BTN: Birmingham Telecommunications News COPYRIGHT 1988 May 1988 Volume 1, Issue 2 Table Of Contents ----------------- Article Title Author Policy Statement and Disclaimer................Mark Maisel Editorial Column...............................Mark Maisel Transfer Protocols for PCB 12.1 and Others.....Ed O'Neill Rebuttal to Michele's T and W..................Bubba Flaval Telecommunications And Women, part 2...........Michele Cahoon Gamer's Corner.................................Osman Guner Known BBS Numbers..............................Mark Maisel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer and Statement of Policy for BTN We at BTN try our best to assure the accuracy of articles and information in our publication. We assume no responsibility for damage due to errors, omissions, etc. The liability,if any for BTN, its editors and writers, for damages relating to any errors or omissions, etc., shall be limited to the cost of a one year subscription to BTN, even if BTN, its editors or writers have been advised of the likelihood of such damages occurring. With the conclusion of that nasty business, we can get on with our policy for publication and reproduction of BTN articles. We publish monthly with a deadline of the fifteenth of the month prior to publication. If you wish to submit an article, you may do so at any time but bear in mind the deadline if you wish for your work to appear in a particular issue. It is not our purpose to slander or otherwise harm a person or reputation and we accept no responsibility for the content of the articles prepared by our writers. Our writers own their work and it is protected by copyright. We allow reprinting of articles from BTN with only a few restrictions. The author may object to a reprint, in which case he will specify in the content of his article. Otherwise, please feel free to reproduce any article from BTN as long as the source, BTN, is specified, and as long as the author's name and the article's original title are retained. If you use one of our articles, please forward a copy of your publication to: Mark Maisel Editor, BTN 221 Chestnut St. BHM, AL 35210-3219 We thank you for taking the time to read our offering and we hope that you like it. We also reserve the right to have a good time while doing all of this and not get too serious about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial by Mark Maisel The BBS community has been very responsive to BTN and I want to open this months issue with a big THANK YOU! I am working on some way to turn BTN into a CHEAP printed monthly for distribution through low cost subscriptions and retail stores. We will continue to remain primarily a download based magazine, that supports and hopefully is supported by its readers. The comments that we have received have been all positive and filled with good suggestions, many of which will be implemented over time. Our last issue certainly did arouse some attention. Tyros' survey results led the way in stirring up some interesting discussions. It certainly was not a scientific effort in polling, but then again it was never intended to be such. One good thing that has come out of the survey is that so many people have expressed an interest in it, that it is going to become an annual event and hopefully will be more precise and accurate due to so much more input from users as to methods and questions. Anyone who wishes to participate in the survey should contact Tyros on Channel 8250 or myself on any public board in town. I think I have active accounts on most boards in Birmingham. We will probably start organizing the next survey over the summer and prepare for a fall survey. We found an ideal person willing to respond to Michele Cahoon's Telecommunications and Women column and his reply to her first article is right here next to her second installment. Please read it over and tell us what you think. Who's right? If you have a similar or dissimilar opinion, please let us put it in print. We fully support the idea of using pen names if you would like to remain anonymous or if you just prefer to write under your handle. Our Gamer's Corner should inspire some intense competition on the boards that support game doors. I hope to see some folks get out there and go after our resident expert, Osman Guner. He plays them all; how he has time I don't know and his results speak for themselves. For those of you who don't know, Osman is the director of the ongoing chess tournament on America Online. If you would like a challenging match, then contact him there for a good game. Finally, if you are running a public bbs and would like some free publicity, then get me your board name, phone number, and baud rates supported, and I will see to it that you are added to our list of known bbs numbers. I want you to continue to enjoy BTN for a long time, so don't just sit there, keep reading! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Transfer Protocols for PCBoard 12.1 and Other Systems by Ed O'Neill PCBoard 12.1 does a number of different protocol transfers internally. In addition to these, the SysOp can add protocol drivers as a shell, a program that's run outside of a memory resident program. These shell programs must meet three requirements: They must set the DOS ErrorLevel to flag the success or failure of the transfer. They must leave the communications port's settings intact on exit and they must be capable of accepting complete DOS file specifications in the standard Drive:\Path\Filename.Ext format. The parameters are passed to a batch program and are defined in PCBPROT.DAT as follows: A,I,128,ASCII X,I,128,Xmodem Sum C,I,128,CRC XModem Y,I,1024,Ymodem G,I,1024,Ymodem-G I,I,128,Imodem Z,S,1024,Zmodem K,S,90,PCKermit W,S,128,WXfer 4.0 N,I,0,None The first letter denotes the selection you make when you register or when you pick menu selection (T)ransfer Protocol. It's kept in your data base record and is used each time you request a download. The second letter can only be S or I to define Internal or Shell transfers. The numeric defines the block size and is used to calculate the number of blocks and estimate the time of each transfer. Then there is the description you see when you make a selection. ASCII - Is used to transfer text files containing only printable characters or those in the ASCII numeric range from 32 to 127 or 32 to 255 on some graphic devices (know as Extended ASCII). In addition to the printables, there will be some other "action" characters in the text: LF (10), CR (13) and sometimes HT (09). Some text processors change the individual bits in the words for pagination and may not be compatible with your processor. Also, some text files may contain ANSI Escape (27) sequences which will passively appear on your screen if your machine can't process them for color, sound and cursor positioning. This protocol will show as the most efficient (100%) but that assumes that every character transmitted is necessary and there is no overhead bytes for data integrity checks as associated with the other protocols. You may use your ASCII upload to send a composed message to the message bases or send an ASCII text file to the upload directory. XModem Sum - This protocol was developed in 1979 by Ward Christensen for the CP/M operating system and was know as MODEM and MODEM2. The simple check sum is fairly accurate but there is a mathematical probability of about 0.4% errors getting passed the check. The receiver must ACK (acknowledged) or NAK (not acknowledge) each 128 byte block and the sender must wait (half duplex) before sending the next block or resending the bad block. The delay while waiting for the ACK or NAK lowers the efficiency (Actual/Potential) of the transfer. On The Channel, this protocol is 70% to 80% efficient depending on line quality and the start-up delay. Yes! The clocks running while you type the name and start the transfer and affects the efficiency. XModem CRC - The CRC stands for Cyclical Redundancy Check, a polynomial calculation produced from the sum of the bytes in the 128 byte block. The result of the equation is passed as a two byte (16 bit) trailer to the block and is recalculated and compared on the receiving end with the NAK/ACK response. The efficiency of this transfer is consistently 5% better than sum correction even though the packet length is increased by one byte. I have no real explanation for this but I suspect that the improved error checking eliminates a few false, bad block retransmits. YModem - The most significant improvement with YModem is an increase in the block size to 1024 bytes. The automatic reduction in ACK/NAK handshaking with the larger data block automatically raises the efficiency to about 92%. There is also provisions to send 128 byte blocks to eliminate padding the last block to 1024 bytes. It uses full 16 bit CRC error checking and has an optional block zero to send and receive file names, file path, file size and last modification date and time to the receiver. This is the method used in YModem Batch mode and overcomes XModem's and YModem's requirement of typing the name in on both ends. YModem-G - This is a stripped version of YModem for error correcting modems. The ACK/NAK handshake is eliminated with the assumption that the data coming from the port is corrected. There are several ways of doing this but it is a hardware function and differs from one modem to another. If the file transmission is not ACKed at the end of the transmission or if an error is detected, this protocol just aborts and must be restarted. Imodem - I can't tell you much about this protocol. I do know that it is designed for error correcting modems. It's available the national services, in ProComm Plus and in QModem. I understand that it takes advantage of the error correction of the newer modems and is very efficient but, to date, I have not used it or been able to find any more information on it. ZModem - This is my personal favorite. It is a proprietary protocol written by Chuck Forsburg of Omen Technologies and is only available in his products. The good news is that DSZ, a IBM-PC/XT/AT compatible product, is available from this BBS and others to add ZModem to your transfer arsenal. This protocol is the best of all worlds. It incorporates the superior concepts of XModem, YModem and Batch protocols and implements them in a full duplex, streaming protocol. This means that the sender is no longer required to wait for the ACK before sending the next block. It just clips along, block after block, and resends any bad ones after sending the entire file. The ACK/NAK procedure is done in full duplex to further raise efficiency to 95% even over mediums with huge propagation delays like satellite relays. The batch capability of ZModem, also, lends itself to error recovery. It can actually restart an error ridden, aborted transfer making DSZ and ZModem the state of the art in protocols. The 32 bit CRC, twice the resolution of YModem's 16 bit one, practically eliminates the chance of an error sneaking past the check. PCKermit - Kermit is slow. It is, however, implemented on several different types of PCs, minis and mainframes and should only be used in the absence of another, more efficient, one. I have it only for those that don't have anything else. The small packet size, 90 bytes, and half duplex acknowledgements make it very inefficient but it is better than nothing. Note that this shell program will not properly set the DOS ErrorLevel and you will be charged with aborted downloads. Sorry! I'll replace it as soon as I find a better one. Some system have a remote Kermit file server but not this one. In all fairness, the server does make Kermit more useful and desirable. WXfer V4.0 - This is Marty del Vecchio's implementation of Windowed XModem. A windowed protocol is capable of changing the block size based on the transmission errors. If you have a clean line and get zero errors, the software raises the block size in 128 byte increments. This is really only good for large files on clean lines. With small files and noisy lines, it's much more like XModem. This implementation of WXModem is not fully compatible with ProComm Plus. I suggest that you get this exact version if you want to try it. None - Use this setting if you're trying out different protocols and wish to be prompted when you request a download. Obviously, you cannot download with your protocol set to NONE but you can use any of the other letters to avoid getting the menu each time you download. The format is - D FileName.Ext (L) - where (L) is the single letter protocol designation desired. How do you do it? Here are some sample command lines for DSZ: dsz sz -w zcom*.zoo (ZMODEM send, 4096 window for 1200b PC Pursuit) dsz sz -r giant.arc (ZMODEM crash recovery: resume interrupted transfer) dsz sb *.arc (YMODEM (128 byte blocks) send) dsz sb -k *.arc (YMODEM-1k send) dsz handshake on sb *.arc (YMODEM-g or YMODEM send, hardware handshake) dsz sx -k naughty.bit (XMODEM-1k single file send) dsz rb -y (YMODEM receive, erase old file if any) dsz handshake on rb -g (YMODEM-g receive) dsz rz C:/uploads (ZMODEM receive with specified directory) dsz rx -c foo.bar (XMODEM-CRC or XMODEM-1k single file receive) You simple pick the one you want and add a line to a batch that you run from your communications package. Here are the exact lines from the batch files I use for ZModem transfers from ProComm Plus, the first for receiving and the second for sending. They must be placed in a batch and the batch name added to your external protocol list as ZMODEM-D.BAT and ZMODEM-U.BAT respectively. DSZ must be available in your path or in your default directory and is called from the batch. for downloading -> DSZ handshake both pB4096 rz -r for uploading -> DSZ handshake both pB4096 sz %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 Check you DOS manual if you don't understand the use of the %# in the batch. The others, PCKermit, SeaLink, MegaLink, WXfer, WXModem, ext. will operate in a similar fashion. They, generally, will give you command line examples by running them with a ? /h -h or other help switch. See the documentation with each driver available in Conference 9 - Directory 2. You can, also, get command line examples from within the ProDOOR and duplicate them on your end. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Telcommunications and Women: A rebuttal by Bubba Flaval "Beg pardon?" "I'm serious. There is an article in the first issue of the BTN by some woman about why we should get more women involved in BBSing." Reluctantly, I sat my Budweiser down and transferred my attention from this months Hustler magazine to the printout my friend had handed me. "She can't be serious!" "I think she is, though." I reread the article and decided that whoever Michele Cahoon was, she had some wrong ideas and it was apparently up to me to try and straighten it out before she confused a lot of good people. I looked out the window where my new 4 X 4 sat needing another coat of wax and decided that this dippy broad needed attention first. I fired my system up, loaded my word processor in, and started composing the Truth: The small percentage of women involved in BBSing needs to stay a small percentage. The ones involved in it now are indeed fairly unobtrusive, (for you women reading this that means they keep their heads down) which is proper behavior for a woman involved in a man's field). After all, who wants to read a message base full of messages like "I think that the Toni permanent is the best, don't you agree." As far as women on bulletin boards using a man's name; Why not! As long as they leave sensible messages. I would rather read a message about how to change the plugs in my RV or upload using a new protocol than talk about permanents! If one of them forgets and logs a message about a new hair care I ask the SysOp to check them out and delete them if possible. Teenaged boys are SUPPOSED to go through 'turbo hormonal changes.' Because of these changes they do have a tendency to hit on women on the boards (unless they are under a man's name). This makes them a valuable asset to telecommunications; They keep these 'free thinking' women from infesting our boards. Otherwise these young male 'hunters' would be nailed into barrels and fed through the bunghole (of the barrel) until such time as they gain more control. Women SHOULD be intimidated by computers! They can't even follow simple directions to the laundromat let alone the sophistication involved in operating a terminal. Here is a simple way to test this: Tell your wife (or girlfriend) that DEVICE=ANSI.SYS and that this statement goes into the CONFIG.SYS file and I guarantee her eyes will cross! I suggest that she keep looking for the solutions. I personally think the solutions are for women to not concern themselves with these things that are beyond their ken (understanding, for you women!) and that they keep up with women type things, such as: Hair care, raising kids, recipes, etc... I'm pretty much of a free thinker and pride myself on being current with the times so I'll not make the recommendation that my father would have made ("Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant!") but at times I can see a little of the wisdom of the saying. Toni hair care, indeed! Now, if all of this is finally clear to everyone... I have a truck I need to get waxed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Telecommunications and Women Part two of ? by Michele Cahoon This issue we will address a cure for 'turbo hormones' of young boys. One thing women, we must be very direct, firm and most of all quick to cut the remarks of these young boys. If more of us would not play their little games of flirting with one another they would be less apt to continue with these comments. I have personally experienced alot from these kids. Most of the "hits" have been when I was BBS-ing on a board with two nodes. All of a sudden a chat request has been issued. There are several ways to handle this: 1. When you first log on turn the availability for chat to unavailable. The disadvantage to this is any friend who might try to chat will not be able to reach me either. 2. You can ignore the chat request. This almost always leaves you with a nasty message of protest because you didn't answer their request for chat. 3. Answer the chat and when the second or third question is, "How old are you?", respond with something like my favorite; "I'm 99 years old, 200 lbs and have 5 kids and 20 grandkids!". You almost always get left rudely in chat by yourself when the questioner is a kid. These are just a few helpful hints and suggestions. Just remember gals, we are people too and should be treated with the same respect. So if more would get involved I think that the turbo kids will lay low after enough women clip them off at the knees! If you have any little secrets to help other women and the turbo kid dilemma. Send your response to Channel 8250. We will definitely take notice of all! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS CORNER by Osman Guner TIPS ON POWER STRUGGLE ---------------------- Supporting Board Phone Status ---------------- ---------------- ------ Apple Valley (205) 854-9661 (205) 854-9662 Up Magnolia (205) 854-6407 Up This game have some similarities to Trade-Wars and also some differences. It is played in a 3-dimensional universe (10X10X10 grid). Unlike Trade-Wars one does not need to draw a map of the universe, since sectors are given 3-dimensional coordinates. The maximum amount of cargo-hold one can obtain is 1000. It is advisable to have this number of holds since it will increase your trading capacity in a limited number of turns per day. The prices of items are fixed, so you might want to find out which items will sell for more credits. It is also a good idea to purchase items in multiples of 10; otherwise you may end up with bits and pieces of various items and can not take full advantage of your 1000 cargo-holds. With the credits, you can buy cruisers, fighters, and ground troops. Since cruisers are 8 times more expensive than the fighters but 10 times more powerful, it may be advantageous to build up on cruisers first. Sooner or later, however, you will have to build up on ground troops too, to be able to occupy (own) a planet. There are 3 power planets located at sectors (4,4,4), (7,7,7), and (10,10,10,). When you are strong enough, you should try to invade and occupy one of those power planets which produce the power product Nebulae. By keeping the production level of the planet above 1000, one can build up on military power much more rapidly. The production level can be kept high by developing the planet with agricultural products. The agricultural planets may be developed by industrials, the industrial planets by mining products. Hence, it is a good idea to keep the neighboring planets well developed and even to protect them with some ground troops. If you use full 1000 holds and keep the power planet developed making sure that it produces more than 1000 nebulae at all times, you can build as much as 200 cruisers, or 1600 fighters, or 640 ground troops in a single day (50 turns). The ultimate goal in Power Struggle is to occupy all three power planets and to bring peace to the universe by ending the power struggle... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Known BBS Numbers for the Birmingham Area NAME NUMBER BAUD RATES SUPPORTED 68FREE 933-7518 300,1200 APCO BBS 226-1841 300,1200,2400 America Online 324-0193 300,1200,2400 American BBS 674-1851 300,1200,2400 Amiga Alliance 631-2846 1200 Apple Valley Node 1 854-9661 300,1200,2400 Apple Valley Node 2 854-9662 300,1200,2400 Birmingham BBS Node 1 251-2344 300,1200 Birmingham BBS Node 2 251-8033 300,1200 Bus System BBS 595-1627 300,1200,2400 Channel 8250 785-7417 300,1200,2400 Commodore Club-South 853-8718 300,1200,2400 Fortress BBS 664-9040 300,1200 LZ Birmingham 870-7770 300,1200,2400 Magnolia BBS 854-6407 300,1200,2400 Misty Mountain 979-8409 2400 Music Alley BBS 969-2416 300,1200,2400 Point of No RETURN 664-9609 300,1200,2400 ST BBS 836-9311 300,1200 Southern Regiment 647-9176 300,1200,2400 Sperry BBS 853-6144 300,1200,2400 The Connection Node 1 854-9074 1200,2400 The Connection Node 2 854-2308 1200,2400 This is hardly a complete list of local bulletin board systems but these are a good start. If you have any to add, please let me know.