RINGER 1.10 John A. Qualtrough
(c) 1992 Q-Ware Las Cruces NM



RINGER is distributed as Shareware NOT Freeware. If you like RINGER and
find it to be useful, you are asked to pay about $5.00 for a registered copy.
With this registration, you will receive any pending updates and a disk full
of other utilities to make your PC a more useful tool.

Send Check, Money Order, or Cold Hard Cash to:

John A. Qualtrough
315 Linda Vista Rd.
Las Cruces, NM 88005

Questions or comments may be left on:
Waterfront West Wildcat! BBS
300 - 19200,N,8,1 (24Hrs)
(505) - 523 - 4528
Leave [M]essage for John Qualtrough


Purpose for RINGER:

RINGER is a small TSR designed mainly for SYSOPs to protect a system from
a lock-up due to system problems. What RINGER does, is monitor your modem
ring indicator to determine when the phone rings. If the phone rings more than
three times without your BBS answering, RINGER performs a system cold re-boot.
In this way, an unattended system can be protected from "hanging" due to DOS,
live door programs, or other errors which normally require operator attention.
When your BBS does answer, RINGER will be inactive as long as a carrier is
detected. When the call is complete, RINGER will begin monitoring once again
for the next call.


Requirements for RINGER:

RINGER requires DOS 3.x (or later) and 640K is recommended. RINGER uses
around 600 bytes of DOS RAM while resident. RINGER also requires that the
cable used to connect your modem to the computer contains at least two of the
signals which RINGER uses. These are Ring Indicator (pin-22) and Carrier
Detect (pin-8). Virtually all factory made cables will contain these lines,
and internal modems produce these signals automatically.


Installing RINGER:

Install RINGER by typing: RINGER port

Where "port" is the COM port number to which your BBS modem is connected.
Valid values are 1, 2, 3, or 4.
Example:
C:\>RINGER 3 (Monitor COM3: modem)

The installation should be placed in the BAT file used to start your BBS, or
in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that monitoring will automatically take place
each time the system is booted.

RINGER will now monitor for more than 3 rings of the phone line attached to
this modem. The ring status is checked 18.2 times per second in the
background and should not interfere with your main BBS program. Before
performing a cold re-boot, RINGER will drop the COM port RTS/DTR signals so
the modem attached will hangup. This will allow your software to re-configure
the modem after booting without the modem remaining on-line.


Software Compatability:

Although RINGER should run under most applications, there may be some
programs which are not compatible. Any application which directly accesses
hardware or does not use DOS/BIOS for I/O is possibly incompatible. Sorry,
but trial and error are the best debuggers! I have tried RINGER on a
number of different hardware platforms running either DOS 3.3 or DOS 5.0 and
have had no problems.


End Of Document