Subj : Re: BBS software.
To   : mark lewis
From : Tony Langdon
Date : Thu Mar 08 2018 07:42 am

-=> mark lewis wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

 ml> we used it as a door from RemoteAccess to provide email and news
 ml> capability... never did get it set to use account credentials from RA,

Interesting way to do it.  I simply used GIGO to gate email and news to my
downlinks.

 ml> though... you had to login to RA and then into Waffle... i don't
 ml> remember if logging out of Waffle terminated the call or if we did get
 ml> it to return to RA so the users could do more there...

It would have been possible to reeturn to RA, with the worst case being you may
have to log in again.  Because each phone call cost 25c (untimed), I added a
"re-login" feature to my RA board, which simply exited with a unique errorlevel
that caused the batch file to recycle and reload RA with the parameters of the
current physical modem connection, so it would go back to the login prompt. 
Had to disable DTR on the modem, so it wouldn't drop carrier when the BBS
recycled.

Actually, that also survived a reboot, so I was able to make system level
changes (very carefully!!!) using DOORWAY (loaded as a sysop level access
door), reboot the system - I had a simple "reboot.com" that could do that, then
when I saw the modem init string come up on my terminal, I'd emulate a modem,
to get the BBS to respond, so I could log back in.

reboot.com was very simple.  It was a 5 byte file created in debug, and IIRC,
the hex values in it were EA 00 00 FF FF, which corresponded to the 8086
instruction "JMP FFFF:0000" - the reboot vector for that processor.


.... Sign my petition to outlaw this.
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