bchurch@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Bob Church) (02/24/90)
Sorry to post this but my mail bounced. It may be of general interest anyway. jonah@sdcsvax wanted to find a communications program which could be set up to do everything automatically including dialing up the bbs. A student would only need to insert the disk and turn on the computer. Point-To-Point will do this. It is a commercial program currently distributed by Beagle Brothers so you'd have to buy a lot of copies or better yet work out a site license or some such. What I'm about to describe works with version 2.0 which is a little dated. I would imagine that the program is still pretty much the same but since I only use Kermit I can't be sure. PTP, like most comm programs, has a set of entries for the settings and phone numbers for different places that you want to call. You can even set the entry to automatically startup a macro. Here's the important part for your need. The PTP disk contains 16 sys files called DIAL.01 through DIAL.16. If you run one of these system files it starts up PTP and then dials the corresponding number just as if you'd selected it yourself. To do this from autoboot takes a little work the first time but then you could make disk copies quickly and easily. (once you've sorted things out with Beagle Bros., that is.) Start up a copy of the PTP disk and configure it. Then put the phone number and settings in the first entry. Now rename the file DIAL.01 to DIAL.SYSTEM. Format a Prodos disk and copy the files from the PTP disk to this one. Here's the important part. Copy Prodos, Dial.SYSTEM and then the other files. When a Prodos disk is booted it seeks out the first system file containing the name .SYSTEM and runs it. DIAL.SYSTEM, which is actually the renamed file DIAL.01 will take care of everything. You can even set up a macro for logging on, getting into the correct conference etc. ******************************************************************** * * * bob church bchurch@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu * * * * If economics isn't an "exact" science why do computers crash * * so much more often than the stock market? * * bc * ********************************************************************