Category : BBS Programs+Doors
Archive   : CDCOM.ZIP
Filename : README.1ST

This program is not shareware. What this basically boils down to is that
it is fully functional except for a few frills that are disabled until it
is registered, and there is also a message displayed when download is
selected that the program is unregistered. It also means that there is
no obligation to register it, you can run the unregistered version as long
as you want, and you are welcome to the unregistered updates as they come out.

The one time registration fee of $25 will yield a passkey number that can
register any version of cdcom that I will be releasing from now until who
knows when, unless someone breaks the code I use (very unlikely). The actual
exe file is modified when registration takes place, so you will simply use
the passkey with the version of cdcom.exe that you already have, or any updates
or bug fixes in the future. Any version of cdcom can be registered using this
code (including pc-sig version).

The unregistered version of this program may be freely distributed by
any means. All I ask is that you leave it in the zip format, and do
not add zip comments or any form of advertising to the file (bbs ads, etc).
It may be included in file collections as long as the purchaser understands
that registration is not included when they buy your collection or cdrom
disk.

We have a cdrom disk for sale if you are interested. It has 481 meg
of pd/shareware and 61 meg of Christian files for a total of about
9,500 files. Price is $20, which includes shipping. CdCom of course
works great with it. There are fixed description files available for
download/freq from 1:206/1 (which is now dedicated 9600 14.4k dual) as
A&OV1FIX.ZIP. There is also a special going on if you want, $30 will
get you the cdrom disk, a cdcom passkey # (fill out register.doc form) to
register cdcom and a 1.44 mb disk with latest version of program and
utilities that are used with it. There are about 20 of them left as
of 8/18/92 so its first come, first serve. Price is same for overseas
addresses (it all works out). Send check to address listed in register.doc.

5/16/92

Fixed a problem with the Top 45 Download report function, the press enter
to continue prompt would overwrite the Total Files Downloaded line at the
end of the screen when the file was displayed from within CdCom. I also
sped it up a bit, it should be able to generate the report much faster now.

Also makexrf was not removing trailing spaces from single line file
descriptions when converting them. If your value on cdcom.def line 15
description line length (also in makexrf.dat) is greater than say 100 or
so this may be the problem, and you may want to recompile the description
listing (it would speed up searches, list by category, etc) using the new
fixed version of makexrf. It will also take up less disk space.

5/7/92

Fixed a problem makexrf was having with disks that had with disks with
a lot of imbedded sub-dirs, like the gigabyte gold disk has off the
cdtests sub-dir. It would return error 201.

4/26/92

Fixed a problem that DesqView users may have noticed, and that is filenames
popping up on the active window. This was happening when a user marked
files, and then went to download them. This was also causing problems in
that it would "forget" the filenames that they had marked, ending up with
them having to enter them again.

4/24/92

Found yet another bug in the search routine. With AND searches it would
suddenly stop and appear to be doing nothing, however ctrl-k would abort it.
OR searches would just display the same file over and over. These both
did not happen all the time however, but I'm surprised no one ever came
across them before. Both were caused by the same problem in the code and
appear to be fixed.

4/17/92

Found another bug in the search routine. If you had multi-line descriptions
it would not find all the matches. It worked fine in single line mode
however. It seems to work fine now.

4/14/92

There is a version 1.1e floating around, if you have it update with this
one for sure. That was a definate beta copy, didn't mean to it to get out.

Fixed a number of problems with makexrf. These are covered below.
Main one is fixing the error 15 problems with the nightowl disks. Also
Added option to allow different placement of the | symbol using the
file PCBL.DAT. Simply create this file with the wanted placement
column number (instead of 32) on line 1 (the only line in the file),
and makexrf will read it on startup of convert and use it instead of 32.
Another problem was it would not strip out the lines you told it to
if you had multi-line descriptions, but it worked if you single line
descriptions.

Makexrf can also be told to either read only certain directories or
exclude certain directories when reading the filenames off the disk.
This allows you to block access to large blocks of files by directory on
cdrom disk instead of using the cdcom.loc file. See end of makexrf.doc
for details.

2/4/92

Added two new lines to cdcom.def, so there are now 20 lines total.

Line 19 is now the max time to wait in minutes before giving a cdrom
drive timeout error (error 72). This will also allow collision problems
with multi-node on the DRM-600 to be fixed. CdCom will now wait till the
drive is freed up before attempting to copy files. Of course if this time
is exceeded before it is freed up then it will give a timeout error.
DRM-600's on multi-node must copy the files from the cdrom drive, they
cannot be viewed or downloaded from the cdrom drives. Also changed
the download routine, it waits until all filenames are entered before
copying the files over, so it performs a batch copy, which should take
the shortest amount of disk access time and quickly free the drive
up again.

I also changed the view function so it no longer by default copies the file
to be viewed to the temp dir. It only copies it now if you have the
parameter set to copy files from cdrom drive.

Line 20 is the keyboard inactivity timeout time in minutes. I had
hardcoded it for 3 minutes but this was not long enough for some of
you, so now you can set it yourself.

Files that have extensions that cdcom does not recognized as compressed
format would get passed to the read text function (like .gif files) when
a user would try to view them. You can now block certain extensions from
being viewed by putting these extensions in NOVIEW.EXT. Format is as
follows:

# of extensions to block
.EXT

example:

5
.EXE
.COM
.GIF
.PCX
.TIF

1/14/92

It will now recognize .ARJ extensions properly and pass the appropriate
information to aviewcom for viewing these files.

Fixed a number of minor problems. The duplicate files handler
was acting strangely, this has been fixed. Made quite a few cosmetic
changes. I don't see the door run very much so alot of them slip thru.
Most changes were just various tweaks, too many to list.

Forgot to include in doc file about cdcom.loc file which allows you to
lock certain filenames from being downloaded. This function has been
in the door for quite a while actually. Check cdcom.doc for more details.

There was a bug in makexrf convert function, it would bomb occasionally
with error 15 on some multi-line descriptions. I think I got it fixed.

On the temporary work dirs, if you are running more than one version of the
door, they can all share the same temp dir for the same node number.
ie: for node 1, cdcom1.def temp dir location for each disk can be the same
for every disk you are running since only one person can be on one node at
a time anyways. There is no chance that someone entering a different door
will have a collision, because it would be reading cdcom2.def, etc.
This will help save some disk space without having multiple directories
all over the place. Once again, for each different disk, the cdcom1.def for
each disk can all use the same temp dir, the cdcom2.def can all use the same
temp dir, etc. So you can create a TMPNODE1 dir, TMPNODE2 dir, TMPNODE3 dir,
etc. then all cdcom1.def for all the disks can use TMPNODE1, all cdcom2.def
can use TMPNODE2, etc.

The cdcom.exe file can now be pathed. So you can just register one cdcom.exe
file, then place it in a pathed directory, and all the different disk
setups will use the same cdcom.exe. It will read the registration info
out of it correctly. Makexrf can also be pathed if you like, but you only
need it for the initial setup so its up to you. This will save a little room
on your disk, and also make updating to newer version a little quicker.

I wanted to bring to your attention that there is a few limitations to this
version of the door. The maximum number of directories that it can handle
at this time is 255, and the maximum number of files is 32,767. Some disks
are coming a little close with the directories, I've seen up to 195
directories on some disks. The number of files seems to be safe though as
the most I've seen on a disk to date is around 18,000. If you start running
into disks that exceed these limitations let me know so I can start planning
the proper changes that will need to be made to the door.

Am working on the DL KB checks, if I get them done before this is released
then you won't see this message, instead I'll be explaining how it works.
It will undoubtably just get all the info it needs from callinfo.bbs.
Am also gearing up to convert to door.sys, which will just be a tedious
conversion, not a major one. But I guess that hasn't been a major problem
with most of you anyways.

11/23/91

Fixed bug in the AND search. It was not working correctly. I'm
surprised no one found it before as it was quite a serious one.
It is working correctly now, as I thoroughly tested it this time.

Added additional line to cdcom.def so that you can by default have
the user info line at the bottom either on or off at startup. If
you have it off initially, you can toggle it on with ALT-I if you want
to see who is online, then use alt-i to toggle it off again (alt-i will
also work if you have it on by default). The screens will display faster
with the user info line off. A 0 on line 18 will be off on startup,
a 1 will be on. See cdcom.doc for more information on this.

10/20/91

The command on the main menu has been changed. will now
display the top 45 download report. The time information stuff has
been moved to the ? command.

Some command line parameters have changed for aviewcom. The node # is now %9.
%8 is now for the connect baudrate. I removed the -r%8 from the aviewcom
command line and replaced it with just %8. CdCom will add the -r to the
connect baudrate. This is done so it can also lock downloads (-d) if the
users security is insufficient to download in the program (specified by
cdcom.def). So if they are allowed to download from cdcom, it will pass
-rbaudrate to %8, if not it passes -d to %8 so they cannot download. If
you just don't want to allow downloads from aviewcom, then remove the %8
parameter and replace it with -d.

9/30/91

There are no longer separate releases of the door for different disks.
This version should work with pretty much any shareware type of disk
except for pc-sig. This version also replaces all previous versions of the
door. Configuration files have been included in CFGFILES.ZIP for the disks
that were previously supported. Cdcom.def has changed so check cdcom.doc
for these changes.