FSEC file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. After answering, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the FSEC file and the various fields you can edit. ALT-R Repeat currently highlighted line. If you are creating entries that are very similar in definition, you can use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. ALT-I Insert a new security level. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, you would using this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current security level. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back so if you make a mistake, you should exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. You will notice there are three fields in this file. These fields allow you to specify the subdirectory and/or filename(s) you wish to control and the security and/or password required to access the file. Drive \ Path In this field, specify the subdirectory you wish to control access to. You can enter any valid DOS path in this field. Make sure that whatever you enter in this field matches one of your entries in your DLPATH.LST file or it will be ignored. For example, if you enter C:\RESTRICT\ in this field but in your DLPATH.LST is the entry \RESTRICT\, a match will not occur. If you wish to control access to an entire drive, enter the drive letter followed by a colon. For example, to control access to all of drive F, enter F: in the field. If you leave this field blank, whatever you enter for the filename will be controlled no matter what download path it is found in. For example, if you have a bunch of files in different subdirectories that begin with FAQ, save yourself several entries in the FSEC file by leaving the Drive \ Path field blank and enter FAQ*.* in the filename field. File Name In this field you should enter the filename you wish to protect. You may enter any valid DOS filename or wildcard in this field. For example, if you wish to simply protect SALE0393.ARJ, you would enter that filename in this field. However, if you wished to protect every file that begins with SALE, you would enter SALE*.* in this field. If you leave this field blank, every filename that is found in the subdirectory that you entered in the Drive \Path field will be protected. In other words, this field defaults to *.* (all files). Sec In this field, enter the security level that is required to download the file(s) defined by the first two fields. If you enter a security level of 0, it is assumed that the file is a FREE file that does not get recorded as a downloaded file in the user's record. Password The password field allows you to enter a password that is required in order to download the files that are defined by the first two fields. There are two exceptions and those are the words FREE and NOTIME. These two passwords have special meaning in PCBoard. The FREE password will make it so that the files or bytes downloaded do not get updated when a user downloads a FREE file. NOTIME is only slightly different in that no time is deducted for downloading a NOTIME file. Once the password has been entered, it will not be asked for again during the session. This means that if the user's login password is the same as the file password, the password will not be asked when attempting to download a file protected with the same password. The order that you list the entries in your FSEC file are very important because PCBoard will act on the first match that it finds. Therefore, you will want to list your most specific entries at the top and your more generic entries towards the bottom of the file. For example: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- *.* 20 Q:\FREE\ MEMBER*.* 0 FREE This example would not work because every file would match on the first entry and PCBoard would act on it. Instead, you would want to reverse these entries so that PCBoard checks to see if the file is in Q:\FREE\ first. As a general rule, you could order your FSEC in the following manner: * Entry has a subdirectory and a filename specified * Entry has a subdirectory but no filename specified * Entry has only a filename specified * Entry has *.* for a filename and no subdirectory specified. * Perhaps the simplest example would be if you wanted to allow any user to get files from your Y:\FREE\ subdirectory but only users who have a security level of 20 or higher can download any other files. In this case you would make the following entries in your FSEC file: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- Y:\FREE\ *.* 0 FREE *.* 20 As another example, let's assume you want to protect the files in two subdirectories with a particular password. In this case, you would make the following entries:' Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- Q:\CHARTS\ *.* 20 MAKE_MY_DAY! R:\SALES\ *.* 20 CHERRY-PIE Finally, let's assume that you have a CD-ROM on-line as drive X. You only want to allow those users which have contributed to your system (level 50 or above) to download files from your CD-ROM. You want to protect all of the files in drive X but you certainly do not want to have to enter all of the subdirectories into the FSEC file. In the Drive \ Path field. Instead, enter the drive letter you wish to protect as in the following example: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- X: *.* 50 Name/Loc of UPSEC File The UPSEC file is very similar to the FSEC file except that it allows you to control the files that get uploaded to your system rather than the files that are downloaded. For instance, you may decide to only accept files that have a .ZIP extension. If this is what you desire, then the UPSEC file is where you will configure your system to do this. Whenever a user attempts to download a file, PCBoard will first check your DLPATH.LST for the current conference to see if the file can be found. If the file is found, PCBoard will check your UPSEC file to make sure that the user has sufficient security or knows the correct password to upload the file. To edit your UPSEC file, press F2 while you have the Name/Loc of UPSEC File field highlighted. When you do, you will see the following screen: There are several keyboard commands that are active when you are editing your UPSEC file. These keyboard commands allow you to delete entries, insert entries, etc. The following are valid: ESC Exit the UPSEC editor. If you have made any changes to the UPSEC file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the UPSEC file and the various fields you can edit. ALT-R Repeat currently highlighted line. If you are creating entries that are very similar in definition, you can use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. ALT-I Insert a new security level. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, you would using this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current security level. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back so if you make a mistake, exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. You will notice there are three fields in this file. These fields allow you to specify the subdirectory and/or filename(s) you wish to control and the security and/or password required to access the file. Drive \ Path In this field, specify the subdirectory you wish to control access to. You can enter any valid DOS path in this field. If you wish to control access to an entire drive, enter the drive letter followed by a colon. For example, to control access to all of drive F then you would enter F: in the field. If you leave this field blank, it is the same as saying any drive and any subdirectory on the entire system. File Name In this field you should enter the filename you wish to protect. You may enter any valid DOS filename or wildcard in this field. For example, if you wish to prevent users from uploading any filename that ends with a .COM extension, enter *.COM in this field. If you leave this field blank, every filename that is found in the subdirectory that you entered in the Drive \Path field will be protected. In other words, this field defaults to *.* (all files) when left blank. Sec In this field, enter the security level that is required to upload the file(s) that are defined by the first two fields. If you enter a security level of 0, anyone may upload the files specified. Password The password field allows you to enter a password that is required in order to upload the files that are defined by the first two fields. Once the user has entered the password, they will not be asked for it again during that session. This means that if the user's login password is the same as the file password, the password for the file will not be asked for. The order that you list the entries in your UPSEC file are very important because PCBoard will act on the first match that it finds. Therefore, you will want to list your most specific entries at the top and your more generic entries towards the bottom of the file. For example: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- *.* 20 Q:\CONF1\PRIVUPLD\ *.GIF 0 This example would not work because every file would match on the first entry and PCBoard would act on it. Instead, you would want to reverse these entries so that PCBoard checks to see if the upload would go to Q:\CONF1\PRIVUPLD\ first. As a general rule, you could order your UPSEC in the following manner: * Entry has a subdirectory and a filename specified * Entry has a subdirectory but no filename specified * Entry has only a filename specified * Entry has *.* for a filename and no subdirectory specified. Perhaps the most practical example would be to illustrate how you make it so that users could only upload compressed files and only those compressed files that you wish to allow. You could create the following FSEC file for allowing only *.ZIP files to be uploaded to your system: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- *.ZIP 0 *.* 100 When a user uploads a file, PCBoard will check the UPSEC file to see if the filename ends with .ZIP. If it does not, it proceeds onto the next entry in the file. Obviously the last entry will match any file that is uploaded. The catch, however, is that if no matches were found on the previous entries in your UPSEC file, they will not be able to upload the file unless their security level is 100 or higher. Another example would be if you wanted to allow .ZIP files to be uploaded anywhere on your system but you only wanted .GIF files to be uploaded in conference #3. In a case such as this, you would make the following UPSEC file: Drive \ Path File Name Sec Password -------------------------------- -------------- ----- -------------- D:\CONF3\PRIVUPLD\ *.GIF 0 *.ZIP 0 *.* 100 PCBoard sends all uploads initially to the private upload directory so make sure if you are trying to protect uploads to a particular conference, enter the location of the private uploads regardless of whether all uploads are public or private. This example assumes the private upload directory for conference #3 is D:\CONF3\PRIVUPLD\. As you can see, a user could only upload a filename that ends with .GIF if the private upload directory for the conference is D:\CONF3\PRIVUPLD. Name/Loc of User Trashcan File The trashcan file gives you the ability to protect users from creating accounts with user names that are listed in your trashcan file. This means that you can protect users from logging into your system with words that you may find offensive. To edit the trashcan file, you highlight the field on the screen which says Name/Loc of User Trashcan File and then press F2. When you do, you will see a screen similar to the following: In the trashcan file editor, the following keyboard commands are available: ESC Exit the trashcan editor. If you have made any changes to the trashcan file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the trashcan file. PgDn View the next 15 entries. On each screen of the trashcan editor, 15 entries can be displayed. If you want to view the next 15 entries in the file, use this keyboard command. PgUp View the previous 15 entries. To view the previous 15 entries of the trashcan file, use this keyboard command. ALT-I Insert a new line. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, use this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current line. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back. If you make a mistake, exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. The trashcan file is accessed whenever a new user logs into a system. If any of the entries in the trashcan file are part of the new user's name, PCBoard will not allow them to continue. For example, if you have the word ENTER in your trashcan file a user could login as THE ENTERPRISE, but not as ENTER THE NIGHT. The key difference is that ENTER is not a separate word in the name. As another example, if you have the word THE in the trashcan file, a user name such as THE WIND, or THE WILD ONE would fail. A name such as JOHN THEOS would not fail because the word THE does not exist as an entire single word. Name/Loc of Protocol Data File The protocol data file is the configuration file that stores information about the file transfer protocols that are available on your system. In order to transfer files from your system to the remote user's system or vice versa, a file transfer protocol must be used. There is no one standard file transfer protocol, therefore, PCBoard gives you the ability to define up to 36 different protocols for your system. To edit your protocol data file, highlight the line which says Name/Loc of Protocol Data File and press F2. When you do, you will see the following screen: The protocol data file consists of seven fields for each protocol entry. The following describes each field in detail: Use Each protocol in PCBoard is referenced by a protocol letter rather than the name of the protocol. The letter that you enter in this field is the letter that will be used while on-line to reference the protocol. You may enter any letter or number (A-Z and 0-9) for a total of 36 possible protocol definitions. Type This field describes the type of protocol that you are defining. The following are the valid options: I Internal. An internal protocol is one that is implemented inside of PCBoard itself. You could call these built-in protocols if you wish. There are seven protocols that are internal to PCBoard: (A) ASCII (X) XModem/Checksum (C) Xmodem/CRC (O) 1K-Xmodem (F) 1K-Xmodem/G (Y) Ymodem BATCH (G) Ymodem/G BATCH If you are defining an internal protocol, you must use the appropriate protocol letter (shown in parentheses in the internal protocol list) for the internal protocol to be used. S Shelled. This type of protocol refers to an external protocol (one that is not built into PCBoard). You should define an external protocol as this type if it is a single file transfer protocol (not capable of batch transfers) or if it does not use the DSZLOG style log for recording transfer activity. If you define a protocol as this type, PCBoard will not let a user transfer more than one file at a time. D DSZLog. This type of protocol refers to an external protocol. Any protocol that is capable of recording transfer information in the DSZLOG style format should use this protocol type. If you are unsure if the protocol you are trying to add supports DSZ style logging, please refer to the protocol documentation or the author of the protocol. PCBoard will allow callers to use any protocol of this type for batch file transfers. B Bi-directional. You should only define a protocol as this type if it is capable of sending and receiving files at the same time. Only a handful of protocols exist that support bi-directional transfers. If you do use a protocol that supports bi-directional transfers, make sure that it also supports DSZLOG style logging. If it does not, PCBoard will not be able to properly determine the files that were transferred. Size Just before PCBoard begins a download it will print the size of the file(s) that will be transferred and approximately how many protocol blocks required to transfer the file. Each protocol uses a packet or block size. Most of the advanced protocols will send 1024 bytes at a time whereas protocol like Xmodem will send 128 bytes at a time. PCBoard uses the value that you enter in this field to determine how many protocol blocks will be transferred. This information really is purely statistical in nature and the protocol will continue to function properly even if you do not enter the right value. MNP Some file transfers protocols will off-load the error correction on the modems in order to get better throughput. If you are installing a protocol which relies on error correcting modems, enter Y in this field. When this field is set to Y, a user may only select this protocol if they have established an error correcting connection (e.g., MNP, v.42, etc.) For this to work properly, both your modem and the remote modem must have established an error-correcting connection. Port Open Normally, PCBoard will shut down the RTS signal and unhook itself from the serial port interrupt prior to executing an external protocol. It is then up to the external protocol to initialize the serial port for proper communications. This is the method that nearly every external protocol expects to function properly. However, some protocols may require that PCBoard leave the port 'as-is' before turning control over to the external protocol. If you run into a protocol that absolutely requires this then set this field to Y. If you are not sure, leave this option set to N or you could see some unpredictable results when you return back to PCBoard from the external protocol. Lock Lines The status lines, which PCBoard moves to the top of the screen during a shelled protocol, may be frozen in place to avoid having them scrolled off the top of the screen. This way you can see who is on-line transferring files when users are using external protocols. This only works for those external protocols which use BIOS to write to the screen or if the protocol does not write to the top two lines of the screen. To lock the lines in position, set this option to Y. Description In this field, enter a short description of the protocol that is being defined. This description is displayed to the caller whenever they are choosing from the list of protocols that have been defined on your system. You may enter up to 37 characters to describe each file transfer protocol. As mentioned previously, internal protocols are built in PCBoard. External protocols are separate programs and are not really related to PCBoard. Batch files are used to execute external protocols. PCBoard expects these batch files to be named in the following manner: PCBR?.BAT where ? is the protocol letter of the external protocol you are defining. This batch file will be executed whenever you receive a file (a user uploads to your system). PCBS?.BAT where ? is the protocol letter of the external protocol you are defining. This batch file will be executed whenever your send a file (a user downloads from your system). An external version of Zmodem is included with your package. If you look in the directory where you installed PCBoard, you will see a PCBRZ.BAT and a PCBSZ.BAT file. These are the two batch files that will get executed when a user requests Zmodem for their transfer protocol. For further information on setting up external protocols please see the Batch Files chapter of this Manual. NOTE: If you have defined a protocol and it is not showing up when a user attempts to set their default protocol, it may be due to one of the following: The protocol that is not being listed is marked as a protocol that requires an error-correcting session (MNP or v.42). The user that is on-line has not established an error-correcting session (the connect speed on the status line does not have an E on the end). The protocol that is not listed is an external protocol and one or both of the external protocol batch files are missing. Name/Loc of Multi-Lang. Data File The multi-language data file is the file that controls what languages (if any) are defined for use on your system. The ability to configure multiple languages on your system gives you the ability to cater to more users who may not speak the same language. To edit the multi-language data file highlight the line on the screen that says Name/Loc of Multi-Lang. Data File and press F2. You will see a screen which resembles the following: The following describes each of the fields in this file: Language The name of the language. This is the text that is displayed to the caller when they are asked to choose a language at login. You should include the number of the language on this line. The first language in the file will be assigned language #1, the second language will get language #2, etc. Extension The filename extension for language specific files. For example, if you are adding the French language, you may want to make the extension .FRE. This means if you had a file called WELCOME.FRE it would be displayed to anyone who selected the French language at login. Country If you also want PCBoard to add date, numerical separator, and capitalization support for the language that you are defining, you need to enter the country number to use as defined by COUNTRY.SYS. For the French language this would be 033. CodePage The code page is also a function of COUNTRY.SYS and defines what characters are available in the language you are defining. This information should be provided in your operating system manual. As an example, the French language would use 850 in this field. Yes Since Yes and No are not the same in all languages, you can define what character will be used to represent a response of Yes. In French, you most likely would like to use the letter O. No As with the Yes field, the language you are defining may use a character other than N to represent a response of No. Simply enter the character that you wish to use to represent a response of No. There are several keyboard commands which give you the ability to add and delete entries, and more. They are as follows: ESC Exit the multilingual editor. If you have made any changes to the multilingual file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the PCBML.DAT file. PgDn View the next 15 entries. On each screen of the multilingual editor, 15 entries can be displayed. If you want to view the next 15 entries in the file, use this keyboard command. PgUp View the previous 15 entries. To view the previous 15 entries, use this keyboard command. ALT-I Insert a new line. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, use this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current line. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back. If you make a mistake, exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. For more information about the country code and code page information please see the discussion about COUNTRY.SYS in the Internationalization section of the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Name/Loc of Color Definition File PCBFiler has a menu option you can use to customize the colors used in your directory files. PCBoard will read this information from PCBFiler configuration file (PCBFILER.DEF) to colorize your directory files on-the-fly. The configuration file will be created in the same directory as PCBFILER.EXE. In this field, enter the location and name of your PCBFILER.DEF file. If the PCBFILER.DEF file cannot be found in the location that you specify, your file directories will appear in monochrome rather than the colors that you desire. Name/Loc of Default CMD.LST File The CMD.LST file defines commands that you can be used to add, change, or even replace commands available to your callers. You can define commands that stuff the keyboard with certain text, run PPE files, or execute a menu file. In this field, enter the name and location of the default CMD.LST file. This file will be used in any conferences that do not have a conference specific file defined. To edit this file, highlight the line which says Name/Loc of Default CMD.LST File and then press F2. You will see a screen which resembles the one on the following page: While in this editor, these keyboard commands are available: ESC Exit the CMD.LST editor. If you have made any changes to the CMD.LST file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the CMD.LST file. PgDn View the next 15 entries. On each screen of the trashcan editor, 15 entries can be displayed. If you want to view the next 15 entries in the file, use this keyboard command. PgUp View the previous 15 entries. To view the previous 15 entries of the CMD.LST file, use this keyboard command. ALT-I Insert a new line. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, use this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line that you can edit to suit your needs. ALT-D Delete current line. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back. If you make a mistake, exit without saving and then attempt to make the changes again. ALT-R Repeat current line. If you are creating entries that are very similar in definition, use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. There are three fields that are used to define each command in the CMD.LST file. The following describes each field in detail: Command You can enter up to 15 characters to define a command. The text entered in this field will be used whenever the command is executed. For example, if you enter MAIL in this field, a user must type MAIL to access the command you are defining. Security In this field, enter the security level that is required to execute the entry you are defining. If the user does not have a security level equal to or greater than the number that you enter, a Menu Selection is not available message will be displayed to the user. Replacement When a caller executes a command you define, you can have the command run a .PPE file, a .MNU file, or have it simulate the user keystrokes. If you wish to run a .PPE file then specify the full path and filename you wish to run including the .PPE extension. If the filename that you specify cannot be found, no action will occur when the command is executed. To run a .MNU file specify the full path and filename that you wish to run including the .MNU extension. If the filename that you specify cannot be found then no action will occur when the command is executed. If you do not specify a .MNU or a .PPE file then the text that you enter in this field will be stuffed into the keyboard so that it appears that the user actually typed the text that is in this field. This would be useful to combine frequently used commands into one easy to remember command. Any commands that you define in the CMD.LST file will be found before any other internal command or door name is executed. This is the reason that any commands that you define in this file will override internal commands of the same name. If you define a command that is more than one character in length, you do not have to type in the entire command for PCBoard to act on it. PCBoard simply needs is to be able to guarantee that what is typed will make it a unique command. For example, if you have a command named ORDER as the only entry in CMD.LST, you could enter OR to open the command because there are no others beginning with OR either as an internal command or in your CMD.LST file. As another example, you could create a command called NEWFILES that would stuff N;S;A into the keyboard. This would provide an easy way for your users to display the new files in a particular conference without having to remember to type in a more cryptic command such as N;S;A. To define this new command, make the following entry in CMD.LST: Command Security PPE/MNU File -or- Keystroke Replacement -------------- -------- --------------------------------------- NEWFILES 0 N;S;A^M Assuming that you have a .PPE file that you wish to run in place of the E user command you could make the following entry in your CMD.LST file: Command Security PPE/MNU File -or- Keystroke Replacement -------------- -------- --------------------------------------- E 0 C:\PCB\PPE\EMSG.PPE As you can see by this sample entry, any time a user executes the E user command, PCBoard will run EMSG.PPE located in the C:\PCB\PPE\ subdirectory instead. Having a command execute a .MNU file is just as simple as running a .PPE file. All you have to do is to specify the name of the .MNU file that you wish to run as shown in the following entry: Command Security PPE/MNU File -or- Keystroke Replacement -------------- -------- --------------------------------------- ORDER 0 C:\PCB\MNU\ORDER.MNU This entry will execute C:\PCB\MNU\ORDER.MNU whenever a user types in the ORDER command. Name/Loc of All-Files DLPATH.LST If you have files available for download in several conferences, you may want to use this file to protect users from uploading files which do not exist in the current conference but may exist in another conference on the system. Normally, PCBoard will check the DLPATH.LST file of the current conference to see if the files a user wishes to upload duplicates any files already on the system. Since a different DLPATH.LST file can be specified for each conference this means you would not be able to check for duplicates across conferences. If there are entries in the The All-Files DLPATH.LST (ALLFILES.LST) file, PCBoard will use that file to check for duplicates when a user is uploading a file. The ALLFILES.LST file is not used at any time for downloading purposes so you may include every path on your system if you wish. To edit your ALLFILES.LST file, highlight the line on the screen that says Name/Loc of All-Files DLPATH.LST and press F2. You will see a screen which resembles the following: While you are in the editor, the following keyboard commands are available: ESC Exit the ALLFILES.LST editor. If you have made any changes to the ALLFILES.LST file, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes that have been made. Afterwards, you will be returned back to the Configuration Files menu. F1 Access on-line help. On-line help will be displayed that relates to the all-files DLPATH.LST file. PgDn View the next 15 entries. On each screen of the DLPATH.LST editor, 15 entries can be displayed. If you want to view the next 15 entries in the file, you would use this keyboard command. PgUp View the previous 15 entries. To view the previous 15 entries of the DLPATH.LST file, use this keyboard command. ALT-I Insert a new line. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, use this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line. ALT-D Delete current line. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back. If you make a mistake, exit without saving and then attempt to make the changes again. ALT-R Repeat current line. If you are creating entries that are very similar in definition, use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. Perhaps the easiest way for you to create your ALLFILES.LST would be to use the DOS COPY command to combine the DLPATH.LST files that you use in your various conferences into one single file called ALLFILES.LST. This method would be faster than manually entering each path or index file into the file. NOTE: You should also add the private upload directory path for each conference in your ALLFILES.LST if you want PCBoard to check these directories since they are not normally included in your conference DLPATH.LST files. As a quick example, let's assume that you have defined two conferences on your system. In both conferences you have different files available for download. You decide that the ALLFILES.LST would be the best way to protect from getting unwanted duplicate files. First, you use the COPY command in DOS to combine your DLPATH.LST files for your conferences by typing the following: COPY C:\PCB\CONF1\DLPATH.LST+C:\PCB\CONF2\DLPATH.LST C:\PCB\ALLFILES.LST Next, add the public and private upload directory paths for the two conferences into your ALLFILES.LST so that it resembles the screen on the following page: Name/Loc of Upload File Trashcan This configuration file has one purpose -- to stop users from uploading certain filenames. If a user attempts to upload a file which is in this list then PCBoard will print an error that says Files matching ([filename]) are not allowed on this system. To edit your upload file trashcan you need to highlight the line on the screen which says Name/Loc of Upload File Trashcan and press F2. Inside the upload file trashcan editor, you may specify any valid DOS filename or wildcard. Use the up and down cursor keys to move between fields and type in the filename or wildcard filename you wish to disallow all users to upload. Batch file for viewing compressed files In this field, enter the name of the batch file you wish to execute when a user executes the F;V user command to view a file available for download. PCBoard will execute the batch file specified in this field. In addition, PCBoard will pass the full path and filename being viewed as the first parameter to the batch file. The default PCBVIEW.BAT included with your package makes use of VIEWZIP.EXE and VIEWARCH.COM that are also supplied with your package. These two utilities allow you to list the files contained in .ZIP and .ARC compressed files. Filename EXTENSION for compressed files Usually a bulletin board system will pick a particular compression program to compress all of the files on-line. For example, you may decide that you want all of your files to be in .ZIP format. This field allows you to specify the default extension for compressed files. This extension will be used in the following places: When flagging or requesting a file for download, PCBoard will attempt to find a filename with the compressed filename extension if no extension is supplied by the user. This can save keystrokes because the extension would not have to be entered. When using the F;V command PCBoard will attempt to find a filename with the compressed filename extension if no extension is supplied by the user. This can save keystrokes because the extension would not have to be entered. If a bulletin is requested for download, PCBoard will check to see if a file exists in the same location as the bulletin file that has the same filename and also an extension that matches the compressed filename extension. If such a file exists, the compressed version of the file will be downloaded instead of the ASCII text version. This allows you to have large bulletins on-line but for users to easily (and quickly) download a compressed version of the bulletin. Display Files When you select this menu option, you will be presented with the following screen which lists some of the display files you can change the location of or even edit: PCBoard makes use of several display files. These display files are text files that will be displayed to the caller. Text files allow you to easily customize the information you wish to present to the user. You can make your file large or small, colorized or monochrome. The point is that you have the choice. All of the display files that are listed on this screen can have graphics, security, and language specific versions. See Display Files in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual for additional information.. In each of the fields on this screen, enter the drive, path, and filename that you wish to use for each display file. From within PCBSetup, you can edit the normal display file and the graphics specific version by using F2 and F3 respectively. If you edit a file, PCBSetup is going to call the text and graphics editors that you defined in System Manager | Define Text & Graphics Editors because these are text display files. Name/Loc of WELCOME File This file will be displayed after the Do you want graphics prompt is answered (assuming Q is not used to abort the welcome file). Typically, SysOps will design this screen to display the system name, phone numbers, and any other relative facts. Name/Loc of NEWUSER File When a new user is logging into your system, this display file will be shown to them right after they confirm that they are a new user. In this file you will most likely want to display rules of your system and any steps that the user must complete to become registered on your system. Name/Loc of CLOSED File This file is displayed whenever PCBoard determines that a user cannot login to a system because it is a closed system. There are two ways of creating a closed system: In PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control you have enabled the Run System as a Closed Board option. New users will not be allowed to login to the system. The security level of the caller has been defined to have 0 minutes available in the PWRD file. This will display the CLOSED file regardless of the closed board option in PCBSetup. You will want to display a brief explanation of why the user cannot login to your system and provide further instructions as to what the user should do. Name/Loc of WARNING File The WARNING file is displayed only to those callers whose subscription is about to expire. This file will be displayed whenever the user is within the warning period defined in PCBSetup | Subscriptions. You will want to let the user know that their subscription is about to expire. You may want to purposely use color or other eye-catching effects to make this file stand out since some of your users may miss this file. Name/Loc of EXPIRED File When a user's subscription has expired, PCBoard will display the EXPIRED file every time they login. Therefore, you may want to have this file contain the instructions necessary for a user to renew their subscription. Name/Loc of Conference Join Menu When a user executes the J user command with out specifying a conference name or number to join, PCBoard will display the menu of conferences that are available. The display file defined by this file is the one that is used to list the conferences that are available on your system. Because it is a text file, you can customize it to look any way that you desire. You should include the conference number and/or name for each conference so the user may use the name or number of the conference they wish to join. Name/Loc of Group Chat Intro File When a user joins group chat, this file will be displayed to them. In this file you may want to outline general rules of courtesy in regards to node chat. Remember that this file will be displayed every time group chat is joined so you may not want to make this file particularly long. Name/Loc of Group Chat Menu While in group chat, the user can execute several different commands. These commands allow the user to change channels, send private messages to other users, and more. This display file is a menu that is displayed when a user is not in expert mode and presses ESC. Expert users would need to ask for the menu by typing MENU at the Chat Command prompt. Name/Loc of NOANSI Warning Group chat makes heavy use of the ANSI terminal emulation standard. If PCBoard determines that the user is not capable of ANSI at login and the user attempts to join group chat, this file will be displayed. In this file, you may simply want to warn the user that they should instruct their terminal program to use split-screen chat mode (if available) or avoid typing while others are typing. New User/Logon/off Questionnaires Besides normal script questionnaires, you can also use script questionnaires at logon, logoff, and when a new user is logging into the system. As with normal script questionnaires, you can use the text format questionnaires or you can make the questionnaire files actual PPE files if you need more control when asking questions. Name/Loc of New Reg Questionnaire When a new user logs into your system, this questionnaires gives you the ability to ask for additional information that PCBoard does not. For example, you may want to ask questions about where the new user found out about your system or even something like their birth date. If you have defined a new registration questionnaire, it will be used right after PCBoard finishes asking it's normal questions (default protocol, password, etc.) Name/Loc of Answers to New Reg. The filename that you specify in this field is where the answers to the new registration questionnaire will be stored. If you used a standard script questionnaire, the answer file will simply print the question that was asked followed by the answer that the user gave. If you are using a PPE for the new registration questionnaire, the format of the answers could be in any format since the PPE controls the output. Name/Loc of Login Script Quest. The login script questionnaire is executed by everyone right after they enter their password and even before the $$LOGON.BAT file is executed. If you want to ask a questionnaire for every login or more likely to execute a PPE at every login, define the file to use as your questionnaire. NOTE: You can also have this field display an additional logon screen by specifying the filename to display in this field and leaving the answer field blank. When the answer field is blank, no questions will be asked. Name/Loc of Logon Script Answers The filename that you specify in this field is where the answers to the logon questionnaire will be stored. If you used a standard script questionnaire, the answer file will simply print the question that was asked followed by the answer that the user gave. If you are using a PPE for the logon questionnaire, the format of the answers could be in any format since the PPE controls the output. Name/Loc of Logoff Script Quest. The logoff script questionnaire is executed by everyone right after they enter the command to logoff and before the $$LOGOFF.BAT file is executed. If you want to ask a questionnaire at every logoff or more likely to execute a PPE at every login, define the file to use as your questionnaire. NOTE: You can also have this field display a logoff screen by specifying the filename to display in this field and leaving the answer field blank. When the answer field is blank, no questions will be asked. Name/Loc of Logoff Script Answers The filename that you specify in this field is where the answers to the logoff questionnaire will be stored. If you used a standard script questionnaire, the answer file will simply print the question that was asked followed by the answer that the user gave. If you are using a PPE for the logoff questionnaire, the format of the answers could be in any format since the PPE controls the output. Modem Information Selecting this menu option allows you to modify the setup of PCBoard in regards to the serial port you are using. Not only can you define the serial port you will be using, but there are options which control the behavior of PCBoard with your serial port. There are three menu options that you can select. If you want to configure what serial port to use, the initialization string, or other items related to the setup of your modem then you should select the first menu option. Selecting the second menu option will allow you to set numerous options that control how PCBoard interacts with your modem. Finally, the last menu option contains items that allow you to control access to the node you are configuring based on the connect speed of the caller. When you installed PCBoard, the install program configured your modem with a program named PCBMODEM.EXE. This utility will configure numerous modems to operate properly with PCBoard. You should run PCBModem at least once to configure your modem properly. Modem Setup Seconds to wait for carrier As soon as PCBoard detects a ring coming in from the modem, it will countdown from the number that you enter in this field to 0. If PCBoard reaches 0 without being able to determine that a connection has been established, it will recycle and wait for the next call. Normally a good value to set for this field is between 30 and 45 seconds to catch all connections. Comm Driver to use (A/C/F) Standard PCBoard software supplies only one type of comm driver and that is Asynchronous. If you have the standard PCBoard software, you should enter A in this field. If you attempt to enter any other answer, PCBoard will not operate properly. If you have the multiport version of PCBoard (sometimes referred to as the /M version), you can select any of the comm drivers to use. The following describes each comm driver: A Asynchronous (Async). Select this option if you wish to use standard serial ports (sometimes referred to as COM ports). These serial ports all utilize standard UART chips (e.g., 8250, 16450, 16550, etc.). With this driver PCBoard requires that each serial port in the machine access a unique base address and IRQ setting. C COMM-DRV. The multiport version of PCBoard includes a TSR that is called COMM-DRV. This TSR provides a standard interface between numerous serial devices. Not only are intelligent serial boards like those produced by Arnet and Digiboard supported but also some non-intelligent serial boards are supported. To confirm whether or not your card will work with the multiport driver, refer to the Preparing The Multiport Driver section in the Multiple Nodes chapter of this manual, or contact technical support. F FOSSIL. PCBoard can also communicate with serial devices that provide a FOSSIL interface. Usually this requires that you load a device driver or TSR program. Comm Port (0=NONE/Local Only) Enter the number of the comm port to be used by PCBoard. If you enter a comm port of 0, no modem will be used by PCBoard and local logins will be used for all calls. If you have configured PCBoard to use the async comm driver, the numbers 1 and 2 correspond to COM1 and COM2 in your machine. Any number higher than 2 will require that you supply a base address and IRQ value to define the port. If you enter a port higher than 2, your hardware must be configured for whatever values you enter for the base address and IRQ. If they do not, PCBoard will either refuse to load, or will not be able to properly communicate with your comm port. Refer to the Troubleshooting section of the PCBoard chapter for additional details. If you have configured PCBoard to use COMM-DRV, enter the corresponding port number that you defined in DRVSETUP. For example, if you want to use the port 2 defined in this sample DRVSETUP Port Card Sub- Base Card Number Type Port Address IRQ Segment FOSSIL ------ ------ ---- ------- --- ------- ------ 1 ARNET 1 300 3 D000 Y 2 ARNET 2 300 3 D000 Y enter 2 in the comm port field because that is what is defined as the port number in DRVSETUP. If you selected the FOSSIL comm driver instead, enter the port number as it is defined in your external communications driver that provides the FOSSIL interface. Opening Baud Rate (300-115200) In this field, enter the speed you wish for PCBoard to initially open your serial port. Normally you will want to set this to the maximum port rate speed that your modem supports. The valid options are 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, and 115200. Sometimes, your modem may be able to support a faster port rate speed then your serial and computer hardware may be able to keep up with. If this is the case, you will experience data loss (some bytes will be lost when transferred). To resolve this, you can lower the opening port rate speed or upgrade your computer hardware. NOTE: If you enter an opening port rate speed of 19200 or higher, PCBoard will force the port speed to be locked regardless of how you have set the Lock in Opening Baud Rate. Lock in Opening Baud Rate A locked port speed tells the modem to communicate at the rate you entered for the opening port speed. When the communications port is not locked, PCBoard will always communicate at the same speed as the caller is connected at. A locked port rate will have no effect unless you are using a modem that is capable of error-correction (e.g., V.42, MNP) and an error-correction connection is established. With an error-correcting connection, the actual throughput of all data transferred can be increased by up to 20% because the start and stop bits are stripped out. In addition, most error-correcting modems also support data compression of ASCII text (such as display screens) very well. If you enable this option, you need to be sure that your modem is also configured to expect a locked port rate (sometimes referred as a fixed DTE speed or a fixed DTE link). If both the software and hardware are not configured to communicate at a locked port rate, you will see garbage characters on the remote screen when calling in. Modem Initialization String This field contains the initializing string that PCBoard should send to the modem when it first loads and whenever it recycles to the call-waiting screen. The string that you enter in this field will vary between modems because most modems have different command sets and default values. The best thing to do is to use PCBModem to properly configure your modem for use with PCBoard. Instructions for PCBModem can be found in the Utilities chapter of this manual. If your modem is not listed in PCBModem, contact the technical support staff to get your modem configured properly with PCBoard. There are two special characters that you can use in your initialization string to simulate a carriage return (pressing R) and to incorporate a brief pause in your initialization string. ^M If you enter these two characters in your initialization string, PCBoard will send a carriage return and continue sending the rest of the initialization string. Some modems have a problem with long initialization strings. Use the carriage returns to break up a long initialization string. For example ATM0^MATH0^MATS0=0 would send the following to your modem: ATM0 ENTER ATH0 ENTER ATS0=0 ~ If you enter this character in your initialization string, PCBoard will pause 1/2 of one second every time it encounters this character. This would be useful to manually slow down the speed at which the modem initialization string is sent. If you run communications programs on the same modem that you use for your system, you need to be careful to restore the modem to all of the proper settings because your communications program has an initialization string as well. One initialization string that you could use would be ATZ^MATM0H0. This string will reset the modem, turn off the speaker, and put the phone line back on hook (if it was off hook). Be forewarned, however, that some modems have a problem with sending ATZ in the initialization string and may report a modem reset error. An incorrect initialization string that does not generate an OK from the modem will result in PCBoard issuing a modem reset error. If you experience this error, refer to the Troubleshooting section in the PCBoard chapter of this manual for additional instructions. Modem Off-Hook String Sometimes PCBoard will want to take the phone off-hook to make the phone line busy. PCBoard will send the off-hook string that you enter in this field at the following times: Selecting User - Busy, Sysop - Busy, or DOS-Busy from the call waiting screen. Enabling the Modem Off-Hook During Recycle will force the phone to be off-hook from the time carrier is dropped until the initialization string is sent. Recycling the node using the 15 sysop command. NOTE: Some modems have built in limits as to how long they will stay off-hook. When this time expires, they will go back on hook (allowing your phone to ring). In this type of situation there is nothing that PCBoard can do to keep the phone line busy as this is a built in function of the modem. Configuration Switches Disable CTS/RTS Checking CTS/RTS refers to a type of flow control called hardware flow control which restricts or enables the flow of data. When data cannot be received or sent by one side of the connection it will attempt to restrict the flow of data via the hardware flow control signals provided by the RS-232 serial interface. In other words, flow control is necessary to guarantee that modem and computer buffers are not caused to overflow by incoming or outgoing data. Normally you will want to answer N to this question unless your modem or serial card does not support CTS/RTS flow control. For high speed communications it is essential that you do not disable flow control or you risk losing data over the connection. NOTE: For high speed communications it is essential that you answer N to this question or risk data loss over the modem. Valid options for this field are: N CTS/RTS flow control will be enabled by PCBoard. Similar to locking the port rate, it is required that both the modem and PCBoard be configured to use CTS/RTS flow control. It is also important that your modem not be configured for XON/XOFF or software flow control. Y Hardware (CTS/RTS) flow control will be disabled by PCBoard. Select this setting only if your modem does not support hardware flow control (check your modem manual if you are unsure). Disable RTS-Drop During Write While PCBoard is receiving an upload file (via an internal transfer protocol) it will normally shut down the RTS signal while it writes to disk to avoid data loss. N When writing data being uploaded, PCBoard will shut down RTS to prevent data from being lost. Y Disables this automatic RTS shut down. While faster uploads may be possible, it could result in data loss. You would be most likely to experience data loss if the upload is being written to a slow drive or across the network.. Using a FastComm 9600 If you are using a FastComm 9600 modem, you should answer Y in this field. PCBoard has to assume certain aspects about the connection due to the way the FastComm modem operates. If you are not using a FastComm 9600 modem, leave this field set to N. Reset Modem While Idle PCBoard gives you the opportunity to reinitialize the serial port and modems every five minutes while idling at the call waiting screen. This may be beneficial if you experience unexplained modem reset errors. Valid options are: N When at the call waiting screen, PCBoard makes no attempt to reinitialize the port. Y While at the call waiting screen, the port and modem will be reinitialized after five minutes of inactivity. NOTE: In some modems this can help keep the modem from getting modem reset errors while other modems will instead be more prone to such errors. Experiment with this setting if you are getting modem reset errors during recycles. Reset Modem During Recycle After a caller hangs up you can automatically have PCBoard send the standard ATZ to your modem to initialize the power-on defaults of your modem. This might be useful if your modem experiences unexplained modem reset errors. Valid options for this field are: N After a caller is disconnected, PCBoard will not send the ATZ command to your modem. Y After a caller disconnects from your system, PCBoard will send an ATZ command to restore the power-on defaults of your modem. NOTE: In some modems this can help keep the modem from getting modem reset errors while other modems will instead be more prone to such errors. Experiment with this setting if you are getting modem reset errors during recycles. Modem Off-Hook During Recycle Normally after PCBoard disconnects a caller, it will leave the phone on-hook. Those callers calling in will get a ring. This is usually desirable because PCBoard recycles very quickly under normal circumstances. At most, callers may get two to three rings before the modem answers the phone. If you wish, you can configure PCBoard to make the phone busy until it is ready for the next caller. Valid options are: N PCBoard will leave the phone on-hook (incoming callers will hear rings). Y The phone will be taken off-hook causing incoming callers to get busy signals until after PCBoard has completely recycled and is waiting for the next call. NOTE: In some modems this can help keep the modem from getting modem reset errors while other modems will instead be more prone to such errors. Experiment with this setting if you are getting errors during recycles. Modem Delay During Recycle Some modems can get confused if you attempt to recycle the system too quickly resulting in modem reset errors. Setting a value of 1 or higher can help slow down the recycle process and give your modem more time to be reset without experiencing a modem reset error. In addition, this value can be used to 'tune' the speed with which PCBoard recycles. On buffered modems, a higher setting will insure that all data gets transmitted. If your remote callers are not receiving all of the information before carrier is dropped, try increasing the value entered in this field. Packet-Switch Network If you are running in any kind of environment where PCBoard is directly connected to a cable and not directly connected to a modem (e.g., a PAD, packet-switch network, X.25) you need to inform PCBoard via this field. Valid options are: N PCBoard operates in a normal manner expecting a modem to be directly connected to the serial port you specify. Y PCBoard will assume that the modem is not directly connected to the serial port specified. PCBoard will not send an initialization string when recycling after a call (or at startup). PCBoard will know that a call needs to be attended to when a ENTER is sent over the connection. You should also use this setting if you are using a null-modem cable to connect with another machine. NOTE: It is important that the CTS/RTS, RD/SD and CD/DTR signals be wired properly if you select Y for this field. Verify CD-Loss When the Carrier Detect (CD) signal goes out, it generally indicates that the connection has been broken and that the caller has disconnected. However, some modems will drop the CD signal while auto-bauding (changing baud rates) in search of a more efficient speed. This is generally caused by changing line noise conditions. Valid options for this field are: N When the CD signal goes out, PCBoard will assume the caller has hung-up and will recycle the system. In a PAD or packet-switching environment loss of the carrier detect signal never indicates auto-bauding. In fact, a PAD will often bring the CD signal right back up. To avoid accidentally putting the next caller into the last caller's session, select this option. Y To avoid detecting CD loss when, in fact, the caller is still on-line, you must answer Y. When the CD signal goes out, PCBoard will verify that the modem is not simply compensating for line noise. This will avoid PCBoard automatically thinking that a caller has hung up when the CD signal goes out. Leave DTR Up at Drop to DOS When selecting the DOS - Not Busy button on the call waiting screen, this option controls whether the DTR signal is left on or not. Valid option are: N The DTR signal will be turned off. Y The DTR signal will be left on. Answer on True Ring Detect Normally, PCBoard waits for RING to be sent from the modem and then sends ATA to the modem to answer the phone. This proves to be the most reliable method for answering the phone. If you desire, you can choose to have PCBoard watch the ring detect line as signaled by the serial card. Valid options are: N PCBoard will use the more reliable method of waiting for the RING to come from the modem before attempting to answer the phone. Y PCBoard will answer on a true ring detect as signaled by the serial card. You should only enable this option for those modems which do not return the verbose RING response when the phone is ringing. Number of Rings Required This setting allows you to customize the number of times you want the phone to ring before PCBoard tells the modem to pick it up. For example, you may be in an environment where the phone is normally used for voice calls but at night you want to be able to dial into the system. By setting this value a high number most voice callers will hang up before PCBoard answers the phone. NOTE: For CallerID detection to work, you must set this number to at least 2 since CallerID is passed in between the 1st and 2nd ring. Monitor Missed Connections After an incoming phone call is detected, there are four possible outcomes. They are: The countdown will run to completion without establishing a connection (no handshaking, or handshaking failed to complete) A NO CARRIER message will be issued by the modem before the connection is ever completed (aborted handshaking sequence) A connection will be established but carrier is lost before the caller logs into the system A connection is established and the caller successfully logs into the system Valid options for this field are: N Only those connections which are fully established will be written to the caller log. Y Normally PCBoard only writes successful login information out to the caller log. Selecting this option will instruct PCBoard to write one of three lines corresponding to the first three possible outcomes listed previously. 1. NO CONNECT / FULL COUNTDOWN 2. NO CONNECT / NO CARRIER 3. Carrier Lost Force NON-16550 Usage Some of the early 16550 UART chips are buggy. The bug is most often seen when data output gets behind where it should be and only proceeds when typing more characters. If the command prompt is incomplete, but gradually, one character at a time, becomes more complete as you type a command, then you likely have one of the buggy 16550 UARTs. Valid options for this field are: Setting Force NON-16550A Usage to N will generally make the problem go away, but you lose access to the FIFO buffers. A better solution is to replace the defective UART chip. N PCBoard will not modify the way that it treats the UART it detects. Y Even if PCBoard detects a 16550 UART, it will treat it as if it was a 16450 UART. If you suspect that some of the advanced features of your 16550 UART are defective, you may want to select this option. Force 16550A Usage Some multi-tasking environments, such as OS/2 or Windows, use device drivers to virtualize the comm port. In the process of doing so, they may hide the 16550A UART, making it appear to be a 16450 UART when accessed by a DOS application. Valid options for this field are: N PCBoard will assume the UART it detects is the real UART you have installed. Y This option forces PCBoard to operate as if a 16550A UART was detected. This enables the use of FIFO buffers for both transmit and receive operations. Do not set this option to Y if you do not have a 16550A UART. Share IRQs on MCA Buses PS/2s and other Micro Channel based machines have the ability to share interrupts among different hardware devices. This setting will not work unless the IRQ is being shared with software that is loaded before the multitasker. Valid options are: N PCBoard will operate in normal asynchronous mode where it expects each port to have a unique IRQ for each port. Y PCBoard will try to share the interrupt that is used by the serial port. NOTE: Sharing interrupts slows down processing. Therefore, it is recommended that you only use this option when necessary. Allowed Access Speeds Allow Callers at 7,E,1 The majority of PC communications will communicate at 8,N,1 which refers to 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. However, some of your callers may use the less frequently used 7 data bits, even parity and 1 stop bit (7,E,1). N Callers who call in using 7,E,1 will be refused access to your system. Y Callers may connect with your system using 8,N,1 or 7,E,1. Be aware that if a caller connects using 7,E,1 then file transfers will be disabled for that session. This is done because 7,E,1 does not have the capability of properly transferring binary data. Lowest Desired Baud You can set a minimum speed that a caller must have to log into your system. For example, if you want to let only users who have are able to connect at 1200 or higher then you would enter 1200 in this field. The next three fields on this screen determine if you will allow slower speeds and if so, at what time during the day lower connection speeds will be allowed. Allow Lower Speeds Sometimes you may want to allow callers to connect at a slower speed than the one entered in the Lowest Desired Baud field. PCBoard will give you the ability to let users connect at a slower speed but only during a specific time during the day. N Users must connect at a speed equal to or greater than the value that you enter in the Lowest Desired Baud field. If a caller attempts to connect at a slower speed a message notifying the user that the connection speed is not supported on your system will be displayed. Y Users may connect at a slower speed than the value that you enter in the Lowest Desired Baud field. However, the connect must be made during the time range that you define with the Begin Time and End Time field on this screen. Begin Time In this field you can specify the beginning time (hhmm format) when users can call in at a slower speed then what is defined by the Lowest Desired Baud field. All times you enter must be done in 24 hour format. If you answered N to the Allow Lower Speeds, the starting and ending times are ignored. End Time In this field you can specify the ending time (hhmm format) when users can call in at a slower speed then what is defined by the Lowest Desired Baud field. All times you enter must be done in 24 hour format. If you answered N to the Allow Lower Speeds, the starting and ending times are ignored. Security Level Override If you enter any security level other than 0 in this field, users that have an equal or greater than security level will be able to login to the system regardless of the time of the login. The security level override is valid regardless of the Allow Lower setting. Node Configuration Board Name In this field, enter here the name of your bulletin board system. This name is shown to the caller at connect time together with the PCBoard copyright notice. In addition, it is displayed when someone uses the I user command and at the top of the call waiting screen. You can enter up to 63 characters to identify your bulletin board system in this field. Origin This field is reserved primarily for use with netmail networks to identify your system. The format of the information you enter here depends on the netmail software you are using and the netmail system you are connecting to. Contact the netmail software authors and/or your netmail system administrator for details. Parallel Port Num (1-3,0) There are a few places within PCBoard where you can send output to the printer. For example, you can press ALT-P while a user is on-line to start capturing the text on the screen to the printer. Likewise, you can toggle printing of the caller logs from the call waiting screen. All of these functions need to know what LPT port to send the output to. In this field, enter the LPT port you want PCBoard to send printout to. Valid entries are 0-3. If you enter a value of 0, no printer output will be sent. Running a Network / Multitasker System If you are running more than one node on your system, you need to let PCBoard know so that it may use the proper file sharing routines and otherwise take care of other multiple node concerns. N PCBoard will allow a single node to operate. No file sharing will be used and many of the user and sysop commands relating to multiple nodes will be disabled. Y PCBoard will enable file and record sharing so that multiple nodes can access system files at the same time. PCBoard uses the DOS standard for file sharing. If you enable this option, make sure that you have either load SHARE.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT, or that your multitasker/network provide the sharing functions that are completely compatible with SHARE.EXE. If you have told PCBoard that you wish to run more than one node, you will need to assign each node a unique node number. You enter the node number in the Node Number on the Network field. Node Number on the Network In this field, enter the node number you wish to assign for the node you are configuring with PCBSetup. Node numbers must be from 1 to the highest number supported by the software you have purchased. Numbers higher then that will default back to 1 by PCBoard. If you answered N to the Running a Network question, the answer to this question will be ignored. Float Node Number The ability to float node numbers is a feature designed for enabling a large group of local network users to login to a limited amount of PCBoard nodes. What makes this feature even more desirable is that you can mix these local nodes with your dial-in nodes (if you have any). When this option is enabled, PCBoard will start looking for a free node number in your system starting with the node number you defined earlier on this screen. If a node is found, the user will be logged in, using the free node number. If no free nodes can be found, a message is printed to the user stating that no nodes are available and that they should try again in a few minutes. The setup for floating nodes is more complicated than simply enabling a switch in PCBSetup. You will need to modify some of your batch files and other system files to make it work properly. For additional information on setting up float nodes, see the Networking section in the Multiple Nodes chapter of this manual. Valid options for this field are: N Node numbers will not be floated. You will want to use this switch for your dial-in nodes since you most likely want their node numbers to remain fixed. Y Node numbers will be floated. As mentioned previously, this is most useful when you are operating in a local environment where several callers are trying to get into a few single nodes logging in across a network. Network Timeout on Errors (20-99 secs) This is the number of seconds that PCBoard should wait after it has detected a network time-out before failing the operation. You can enter any value between 20 and 99 seconds. In other words, it is common for resources on a network to be in use at the time that another user wants to use the same resource. This is normal and should be allowed. You should set this value depending on the size and speed of your system. The bigger and slower the network is, the longer the network time-out delay might need to be. Node Chat Frequency (once every 5-99 secs) In this field, enter the number of seconds that PCBoard should wait in between each checking of the USERNET.XXX file. This file is used for node chat requests, broadcasts, drop to DOS commands, mail waiting notices, etc. The lower the number the less delay there will be after an action is requested. However, a low number also increases traffic on the network or multinode system and can slow it down. Include City Field in WHO Display When the WHO user command is used in PCBoard, a display of the users that are currently logged onto the system is shown. Depending on how sensitive the city/location information is to your callers you may choose to show the city/location information of each users from the WHO display. N Only the node number and the user currently logged in will be displayed in a WHO display. Y The WHO display will include the city/location field of each of the users currently online. Show ALIAS Names in WHO Display For some systems it may not be desirable to display the alias names in the who display even though aliases are allowed. For example, a public system with an adult section might allow adult oriented aliases in the adult conference, but displaying those names in a public WHO display might not be desirable. Other systems, which are either not adult oriented or are not open to the public, may not experience this situation in which case showing the alias might be preferred. Valid responses for this field are: Remember: You must install the Alias PSA for PCBoard to allow alias names on your system. N Always display the real name of the caller in the WHO display even if their alias is current active. If you have only certain areas that allow aliases it might look funny if you have a user named JIM SMITH on one node and CAPTAIN HOOK on another. Y When the user's alias is active, show their alias in the WHO display. Using Slave Cards (slows file access) Answer Y to this question if you have an Alloy Slave system and are running NTNX prior to version 2.0. NOTE: This option will slow down access to some files. Event Setup An event is simply a batch file that gets executed during a specific time of the day. In this event batch file you could do some of the following things: * Pack your users and/or message bases * If you are part of a mail network, you will most likely transfer mail packets * Some third party products you use on your bulletin board may need to run utilities to update data bases, etc. * Create a list of files on your system using PCBFiler and the /LIST parameter. * Backup your system The previous examples are but only a few of the things you can do in your event. Since events simply execute batch files you are more or less limited by your imagination as far as what you want to run in your event. To define your event information you need to select Event Setup from Main Menu of PCBSetup. When you select this option, you will see the following screen: Is a Timed Event Active Enter a Y in this field if you want to run the events that you have defined in your EVENT.DAT file. If you wish to disable running events, enter an N in this field instead. Name / Location of EVENT.DAT The EVENT.DAT file holds all of the information that defines the timed events on your system. To edit/define the events that you will run on your system, you need to edit your EVENT.DAT file. By pressing F2 while the Name / Location of EVENT.DAT field is highlighted, the editor for your EVENT.DAT will be loaded Your screen should now resemble the following: This is known as the event editor. There are several fields that you can edit which control the batch file that will get run for an event and the times when you event will be run. The number to the left of each line is the event number that is being defined. The rest of the fields on the screen are as follows: Act You may enter either a Y or an N in this field. A Y signifies that the event is active and should be executed as configured. If you enter an N, the event will be considered inactive and will not be run as defined. Mod The mode of the event. You may enter either an E or an S in this field. If you enter an E then the event is an expedited or non-sliding event. If you enter an S as the event type, the event is referred to as a sliding event which will run the next time the node returns to the call waiting screen after the event time. If an event is an expedited or non-sliding event, PCBoard will make its best attempt to execute the event at the time you specify as the beginning time even if it means cutting user's time short. Batch File In this field, you need to specify the batch file you wish to execute for the event being defined. You are given 8 characters for the batch filename. The reason for this is that by default this batch file will be run on all nodes. However, you can make node specific batch files by making the node number the filename extension. For example, if you entered a batch file of DAILY and you wanted node 5 to execute a different batch file then you would create a DAILY.005 file in the same directory where the DAILY file is located. Begin Time This is the earliest time that your event will be run. The time that you enter in this field must be in 24 hour format and there must be a colon between the hour and minutes. End Time The end time is the latest possible time that you wish for the event to run. If the event has not run by the time you enter, the event will be skipped. Days You may also control which days that the event you are defining is run on. In this field all seven days of the week are listed beginning with Sunday and ending with Saturday. Simply enter either a Y or N which signifies whether you want to run the event on the day listed or not. Date This field enables you to specify the dates that PCBoard will run the event. Entering a 00 signifies a wildcard. For example, if you want the event to run on the first day of every month, then you would enter a date of 00-01-00. This event would run on the first day of any month of any year. Another example would be to set the date to 01-01-00. This event would run the first day of every year. Last Date Contains the date that the event was last run on the node number that is specified in PCBSetup | Node Configuration. Not all events run system- wide therefore this field only contains the last date ran for the node you are currently editing. While you are in the event editor, the following keyboard commands are available to you: E Exit the event editor. When you are finished editing your event data file, use this keyboard command to exit the editor. If any changes to the file have been detected, you will be asked if you wish to save the changes. F1 Access on-line help. If you use this keyboard command, on-line help relating to the field that is highlighted is displayed to you. F2 Edit the event batch file(s). When the Batch File field is highlighted, this keyboard command will use the text editor defined in System Manager to edit your event batch file(s). If you have more than one batch file for the event (node specific events), a selection box will pop up enabling you to pick the event batch file that you wish to edit. PgDn View the next 15 entries. On each screen of the event editor, 15 entries can be displayed. If you want to view the next 15 entries in the file, use this keyboard command. PgUp View the previous 15 entries. To view the previous 15 entries of the event data file, use this keyboard command. ALT-I Insert a new line. If you need to add a new entry between two existing entries, use this keyboard command. A new blank entry will be inserted just below the current line. ALT-D Delete current line. This keyboard command will delete the currently highlighted entry. There is no undo function to get the original line back. If you make a mistake, exit without saving and attempt to make the changes again. ALT-R Repeat current line. If you are creating entries that are very similar in definition, you can use this keyboard command to duplicate the currently highlighted entry. The new entry will be inserted just below the current line. The Events section in the SysOp's Guide chapter of this manual contains a more thorough discussion of events and how to define them for your system. Location for multiple nodes Because the event data file stores information about each node, it is required that all nodes access the same data file. If all nodes do not use the same file, your events may not run reliably. Location of EVENT Files This field stores the location where your event batch files will be located. When an event runs, it will look for the event batch file to be located in the subdirectory that you specify. Location for multiple nodes You should insure that all nodes in your system point to the same location for event files. The event system was designed to store the batch files in one physical location. If the nodes on your system all point to different locations, your events will not operate properly. Minutes Prior to Suspend All Activity If an event is defined as an expedited event, you can define the number of minutes prior to the event time that all activity on the system will cease. If your event is defined to run at 2:00am and you configure PCBoard for a 15 minute suspense time, PCBoard will attempt to insure that every user has logged off by 1:45am. The suspense time is used as a safety zone to make sure all users that are in doors or other applications outside of PCBoard's control will return to the system in time for the event. Another reason why you may want to suspend activity prior to the event actually running is to let any file transfers finish. Even though PCBoard will make its best estimate in regards to how long it will take to download files, sometimes line noise or other line conditions will extend the time of the transfer. By suspending activity prior to the event actually running, you can help insure that all of your expedited events will run on time. During the suspense time, the phone is taken off-hook and a message is printed at the top of the screen to let you know that PCBoard is waiting for the event time. During this time, the phone will be busy to all callers that attempt to call. Disallow Uploads Prior to Event This field is used primarily to try to guarantee that the system will be able to run an expedited event at the time you have defined. When downloading files, PCBoard knows how many bytes will be downloaded and approximately how long it will take for the transfer to take place. When a user uploads a file, PCBoard does not know how big the upload will be or even if it will consist of multiple files (batch protocols only). Because of this unknown factor, you may want to restrict uploads before an expedited event runs. Valid options for this field are: N Do not make any special restrictions in regards to uploading files prior to an event. If the user has any time left on the system, they may begin an upload. This could mean that a user could begin an upload just before they are forced off (because they still have time available). Because no restrictions are made on uploads, they could overrun your suspense time and even your normally scheduled event time. Normally when you use this setting you would want to have a substantial suspense time to help compensate for large uploads. Y Disable uploads prior to a schedule event. The value that you enter in the Minutes Prior to Disallow Uploads field will determine when uploads will be disabled if you choose to disable them before an event. Minutes Prior to Disallow Uploads For this field to have any meaning you must have chosen to disallow uploads prior to an event. In this field enter the number of minutes prior to the event running that you wish to disallow uploads. You can enter any value between 0 and 99 in this field. If you enter 0 in this field, uploads will be disabled anytime the user's time limit is adjusted for an upcoming event. Subscription When you have enabled subscription mode, you can control the security level and conference access of each user based expiration date entered in the user record. When a user logs into the system on or after their expiration date, they are considered to be expired. PCBoard will then assign the user the security level entered in the expired security level of their record. This security change will be in effect until the user is no longer expired. In addition, the user will be denied access to any conference that they do not have the X conference registration flag set in. By selecting Subscription from the Main Menu of PCBSetup you can choose to enable subscription mode. If subscription mode is enabled, you can also modify some of the parameters that control how subscription mode will be handled. Enable Subscription Mode Subscription mode will make PCBoard look at the expiration date of each user to determine if their subscription has expired or not. When the user's subscription is current, they are given their normal security level and are able to join any conference they are registered in. When a user is expired, they are assigned their expired security level and may also have their conference access restricted. This setting will determine whether or not subscription mode will be enabled. Valid options for this field are: N Subscription mode is disabled. The user's expiration date is ignored even if the user would normally be expired. Y Subscription mode is enabled meaning that PCBoard will check the expiration date of all users when they logon. The security level and conference access of the user will be set according to the user record (Expired Security Level and X conference flags). Default Subscription Length in Days This field controls what the expiration date of new users will be. The number of days entered in this field will be added to the current date to determine the expiration date of the new user. If you enter a default length of 0, the expiration date of new users will be 00-00-00 which is a date that will never occur and therefore they will never expire. In other words, a setting of 0 disables subscription mode for new users. Default `Expired' Security Level Just as you can set a default expiration date for new users, you can also choose the default expired security level for new users as well. Simply enter the security level that you wish to assign to the new user when they expire. Remember that a security level of 0 locks the user out of the system. Warning Days Prior to Expiration The value that you enter in this field will determine how many days a user will be warned before their subscription expires. PCBoard will display the WARNING file at login specified in PCBSetup | File Locations | Display Files during the warning period. Configuration Options From the Configuration Options menu selection you can control the way PCBoard behaves in various circumstances. There are options in fields that control file transfers, messages, and many other things. Messages Number of Highest Conference Desired In this field enter the highest conference number you want to be able to define on your system. PCBSetup will use the number entered in this field to determine the highest conference number you can define from the Conferences Main Menu Option in PCBSetup. If you enter a value higher than 39 in this field, you may have to update your conference allocations from System Manager | Users Info File Maintenance. Whenever you change the value in this field, you should load System Manager and see if you need to update your conference allocations. If you are running multiple nodes make sure all nodes have the exact same value for this field. If all nodes do not have the same value for this field, then it is quite possible one or more of your nodes will not load because the conference allocations would not be in sync for all nodes. Maximum Lines in the Message Editor This field gives you the ability to limit the total number of lines that a user may enter if they use PCBoard to enter their message. This means that the limit you enter in this field will be enforced when a user uploads a REP packet using the QWK command or even if they upload the message into the message editor. You can enter any value between 17 and 400. The value that you enter in this field can help control the length of messages that are entered by your users. If your users are leaving excessively long messages then you may want to lower the maximum number of lines to help encourage your users to be more brief in their messages. NOTE: Any messages that are posted by software other than PCBoard (such as an off-line mail reading door) may not honor this limit. Anytime that third party software adds a message to a message base it is up to the author of the program to honor the settings you have defined. Message Capture - Maximum Messages This setting allows you to control the maximum number of messages that can be captured into a message capture file or a QWK packet. The reason for setting this value to something other than a maximum number would be to either, limit the length of time it takes the caller to download a set of messages, or to keep a message capture from filling up the disk (especially if a ram disk is specified for the location of temporary files). Message Capture - Max Per Conference This setting allows you to control the maximum number of messages in each conference that can be captured into a message capture file or a QWK packet. The reason for setting this value to something other than a maximum number would be to either, limit the length of time it takes the caller to download a set of messages, or to keep a message capture from filling up the disk (especially if a ram disk is specified for the location of temporary files). Name of Capture File (blank=caller#) The name you enter is this field will be the file that is created for message captures. A user can create a message capture file using the C, D, and Z subcommands of the R user command. If you leave this field blank, the caller number will be used as the filename instead. The capture file PCBoard creates, is stored in the Location of Temporary Work Files specified in PCBSetup | File Locations | System Files. It is quite conceivable that a user could exceed the limits you have set for maximum messages per capture or conference. In a situation where this occurs, they may decide to perform another capture. To prevent this new packet from overwriting the packet they just barely downloaded, PCBoard will rename the capture file using the following conventions: If the filename field was left blank or if the capture filename is 7 characters or less, PCBoard will increment the filename by adding the letter A to the end of the caller number after the first packet is downloaded. If yet another packet is downloaded, PCBoard will add a B to the caller number and so on. If you specified a capture filename that has 8 characters in it, PCBoard cannot add a new character to the filename and still have a valid DOS filename. Therefore, it will increment the last letter in the capture filename until it reaches the letter Z. Name of QWK Packet (blank=capture name) In this field, enter the name that will be used when creating QWK mail packets for users to download. If you leave this field blank, then PCBoard will use the filename that you entered as your capture filename (in the previous field). Be forewarned, however, that if you leave the capture filename blank as well, that your QWK packets will not be created. The reason that no packet will be created is that the QWK mail standard expects to have a consistent base filename to work on. Of course, the caller number varies with each call so that cannot be used as a QWK packet name. Usually, the best thing to do is to summarize your board name in 7 characters or less, use that abbreviation as the capture filename, and then leave your QWK packet filename blank. As with capture files, if a user attempts to download more than one packet during a call, PCBoard is going to increment the filename so that the recently downloaded packet does not get overwritten. QWK files are handled a little differently. PCBoard will give the first QWK packet an extension of QWK. If another packet is downloaded, PCBoard will give it an extension of QW0 and so on. Stop Clock for Capture File Download During the download of a message capture or QWK packet file, you can determine if you want to charge the user time for downloading the file or not. The valid options are: N Any time spent downloading a capture file or QWK packet will be counted against the user's daily/session time limit. If the user had 30 minutes available before the transfer began and it takes them 5 minutes to download, they will have 25 minutes of time left. Y No time will be deducted from the daily/session time limit when the user is downloading a capture file or QWK mail packet. You may choose to set this option to give your users extra incentive to download messages and read them offline. Disable Message Scan Prompt Normally when you login to PCBoard it will ask you if you wish to scan for messages. This option controls whether or not that question is asked. Valid responses are: N With this setting, PCBoard will ask if the message base should be scanned each time a user logs into the system. In addition, any conference that you join and did not scan at login will also ask if you wish to scan the new mail. The difference is that at login, PCBoard will scan all conferences you have selected for new mail. It will show you how many messages are new and if any are addressed to you. If you join a conference which you have not selected for scanning and are prompted to scan for new mail, only the current conference will be scanned. Y The prompt which asks the user if they wish to scan for messages will be disabled. This means that the user will not be asked at login or even when they join conferences. Allow ESC Codes in Messages ESC (escape) codes are generally used to transmit ANSI sequences across the modem. These codes could define color changes, cursor movements, etc. To enter the ESC character into the message editor the ASCII 029 character should be used instead of ASCII 027. This will avoid any conflicts with the full-screen editor and its use of ESC. From the keyboard, the ASCII 029 character can be entered by holding down A while typing 029 on the numeric keypad (a double sided arrow will be printed). This option controls whether or not you want to allow users to enter the ESC character in the message editor. The valid choices are: N Users will not be allowed to enter the ESC character in their messages. In effect this would disable users from entering ANSI color screens in their messages. This in itself is not a bad idea, because not all of your callers would be capable of ANSI color graphics. Colors can still be used in messages using PCBoard's @X color codes. PCBoard can interpret the @X codes to determine if the caller is capable of color and change the color if they are. Y Users may enter ESC characters in their messages. This would allow users to enter ANSI screens inside of message. Remember that not all of your callers will be capable of ANSI so the ESC codes may appear to be garbage if a user is not capable of ANSI. Allow Carbon-Copy Messages When a group of people are targeted for a particular message, one of the most practical methods for getting the message across is to carbon copy the message to several users. This can be done by typing SC while at the message editor command prompt. Instead of simply saving the message, the user will be prompted for additional names the message should be carbon copied to. Each of the users specified in the list will be sent a copy of the message that is saved. The valid options for this field are: N The ability to save carbon copies of a message will not be available to any user on the system. Y Users may save carbon copies of messages to other users on the system. The maximum number of carbon copies can be adjusted for each conference from the conference options screen. Validate TO: Name in Messages To insure mail gets properly addressed to users on the system, you can enable this option to verify names entered in the TO: field of messages. When a name is validated, PCBoard checks to see if the user name entered exists in the user file. If no validation were done, a user could enter a message to a user who does not exist and wonder why a response was never received. The valid options are: N No validation of the name that messages are addressed to will be performed. This means that it is up to the user to properly enter the name of the user. Y PCBoard will make sure that the name to whom the message is being addressed, exists on the system. If the name does not exist, the user is warned that the user name could not be found and given three options. The user can choose to re-enter the name, continue with a name which does not exist, or perform a Soundex search to see if a similar sounding name could be found. NOTE: Regardless of how you answer this question, no name validation will be done in a conference which has been configured as an echo conference. Force COMMENTS-to-the-Sysop into Main When you have several conferences on your system, you might find it very desirable to consolidate all of the messages that are entered using the C user command into the Main Board. This will make it easy to read all of your comments without having to join all of the conferences on your system to see if you have mail waiting. The valid options are: N Leave the comment to the SysOp in the conference that the user was in at the time the message was written. The advantage to selecting this option is that if the user mentions something about the conference configuration but does not reference the number or name you will know what conference they are referring to. The disadvantage is that you may find comments in any conference on your system. Y Any comments to the SysOp (using the C user command) will be moved transparently to the Main Board conference. The advantage to selecting this option is that all of your comments will be in one single location. An additional benefit would come into play if your have netmail conferences and do not want the comments to the SysOp to get transferred to the other systems in the network. Double-Byte Characters (Foreign Systems) PCBoard supports double byte (DB) characters by allowing changing line delimiters in the message base. If you enable this feature you will be able to use DB characters in your messages, however, it is important to realize that the format of messages stored in this format are not compatible with systems or third party software that do not have DB characters enabled. Do not enable DBCS unless you need it. The valid options are: N When you select this menu option, PCBoard stores message in the standard message base format. Y Using this option will cause PCBoard to use a different line delimiter in the message base. This may very well render any third party software for the message bases useless (unless they also recognize DB characters). NOTE: If you change this setting, you will need to delete all of your message bases because they are stored in a different format based on this setting. If you do not delete the message bases, your users may see message headers with no body. Create MSGS File if Missing If the message file is missing when a user joins a conference, PCBoard will normally create the file. In certain situations though, it may be desirable to let PCBSetup create any missing message files for you. In particular, if your system has a lot of nodes (e.g., more than 75), it would be quite possible that some other process could be accessing the message base (such as PCBPack) and for PCBoard to not find the message base. PCBoard would create the message base which could destroy the pre-existing message base. The valid options are: N PCBoard will not create the message base file if it does not exist when a user joins a conference. This will disable all of the message functions if the message base does not exist, but it will still allow the user to join the conference without the risk of interfering with other processes. The only way to create the message base would be to exit and save from within PCBSetup having your entire system checked. If PCBSetup finds a missing message base file it will create it for you. Y For most systems, this will be the desired setting. This way you do not have to worry about creating the message base file. Instead, PCBoard will do all of the work for you. Default to (Q)uick on Personal Mail Scan There are two formats that can be used for scanning for personal mail - the long and quick formats. The quick format uses one line per conference and lists the number of messages scanned and how many were addressed to you. The long format displays more information and consequently takes more than one line for each conference. This option allows you to determine if the quick format will be the default for message scans. Valid options are: N All mail scans will default to the long format. If the short format is desired, the Q subcommand can be used on those commands which involve mail scans. Y When you select this menu option, all mail scans will default to quick mode. If long mode is desired, the L subcommand can be used on those commands that involve mail scans. Default to Scan ALL Conferences at Login When you login and just after PCBoard scans for new bulletins, you are asked if you wish to scan the message base since the last message you have read. This option will decide if only the current conference will be scanned or if all selected conferences will be scanned. Valid options are: N When this option is used, only the current message base will be scanned for new messages. Normally this would refer to the Main Board, but you could define auto-rejoin conferences so that users rejoin the conference they logged off in. Y All conferences that have been selected for scanning will be searched for new mail. Remember that conferences are usually selected for scanning using the SELECT user command. Prompt to Read Mail when Mail Waiting When a new message has been left for a caller, that caller will be informed of the new message with a pop-up message that indicates which conferences have new mail. You can control whether the user is asked to read the mail right now or if only the pop-up message is displayed. Valid options are: N Display the pop-up message only. The user will not be asked if they wish to read the new mail. Y As soon as the pop-up message is displayed, the user will be asked if they wish to read the mail that is waiting for them. NOTE: Not all messages that are left on the system will set the mail waiting flags. For example, some third party software will not update the flags nor will any generic messages you enter in PCBoard (e.g., @USER@, @##@) File Transfers Disallow BATCH Uploads Normally you will want to encourage uploads to your system any way possible, and disabling batch uploads can hinder rather than promote uploads. However, for systems that accept uploads from foreign computing environments, such as a Macintosh, where the file naming conventions do not translate straight across to the DOS environment, it can sometimes be necessary to disallow batch uploads. This avoids the problem that occurs when the batch protocol tries to convert the filenames. Valid options are: N This option will make PCBoard operate normally -- users may do batch uploads. Y Users will not be able to do batch uploads when this option is set. Because a user must enter a valid DOS filename to begin an upload, this setting will force any file uploaded to the filename specified by the user. As mentioned previously, this will prevent a problem when uploading a filename from a foreign system which may try to create an invalid DOS filename. Promote to Batch Transfers PCBoard has two commands for uploading files ( U and UB ). The U command is usually recommended if one file is going to be uploaded and the UB command would be used to upload more than one file (a batch upload). Some of your users may find this method complex or easy to forget and therefore, you are given the ability to automatically promote the U command to the UB command. Valid options are: N The U command will always prompt for file one at a time. Batch transfers could still occur by performing an unannounced upload with a batch protocol. However, the descriptions will not be asked for up front. Y The U command will automatically be promoted to the UB command if the caller has selected a batch protocol (or no protocol at all). Upload Credit for Time The value that you enter in this value will determine how much of the time spent while uploading files will be refunded to the user if their upload passes your integrity checks. The default is 1.0 which means that by default PCBoard will stop the clock during an upload. That is, for every minute a caller spends uploading, 1 minute of credit will be refunded. Effectively, the caller will have the same amount of time left after the upload terminates as when the upload began. Setting this value to something higher, such as 2.5, will refund 2.5 minutes of time for every minute spent uploading. This means that if a user uploads for 2 minutes, they will receive a five minute refund. Remember, that they also spent two minutes downloading so this means that a net credit of 3 minutes would be received.. Once disconnected from the system, any time credits are lost. NOTE: No time credit will be added if the user's time has been adjusted for an upcoming expedited event. This will help prevent your system from missing the expedited event. Upload Credit for Bytes This value defines the number of credits given to the caller for each byte uploaded. The default is 0 giving no credits at all. In other words, the user would have the same amount of daily download bytes available as when they began the upload. You can reward the user for uploading by setting this value to any value above 0. A setting of 1 would give the caller a 1 daily download byte credit for every byte uploaded. The upload byte credit is a credit against the daily download byte limit. Therefore, the credits must be used on the same day in which they are posted or they will be lost. NOTE: If you are testing your uploads via PCBTEST.BAT then the upload must pass or no credit will be given. Include 'Uploaded By' in Desc. When a user uploads a file, this option will control whether or not the user who uploaded the file will be added as the last line in the description. Enabling this option is useful for quickly determining who uploaded a particular file to the system. N The name of the user who uploaded the file is not added to the description by PCBoard. Y An additional line to the end of the description entered by the user will be added to each file uploaded. This additional line will say Uploaded by: followed by the user name who uploaded the file. Verify Files Uploaded After a file is uploaded, you can have PCBoard shell out to a batch file called PCBTEST.BAT to perform tests on the file that is uploaded. The filename being tested is passed to the batch file as the first parameter. You can use any program you want in the PCBTEST.BAT file to test any criteria that you desire. Most SysOps are quite content to verify the integrity of compressed files and to check all files for viri. For more information on PCBTEST.BAT please see the Batch Files chapter of this manual. Valid options are: N No testing will be performed on files that are uploaded. Y PCBoard will test each file (individually) after the upload is complete. Disable Drive Size Check PCBoard normally checks the size of the hard disk and the amount of free space left before allowing an upload to take place. This information is displayed to the caller when they begin their upload (for informational purposes). You can choose whether or not to enable the drive size check. Valid options are: Y PCBoard will not check to make sure sufficient space is available before an upload begins. Likewise, the amount of free space on your upload drive will not be printed to your callers. If your system does not properly support the checking of free space or if you simply do not want the information shown to your callers, select this option. N PCBoard will check to ensure that there is enough free space on the hard drive before beginning an upload. The amount of free space that is checked for is determined by the Stop Uploads when Free Space is less than field on this same configuration screen. Upload Buffer Size (4-64) Enter the size of the upload buffer. This setting can affect the performance of your system during uploads. You should experiment with different values between 4 and 64 for your own system to see what works best. It is recommended that you set this value to a multiple of the cluster size of your hard drive. For instance, if you have a hard drive partition that is greater than 256 megabytes but less than 512 megabytes then your cluster size is 8 kilobytes. A setting of 8 should be the minimum used for the best performance. List of Slow Drive Letters If you have a slow server, a CD-ROM, or even more importantly, a carousel (multi-disk) CD-ROM, it may be beneficial to copy files that are to be transferred off the slow drive down to the temporary directory which could possibly be a faster local hard drive or ram drive. You can indicate for which drives this copying step should be performed by typing a list of drive letters in this field. For example, if you enter IKX in this field, any file that is downloaded from drive I, K, or X will be copied to the temporary directory before the download begins. For those who have a device like a carousel CD-ROM (multiple CD-ROMs but only one is read at a time) you can specify a range of drive letters that make up the device. For example, let's assume that you had a CD-ROM carousel that held 6 discs and used drive letters H, I, J, K, L, and M. To make PCBoard treat all 6 drive letters as one device you would enter H-M in the slow drive field. The dash is used to represent a range of drive letters. By entering H-M you are telling PCBoard to treat drives H, I, J, K, L, and M as one device. When copying files from a drive on your system, PCBoard will lock access to that slow drive so that system performance is not driven into the ground. If the drive is already slow there is no sense to try copying two files at the same time. PCBoard is going to impose a maximum wait period of 90 seconds for a slow drive to finish copying a file. If the slow drive is not free by that time, PCBoard will simply download the file directly from the slow drive. Now you can see why it is important to be able to specify a range of letters to treat as one device. Without this capability, it would be quite possible for a CD-ROM carousel device to spend most of its time swapping disks rather than exchanging meaningful data so that users could get more done is less time. NOTE: If there is insufficient space in your temporary directory to hold all files that are requested for download, PCBoard will not copy the file. Instead, it will continue with the download of the file leaving it on the slow drive for the transfer. Slow Drive Batch File If you have designated some drives as slow drives, you can optionally have PCBoard execute a batch file once the file has been copied. PCBoard will run the batch file that is specified in this field and pass the filename as the first parameter to the batch file. Inside of the batch file, you can run a program to set the comment in a compressed file or whatever your needs dictate. Stop Uploads when Free Space is less than The value that you enter in this field is multiplied by 1024 to determine the number of bytes that should be free on your upload drive before allowing an upload to occur. For example, if you enter 100 here, you will need to have 100 kilobytes of free disk space or PCBoard will not allow the user to upload any files. The fact is, you do not know how big an upload is going to be and you want to make sure that you do not run out of storage space on your drive or it may present a problem for other users. The most detrimental situation would be if you store your users file and your uploads on the same drive.. If you allow that drive to fill-up, your user file could not be increased in size. If the user file cannot grow, new users will not be allowed to log into your system. If you store system files on the same drive as your upload drive, you should set this value to something in excess of 3000 to give yourself some safe breathing room. The best alternative may be to use separate drives for your system files and files that get uploaded to your system. System Control Disable NS Logon Feature If a user adds NS to their response at the Do you want graphics prompt at login, PCBoard will not display the news file. The will enable the user to login to the system faster than they would if they had to view the news file. You may find that some users will use this option without ever manually checking the news. This would not present a good situation if you use the news file to display important information. Valid options are: N Allow users to skip the news file at login. Y Do not allow users to skip the news file at login. Disable Password Check (DOS) If you have your modem configured to automatically answer the phone (instead of PCBoard), you run the risk of a security breach when returning back from a non-shelled door application. What could happen is that the user could drop carrier after they exit door but before PCBoard reloads. If it takes a while for PCBoard to reload, a user could conceivably establish carrier before PCBoard reloads. Of course, if there is carrier when PCBoard resumes, it must assume that the user is still on-line. In a situation like this it might be desirable to verify the password of the user when returning from a door. Valid options are: N When returning from any door application, PCBoard will not ask for any passwords. This is the desired setting for most systems since they will be configured to let PCBoard answer the phone. This eliminates the possibility of having someone connect while PCBoard is reloading. Y The option gives you the ability to verify the password of the user that PCBoard thinks is on-line upon returning from a non-shelled door application. The disadvantage to this is that your callers may become easily annoyed especially if they open several doors. You should only enable this if you must force your modem to answer the phone instead of PCBoard which is not recommended. Multi-Lingual Operation In PCBSetup | File Locations | Configuration Files the filename for the multi-lingual data file is specified. PCBoard uses this file to determine which operational languages can be selected at login. You may want to be able to quickly enable or disable multi-lingual operation. Valid options are: N Multi-lingual operation is disabled. Even if you have defined the languages in your mult-lingual data file, the user will not be prompted to select a language. Y Select this option if you have defined your languages in the multi-lingual data file and if you want to prompt your users to select a language at login. Disable Full Record Updating You may want to protect certain user information that a user is normally allowed to edit with the W user command. This option will determine if the user can edit their city, phone numbers, comment #1 field of their user record using the previously mentioned user command. The valid options are: N All fields that can be edited using the W user command can be modified. Y All fields with the exception of the city, passwords, and comment #1 fields can be edited by the user. Allow Alias Change after Chosen After a caller has selected an alias it may not be desirable to allow the caller to change the alias without SysOp intervention. Preventing the caller from changing his alias avoids problems where one caller tries to leave messages (or do other things) using various names to create confusion. N Once the alias is entered the first time (using the W user command), the user may not change their alias. Instead, they must request that the SysOp change their name. Y The user may change their alias at any time by using the W command. NOTE: For aliases to be active you must install the Alias PSA from within System Manager. Run System as a Closed Board Normally PCBoard will allow new callers to call in and log into the system creating a new user record in your users file as they log into the system. However, you may wish to restrict new users from logging into your system. Valid options are: N New users may login to your system without being restricted. Y New users will not be allowed to login to your system unless a NEWASK questionnaire exists. If the NEWASK questionnaire exists, the user will be allowed to login, and answer the questions. However, no user record will be created for this user. The intention here is that you can use the NEWASK questionnaire to screen your callers and then manually enter a user account for them. Enforce Daily Time Limit Depending on the nature of your system, you may want to restrict your users to an absolute daily time limit, or simply a session limit. With a session limit, your users can call back as many times as desired during the day but they are only allocated a certain amount of time for each call or session. N With either this option set or if the Enforce Time Limit field in the PWRD file is set to N for the security level of the user, the time limit defined in the PWRD file will be considered a session time limit. Y When this option and the Enforce Time Limit field in the PWRD file is set to Y, the time limits defined are daily time limits. Allow One Name Users Normally PCBoard requires that two or more names be used when logging into the system. There are some people that have only one name (believe it or not) and some SysOps like to run alias systems where real names are not used and these sometimes are only a single name. An additional possibility for a one name user would be when you assign all of your users a number or unique ID for their name. Valid options are: N Users will be forced to enter at least two names to login (e.g., first name and last name). If they attempt to login with one name, PCBoard will inform them that they must enter a first and last name to login. Y Users may enter one name to login to the system. If the majority of your users will have one name, you may want to modify the Enter your first name prompt in PCBTEXT to say something like Enter your user name instead. Allow Password Failure Comment When logging into the system, the user is given four attempts to enter the correct password. This field controls what happens if the user does not enter the proper password after four attempts. Valid options are: N The user will be informed that the password is incorrect and that they are being logged off for excessive password failures. Y The user will be asked if they wish to leave a comment to the SysOp. This option would be useful because the caller could give you a voice number or some other type of identification so that they may login to the system again. Otherwise, they would have to create a new user account to get your attention. Warning on Logoff Command If you have users that accidentally log off of your system quite often, you may want to use this option to ask the user if they really wish to log off of your system. Valid options are: N The connection will be terminated without confirmation. Y PCBoard will ask that the user confirm that they really wish to log off. This confirmation can be skipped even when enabled if the BYE user command is used instead of the G user command. Allow Local SHELL to DOS You may want to disable the ability for users who are logged in locally to shell to DOS using the F5 key. Valid options are: N Do not allow local shells to DOS. That means that whenever a user is logged in locally, they cannot press F5 to shell to DOS. This would be useful if you have a lot of users who log in locally and you want to refuse their access to DOS. Y While logged in locally, F5 will shell the user to DOS allowing them to enter DOS commands. Use NEWASK+Standard Questions When a new user calls in PCBoard will normally ask either the built-in new user questions, the ones required to set up a user record in the users file, or it will ask the questions in the NEWASK file and not register the user (if you are running your system as a closed board). Valid options are: N New users will be asked only the standard questions. Y The built-in questions (phone numbers, protocol, etc.) will be asked in addition to the NEWASK questionnaire. This gives you the ability to get more information out of your new users. Read PWRD on Conference Join Normally PCBoard does not re-read the PWRD file after the caller joins a conference. If, however, you have a security level increase (or decrease) in a particular conference you may want to reread the PWRD file to determine new limits for the user. Valid options are: N When the user joins a conference, PCBoard uses the values stored in memory when it initially read the PWRD file. Y Each time a user joins a conference, PCBoard will re-read the PWRD file to update the user's time limit, ratio, etc. Confirm Caller Name / Address If you have a large number of users, it is quite possible that you may have people that attempt to login using common names. For example, you may already have a BOB SMITH on the system (from Tulsa, Oklahoma). A few months later, a new user attempts to login as BOB SMITH and is greeted for a password prompt. Obviously, there is a name conflict, and the new user will have to pick a new name. This field allows you to confirm the city name of the user before asking for the password. Valid options are N Do not confirm the city name after the user name is entered. this setting is recommended if you do not have a large user base (5000+ users) Y This setting is recommended if you have a large user base. After the user name is entered, PCBoard will confirm the city/location information. Auto-Reg in Public Conf When a new user calls in, PCBoard will automatically register the caller in public conferences where the security level required to join is set to 0. It does this by scanning all existing conferences and setting the R, X, and S conference flags in the user's record. This process can take a long time if you have a large number of conferences. Valid options are: N Do not automatically register users in public conferences. Users will not have any conference flags set in the public conferences aforementioned. Y Users will have the R, X, and S conference flags set in public conferences which require a security level of 0 to join. Encrypt Users File For some installations of PCBoard, the ability to encrypt key information in the user file is critical. For example, when PCBoard is used for local access across a network it would not be unlikely for one of your users to copy your USERS file from the network. However, if your file is encrypted, they will not be able to easily obtain the critical information of the user file. The following field in each user file will be encrypted: password city phone numbers (data and voice) the two comment fields If you do plan on encrypting your user file, then you need to run ENCRYPT.EXE on your user file. This is the utility that will actually encrypt the user file. This field, is used only to tell PCBoard if your user file has been encrypted. Valid options for this field are: N Your user file has not been encrypted. This will force PCBoard to access the user file as if it has not been encrypted. This will be the setting for the majority of PCBoard systems. Y If you have already run ENCRYPT.EXE on your user file then this will force PCBoard to work in encryption mode. Your user's file will be encrypted on disk, but PCBoard will properly translate the encrypted data as it reads the data from disk. It is critical that this setting be the same on all nodes. Otherwise, PCBoard encrypted data could be mistaken as unmodified data (or vice versa) and end up corrupting information in the user file. Configuration Switches Disable 3-minute Screen Clear At the call waiting screen, PCBoard will automatically clear the screen after three minutes of inactivity. In essence, PCBoard is enabling a screen-saving feature. Valid options for this field are: N PCBoard will enable the screen-saving feature after three minutes of inactivity. This is especially useful if you leave you monitor(s) on for extended lengths of time. Y Do not clear the screen if the system has been inactive for more than three minutes. Disable Registration Edits Normally, PCBoard attempts to control what the user can enter at certain prompts when a user is logging into your system as a new user. The prompts that are effected by the setting of this switch are: first and last name prompts (high ASCII characters are normally disabled) new user questions (phone numbers, city/location, etc.) For example, when PCBoard asks for the phone number of the user, it is expecting that only numbers and certain punctuation characters be entered in this field. If you use MKPCBTXT to ask a question other than the user's phone number you most likely do not want to restrict entry of that field to numbers. Valid options are: N PCBoard will operate in normal mode. This means that certain fields will have restricted output. Y Any data can be entered in the affected fields. In essence, these fields become free-form edit fields where no checking is performed. Disable High-ASCII Filter With non-error correcting modems line noise could come in the form of any characters including high ASCII characters. Since most users do not enter these characters at the keyboard, this switch is used to control if high ASCII characters can be entered at various prompts and in the message editor. Of course if you want to allow your users to enter high-ASCII characters or if you are using a foreign language which makes use of the high-ASCII then you may want to disable the filter. Valid options are: N PCBoard will continue to filter high ASCII characters. If you are doing this to prevent line noise from being input you may want to reconsider because error-correcting modems are gaining in popularity which will prevent line noise from being mistaken for valid input. Y The high ASCII filter is disabled allowing users to enter these characters at most prompts and also inside of the message editor. This would be the ideal setting if you use languages that make use of these characters or if your users upload a lot of graphics screens. Default to Graphics At Login Throughout the operation of PCBoard, the default choice is usually the safest choice. In certain circumstances, however, you may not want this. For example, if the majority of your users have ANSI capabilities but regularly press ENTER at the Do you want graphics prompt then they will default to no graphics. You can make it so that the default selection at that prompt is to select ANSI graphics based on the answer you enter in this field. Valid options are: N This will provide the safest choice. If a user presses ENTER when asked if they wish to have graphics, PCBoard will default to non-graphics mode. This way a user does not see meaningless ANSI escape sequences if they are not capable of ANSI. Y If the user presses ENTER when asked if they want graphics, PCBoard will default to ANSI graphics mode. If the user is not capable of ANSI graphics, their screen will appear to filled with garbage characters. You may only want to use this if a majority of your callers are capable of ANSI. Use Non-Graphics Mode Only If you do not want to have ANSI graphics mode available to your callers, you may want to enable this option. When this option is enabled, PCBoard will not even ask the user if they want graphics. Instead, it will assume that the user does not want graphics. PCBoard will still send the ANSI detection sequence to see if the user is capable of ANSI so that screen displays can be drawn faster, etc. Users can still change their display mode by using the M user command. Valid options for this field are: N Operate if a normal fashion by letting the user determine if they want graphics or not. This means that the question about wanting graphics will be asked at login. Y The user is not asked if they want to use graphics. Instead, PCBoard is going to default to no graphics. Exclude Local Logins from Stats On the call-waiting screen, PCBoard keeps track of how many calls, messages that have been entered, and files that have been transferred since the last time you reset the stats. This option will control whether or not the actions that take place on local logins (Sysop or user logging in from the call-waiting screen) will affect the stats on the call-waiting screen. Valid options are: N All calls, whether remote or local will affect the call-waiting stats. Y Do not increment the statistics on the call waiting screen when yourself or another user logs into the system locally. Exit to DOS After Each Call Normally PCBoard recycles after each call by closing all files and restarting itself. However, you may need to perform some task between the time PCBoard disconnects the caller and returns to the call waiting screen. An additional possibility is that you may need to load another application which answers the phone instead of PCBoard. If either of these situations fit into your configuration, you will need to exit to DOS after each call. Valid options for this field are: N Recycle using the normal sequence (return directly to the call-waiting screen). Y Exit to DOS after each call. In the structure of the default BOARD.BAT file, PCBoard is going to branch to the :END label. Therefore, you should place any DOS commands that you want executed after each call after the :END label in your BOARD.BAT file. Eliminate Screen Snow in PCB When PCBoard updates the screen, it does so by writing directly to the video buffer which can, on some CGA-based systems, cause snow to appear on the screen while it's being updated. Your callers will not see this but it could be distracting to you. N Operate normally in respect to writing data directly to the screen buffer. If you have a CGA adapter, you may need to select Y instead. Y Disables the screen snow that is possible with certain CGA adapters. Selecting this option will slow down screen updates slightly. Display NEWS Only if Changed This field has one purpose -- to control when the news file will be displayed to the caller. Valid options for this field are: A Display the news file every time a conference is joined. If this is what you desire, you may find that the conference INTRO (defined in the configuration for each conference) may be better suited for this purpose. N Display the news file for each conference once per day. Once the news file has been displayed that day, it will not be shown again. Y Display the news file only if the data of the news file is the same as or more recent than the caller's last logon date. Display User Info at Login This field controls whether or not you wish to display some user statistics at login. Information such as the last call date, the number of calls made to the system, expert mode status, and similar information is displayed. Valid options are: N Do not display user information at login. Nearly all the information PCBoard displays can be accessed using @ macros. Therefore, you can incorporate the user statistics into one of your display screens if you wish. Y The user statistics will be displayed just before the conference command prompt when a user is logging in. In addition, when a user joins a conference, they will be shown the last message they have read, the high message number, and the number of active messages in the conference. This will only be displayed once per conference. Pre-load PCBTEXT File All of the prompts and other messages that PCBoard displays come out of the PCBTEXT file. You can speed up some of PCBoard's displays by having PCBoard load this file into memory. This is called pre-loading. Valid options are: N When needed, read the information required from the PCBTEXT file on disk. This may slow down performance, but it saves the memory that would otherwise be taken by pre-loading the file. Y The PCBTEXT file will be loaded into memory. This will reduce the amount of time that it takes to display information from the PCBTEXT file. In addition, if you store the PCBTEXT file on a network server this option will reduce the network traffic on your system. The disadvantage to selecting this option is that additional memory will be used by pre-loading it into memory. Pre-load CNAMES File Whenever a caller joins a conference or scans for mail in different conferences PCBoard must get the conference information from the CNAMES.@@@ and CNAMES.ADD files. This can put on a lot of wear on your hard disk and it can be relatively slow depending on how fast your hard drive or network connection is. You can choose to pre-load the CNAMES information into memory to speed-up access to that information. However, you do so at the expense of memory. Valid options are: N The CNAMES information will not be pre-loaded. Instead, the information will be obtained directly by accessing the disk as needed. Y The CNAMES information will be loaded into memory. This will allow PCBoard to access the information quicker and also increase the memory requirements of PCBoard. Approximately 650 bytes of memory will be used for each conference in your system. Scan for New Bulletins This question determines if PCBoard should scan for new bulletins during every login. Normally, the scan for new bulletins will occur around the time that NEWS file is displayed (when it displays). You may not want to scan for new bulletins if you have a large number of bulletins on-line. N Do not scan for new bulletins. This setting would reduce the amount of time it takes to login if you have a large number of bulletins on-line. Y Scan for new bulletins. PCBoard is able to scan hundreds of bulletins in a very brief amount of time. If you have a lot of bulletins on-line, you may not want to scan for new bulletins to reduce the login time for your users. Swap Out During Shell Normally the PCBoard executable, and all of the data it is currently working on, remains in memory while it is operating. This information remains in memory even when shelling out to DOS thereby reducing the amount of free memory by the amount that PCBoard, and its data, are occupying. This option will control whether or not PCBoard will swap itself out of memory during various shell to DOS operations (executing PCBTEST.BAT, PCBVIEW.BAT, etc.). Valid options for this field are: N When shelling out, do not swap any data out of memory. You will have less memory available when shelling to DOS (usually under 300 kilobytes). Y PCBoard will swap itself out of memory (leaving about 25K of memory behind to re-load) during a shell to DOS operation. It will swap this information out to whichever storage medium is available (EMS, XMS, and finally disk). This will generally increase the amount of memory by about 200 kilobytes or more. Swap Out During $$LOGON/LOGOFF.BAT Due to the need to speed up the processing of $$LOGON.BAT and $$LOGOFF.BAT, PCBoard normally does not swap itself out when running these batch files - regardless of the previous setting (Swap Out During Shell). If you are running software that requires more memory than is available during a non-swap shell to $$LOGON or $$LOGOFF, you may want to swap out when these batch files are run. Valid options are: N The swap during shell setting will be ignored and a normal DOS shell will be performed to execute the $$LOGON.BAT and $$LOGOFF.BAT files. Y PCBoard will swap memory out leaving approximately 25 kilobytes to reload whenever the logon and logoff batch files are executed. Create USERS.SYS for $$LOGON.BAT In order to keep $$LOGON.BAT processing quick, PCBoard will not normally take the time required to create a USERS.SYS file since most programs that you would run in your $$LOGON.BAT file will not require it. N This is the default setting. No USERS.SYS file will be created when the logon batch file is executed. Y If you have an application that needs USERS.SYS while running in your logon batch file, you should choose this setting. Capture GROUP CHAT Session to Disk Normally PCBoard will not capture information that is typed in by callers during group chat due to the disk intensive nature of group chat. If you would like to keep a record of what users type while in group chat, enable this option. Valid options for this field are: N Do not capture what is said during group chat. This will save you disk space and will not burden group chat with any more disk-intensive operations. Y PCBoard will record the what is written but only after a user presses ENTER. The capture file will contain the date, time, user name, node number, and what was typed. Their will be a capture file for each channel (up to 255) in group chat. The location of the chat capture files are determined by PCBSetup | File Locations | System Files. Allow Handles in GROUP CHAT In group chat, PCBoard will normally allow the user to select a handle to be known as while in chat. For some systems the ability for the user to hide their identity might be very undesirable. Because of this, PCBoard will give you the choice to allow users to use a handle while in chat. Valid options are: N Users may not choose a handle while in group chat. Instead, their first name will be used while in group chat. Y When entering group chat, users will be asked to enter a handle they wish to use to identify themselves while in group chat. If the user wants to change their handle while in group chat, they can type HANDLE at the chat command prompt. Logging Options Log Caller Number to Disk PCBoard stores the vital information about each call in what is termed the caller logs. These provide a call-by-call history of each node on your system. You may want to record the caller number of each user for reference purposes. Valid options are: N PCBoard will not write the caller number to the caller logs. Y The caller number of each caller will be written to the log file. The format will be: Caller Number: 9,999,999 Log Connect String to Disk With all of the various connection types and possibilities of today's modems, it might be useful for you to be able to see what type connect a particular user established for their session. For example, if you get a user that complains about slow transfer rates, it could be that the modem did not connect at full-speed initially due to poor phone lines. By logging this information to disk, this information will be available to you. In addition, any CallerID information will be written to disk as well. N The connect string that the modem gave PCBoard will not be written to the caller logs. Y The connect string and any CallerID information will be written to the caller logs. NOTE: In order for CallerID information to be written to the caller logs, you must set PCBoard to answer after at least 2 rings and have this option enabled. Log Security Level to Disk Sometimes it is useful to know the security level of the user at login written to the caller logs. This option will control whether or not the security level at login will be written to the caller logs. Valid options for this field are: N The security level of the caller will not be written to the caller logs. Y The security level of the caller at login will be written to the caller logs. Remember that the security level of a user can be reduced or increased when joining a conference. Limits Keyboard Timeout (in min, 0=disable) Sometimes users will have to walk away from their system or may forget they were on-line. To prevent the connection from being active until the user's time limit expires or they finally remember, PCBoard allows you to set a keyboard time-out value. If no activity is detected from the caller in the number of minutes that you specify in this field, PCBoard will automatically disconnect the caller for inactivity. This will free up the node for other callers to get in and may also save money for those callers that are calling in long distance. In this field, enter the number of minutes of inactivity a user can have before they will be logged off of the system. As a general rule, a value between 3 and 5 would be good for most callers. If you enter a value of 0, the keyboard time-out will be inactive which will enable the caller to stay on-line until their daily/session time limit expires. No warning is given to the user about keyboard inactivity until the final minute before they are disconnected. During this final minute, PCBoard will send a beep every 10 seconds to alert the caller. After this minute expires, PCBoard will disconnect the caller. Max Number of Upload Description Lines This field controls how many lines the user is given to enter descriptions for their uploads. You may enter any value between 1 and 60. Each description line may contain 45 characters of text to describe the uploaded file. In general a limit of 8 to 10 is sufficient for most systems. Maximum Number of Lines in Scrollback While logged on locally, PCBoard maintains a scrollback buffer which you can use to review information that has already scrolled off the screen. The scrollback buffer can be viewed by pressing the o key. The maximum lines that you can specify is about 400 which will use up approximately 64 kilobytes of memory. Setting a lower number will save some memory and a setting of 0 will totally disable the scrollback buffer. NOTE: A minimum of 30 lines is required unless you disable the scroll back buffer completely. In other words, if you set your scrollback buffer to any value between one and 30 lines, the value of 30 will be forced regardless of your setting. DOS Environment Size When Shelled Out When PCBoard shells out to DOS via COMMAND.COM it is possible to request (of COMMAND.COM) a larger environment size. The value you set here will be passed to COMMAND.COM as a command line parameter such as /E:768 (where 768 would be the value that you have chosen). Increasing the environment size may be required if you have a large number of environment variables. In general, a value of 1024 or higher is not recommended. Number Days Before FORCED Password Change When you have installed the Password Changing PSA, it gives you the ability to force the caller to change their password after a certain amount of days. By forcing your users to regularly change their password, you can be help increase the overall security of your system, because a user's password may not be as easy to hack. This particular field allows you to determine after how many days the user will be forced to change their password. A setting of 0 will disable the automatic renewal of forced password changes and, instead, the only way to force a password change is to manually edit the user record (via PCBSM) and change the expiration date on the password. A setting such as 90 will cause the caller's password to expire every 90 days. This will cause PCBoard to automatically require a new password, for continued access, every 90 days. NOTE: For this field to have any effect, the Password Changing PSA must be installed. Number Days to Warn Prior to FORCED Change If the user's password is set to expire, either from manually setting the expiration date, or from the automatic setting caused by the Number of Days Before FORCED Password Change, PCBoard will give the caller a warning of the upcoming expiration during the login process. In this field, specify the number of days prior to expiration that this warning should be displayed to the caller. NOTE: For this field to have any effect, the Password Changing PSA must be installed. Minimum Password Length When the Password Changing PSA is installed, PCBoard will automatically force a minimum length for a password. The minimum password length is determined by the number that you enter in this field. If you enter a value of 0, there will be no password length restriction enforced. NOTE: For this field to have any effect, the Password Changing PSA must be installed. Allow Sysop Page Start Time When the page bell is toggled on from the call-waiting screen or by pressing F4 while logged in, this field defines the time at which you will begin allowing callers to page the SysOp. If the user attempts to page the SysOp during off-hours, they will be informed the SysOp is not available for chat and asked if they wish to leave a comment instead. For example, you might want to be available for chat between the hours of 8:00am to 5:00 pm. If this is what you desire, enter 08:00 in this field. Allow Sysop Page Stop Time When the page bell is toggled on from the call-waiting screen or by pressing F4 while logged in, this field defines the end time at which callers will no longer be able to page the SysOp. If the user attempts to page the SysOp during off-hours, they will be informed that the SysOp is not available for chat and asked if they wish to leave a comment instead. For example, you might want to be available for chat between the hours of 8:00am to 5:00 pm. If this is what you desire, enter 17:00 in this field. Colors Default Color (@X code format) In certain areas of your system, PCBoard uses a default color for displaying text. The color of the text used in the body of a message is just one example. In this field, enter the @X color you want to use as your default color. For example, if you want your default to be light gray on a black background, enter 07 in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header DATE Line The color code entered in this field will control the color used for the first line of the message header. This is the line that will display the date, message number, etc. For example, if you want the color to be white text on a cyan background, enter 3F in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header TO Line The color code entered in this field, will control the color used for the second line of the message header. This is the line that will display the user who the message is addressed to. For example, if you want the color to be white text on a blue background, enter 1F in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header FROM Line The color code entered in this field will determine the color for the third line of the message header. This is the line that displays who the message is from. For example, if you want the color to be white text on a blue background, enter 1F in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header SUBJ Line The color code entered in this field will determine the color used for the forth line of the message header. This line in the header displays the subject of the message. For example, if you want the color to be white text on a blue background, enter 1F in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header READ Line The color code entered in this field will control the color displayed on the fifth line of the message header. This line is only displayed when the long style message header is being used by the caller. On this line PCBoard will display whether or not the message has been read by the recipient and what type of security is in use for the message. For example, if you want the color to be cyan text on a blue background, enter 13 in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Color for Message Header CONF Line The color code entered in this field will control the color displayed on the sixth line of the message header. This line is only displayed when the long style message header is being used by the caller. On this line PCBoard will display the conference number and the type of read that is currently in use. For example, if you want your default to be cyan on a blue background, enter 13 in this field. For more information on @X codes and the various colors you can select, please see the Display Files section in the Customizing Your BBS chapter of this manual. Function Keys Pre-defined function keys allow you to send text by holding down SHIFT and pressing the function key listed to the left of each field on this screen. For example, if you regularly add a signature to the bottom of your messages, you may want to define a function key to do it for you. In other words, when you execute the function key, your signature will be typed in for you instead of you having to type it in. Sending Text You are given 60 characters to enter text you want sent when you execute a function key. The text that you enter in this field will be sent directly to PCBoard with one exception. If you enter ^M anywhere in a function key field, it will be treated as if you pressed ENTER. Sending The Contents Of A File If you need more than 60 characters to be sent by a function key, you can tell PCBoard to send the contents of an entire file. To do this, begin the line with a % followed by the filename that you want to send to PCBoard. Executing A PPE File Another action you can define is to run a PPE file when a particular function key is executed. To run a PPE from a function key, begin the line with an ! followed by the filename of the PPE (including the .PPE extension) you want to execute. Examples Let's assume that you have entered the following information for your function keys: The following describes each action that would occur for the function keys defined in the previous screen capture are executed: SHIFT-F1 This particular example might be used as a signature when leaving messages on your system. Instead of repetitively typing your name you could press SHIFT-F1 to have PCBoard enter all of this text for you. SHIFT-F2 When PCBoard detects file access errors it will write an entry to the caller logs. This entry will usually contain either the word FAIL or ERROR. This particular example would be quite useful if you wished to regularly scan your caller logs to see if your system may have a configuration error or problems accessing certain files. Instead of typing the command in every day, you could use a function key to do all of the work for you. SHIFT-F3 This example demonstrates how to have PCBoard stuff the contents of a file into the keyboard. When you press SHIFT-3, PCBoard will enter the contents of C:\PCB\GEN\NEW-WELC just as if you had typed it yourself. Remember, when you want to have the contents of a file stuffed, you need to begin the function key definition with a % character. SHIFT-F4 The simple fact that you may run a PPE opens up numerous possibilities. The example shown in the previous screen capture would execute C:\PCB\PPE\TAGLINES.PPE. Remember, to specify that a PPE file should be used for a function key definition, you need to enter an ! as the first character of the definition field. In addition, you must also specify the filename extension of .PPE on your file you wish to execute. Security Levels This section discusses the Security Levels menu option of PCBSetup. From this menu option, you can control the security level that is required to execute commands or certain functions. The following page begins by discussing how to protect SysOp functions. Sysop Functions The fields on this screen give you the ability to control what security level is required to execute the SysOp Commands (1-15). Each of the 15 SysOp commands are represented on this screen. The fact that you can assign different levels to different commands, gives you the ability to have several users who help with SysOp duties. You can then give users access to only those commands that they are required to perform their tasks. The rest of the commands can have higher security levels assigned to them to prevent unauthorized access. Sysop Commands Throughout PCBoard there are certain operational characteristics that were designed for SysOp use. For example, there are subcommands available at the End of Message Command prompt that will enable a user to COPY or MOVE the current message to a new conference. Obviously, you do not want all users to have this capability. The security levels required to use functions/commands like the previous example are controlled on this screen. Sysop Level (for Sysop Menu and F1-Temp-Sysop Upgrade) The value that you enter in this field determines the minimum security level that constitutes a user being seen as a SysOp. For example, if you enter 100 in this field, any user with a security level of 100 or higher will be seen as a SysOp by PCBoard. This means that these users will see the SysOp menu at the conference command prompt instead of the normal user menu. Just because a user is seen as a SysOp does not mean that they have free reign on your system. Remember that you can control the security level required to execute virtually all of the functions and commands. In addition, The security level that you enter in this field will be given to the user under the following circumstances. You temporarily upgrade the access of a user that is online by using the F1 keyboard command. This new security level will only be in effect for the duration of the call. When the user calls in the next time, their old security level will be used. There is a conference flag (C) which can be set in the user record which designates a user as a conference SysOp. If this flag is set in a conference that you user joins, their security level will be upgraded to the SysOp security level. This security level change will be in effect while the caller is in the conference where they are designated as a conference SysOp. When they leave the conference, their access will be returned to normal. Level Needed to Read All Comments In this field, enter the security level that is required for a user to be able to read comments that are left to the SysOp. Comments are seen as any messages that are left by users using the C user command. Because comments are assumed to be of the highest security nature, a user who meets the security level requirements of this field may also read any message on the system. Level Needed to Read All Mail Except Comments The security level that you enter in this field will be used to determine if a user may read private mail that is not from or to the current user. If a user has a security level that is equal to or greater than the level that is entered in this field then they may read any private mail with the exception of comments to the SysOp. The level needed to read comments is determined by the previous field on the screen. Level Needed to Copy or Move Messages Between Areas Sometimes it is extremely useful to be able to move or copy a message to a new conference. However, you do not want everyone to have this capability for obvious reasons. In order for a user to have the capability of moving or copying a message to a new conference, they must have a security level equal to or greater than the value that you enter in this field. Level Needed to Enter @-Variables in Message Base With the exception of @HANGUP@ and @DELAY:nn@, all macros can be entered in a message and displayed when viewing the message. For this reason, you may not want all callers to have this capability. For a user to be able to enter all @ macros such as @USER@ and @MORE@ they must have a security level equal to or greater than the value you enter in this field. NOTE: All users, may enter @X color codes in their messages regardless of the security level you enter for this field. Level Needed to Edit Any Message in the Message Base There are two settings in PCBSetup that will determine if a user will be able to edit a message. This setting controls whether or not a user can edit any message they can read regardless if it was entered by them. There is also a setting in PCBSetup | Security Levels | User Levels which controls the security level required for a user to edit messages they have left. Obviously, you are going to want to set the security level required to edit any message higher than the level required to edit the user's own messages as it follows the rules of common sense. In order for a user to edit any message that they can read, they need to have a security level that is greater than or equal to the value you enter in the field on this screen. The ability to edit any message is a some-what powerful function, because you can make it look like people said something in a message that they really did not. Remember, to edit a message you type EDIT at the End of Message Command prompt. Level Needed to NOT Update Msg Read Status (R O cmd) The R O user command enables you to read messages without having your last message read pointer updated. This is quite useful for skimming through the message base because you can spend more time reading the messages at a later time. All of this is possible because when using this command, your last message read pointers are not updated. This particular field will control whether or not PCBoard should avoid marking the message as having been read when you are reading messages in read only mode. You may not want all callers to be able to have this ability and thus defeat your ability to tell if they have read their messages yet. Setting the security level here outside the reach of your callers will keep them from using this capability. Level Needed to Use the BROADCAST Command The broadcast command is used to send a one line message to a user on another node (or all nodes). In order for the user to be able to use the BR user command they must have a security level that is equal to or greater than the value that you enter in this field. Level Needed to View the Private Upload Directory The value you enter in this field will control whether or not a user can view the private upload directory of the current conference while logged into the system. If the security level of the caller is greater than or equal to the value entered, they will be allowed to view the private upload directory. When logged into the system, you can view file directories using the F user command. To view the private upload directory of the current conference, enter P at the directory prompt number. Level Needed to Enter Generic Messages (@USER@) When addressing a message, you can address it to @USER@, @##@ or @##-##@ (where ## is a security level) to make it appear that the single message is a personal message for each individual user. All of these messages are referred to as generic messages because one single message can appear to be a personal message for every user on your system. The advantage of this is that a personal message will get more attention from the user than a message that is addressed to ALL. The disadvantage to using this method is that it can be obnoxious if used too frequently. You can control what users will be able to enter generic messages by entering the required security level to enter these messages in the field on this screen. Level Needed to Edit Message Headers The security level entered in this field will determine whether or not a user will be able to edit additional information of the message header by entering E at the End of Message Command prompt. The ability to edit the message header information gives you the ability to perform such operations as re-addressing the message, changing the security on the message, changing the FROM field, and more. Level Needed to Protect/Unprotect a Message At the End of Message Command prompt, you can enter U to make a message public or P to make a message private. The value you enter in this field will set the security level that is required for a user to be able to enter these commands. Level Needed to Overwrite Files on Uploads When a file already exists on the system, PCBoard will not allow a user to upload the same file. A user that has a security level equal to or greater than the value entered in this field can choose to: * Remove the existing file * Continue with the upload (leaving both the old and new files online) * Abort the upload. Level Needed to Set the Pack-Out Date on Messages When entering a message, you can set the message security to D if you have sufficient security. This will enable you to set a date when the message you are about to enter will be automatically removed from the message base. This would be useful if whatever message you are entering is date sensitive. For example, if you offering a special subscription rate until July 1, 1994, you may want to set the pack-out date of the message to July 2, 1994 so that people logging in after the first will not see the message. Level Needed to See All Return Receipt Messages Normally a Return Receipt is useful only to the person that requested the return receipt. With this in mind, PCBoard will normally not show the Return Receipt to other users, not even the SysOp. In order to see return receipts that belong to others, you must have a security level equal to or greater than the level specified in this field. User Commands Security Levels Required The top portion of this screen is split into two columns. These two columns list most of the user commands that are available inside of PCBoard. Next to each command description is a field. In each field, enter the minimum security level that is required to execute the command. If the user does not have sufficient security, then the user will receive a notice stating that the command is not available. In each field, you can enter any value between 0 and 255. The rest of the commands (that are not listed) will be controlled by one of those that are listed. For example, the FLAG command can be used if the D command is accessible to the user. This makes sense, because the FLAG command simply marks files for download. If the user is not capable of downloading files, you do not want them flagging files. On this screen you will also see four other fields you can define the security level for. Level Required for BATCH File Transfers In order for a user to transfer more than one file at a time, they must have a security level that meets or exceeds the value you enter in this field. When batch transfers are disabled, a user may only upload or download a single file at a time. Level Required to EDIT Your Own Messages In this field, enter the security level that is required for a user to be able to edit the contents of messages they have left on the system. Messages are edited by typing EDIT at the End of Message Command prompt. Users may find that editing their messages would be useful when carrier is lost while entering their message, or if they discover a spelling/grammatical error after saving the message. If you do not want to let your users edit their own messages, set this value to a high security level. Level Given to Users Who Agree to Register This field will enable you to determine what security level new users who agree to register on your system will be assigned. After the NEWUSER file is displayed, PCBoard asks the new user if they would like to register on the system. If they agree to register, they will be assigned the security level you enter in this field. Level Given to Users Who Refuse to Register If a new user decides not to register on your system, they will be given the security level that you enter in this field. By refusing to register, PCBoard is going to allow the user to look around and will not create a user record because they chose not to register. You can immediately log the user off of the system if they refuse to register by assigning them a security level of 0. The security level of 0 will tell PCBoard to inform the user that they are being logged off because they refused to register.