FrontDoor announcement in FidoNews 1986

Thursday, October 8. 2009

FrontDoor announcement in FidoNews 1986

Fidonews Page 5 6 Oct 1986

By Joaquim Homrighausen
Sysop at Future Hacker Central 501/4609
September 24th, 1986 at 10:25 pm.

A couple of weeks ago I just ran into a problem with my own FIDO. It was a user who couldn't figure out that he had to press RETURN or SPACE a couple of times to make FIDO start. So I decided to write this GREAT utility. The first thing I did was to call my friend Peter Stewart and tell him about this thing we're gonna write. He said "No problem, sounds like a piece of cake".

Done, we started writing this utility last Saturday. And now it's ready...what is ready?! FrontDoor v1.0. This is a program that you put before FIDO to make FIDO start all by itself without any stupid RETURNS or SPACES. What it actually does is that it will sit and wait until one of two things happens: 1) An event is detected within the next 10 minutes. 2) A incoming call at XXXX baud rate is detected. If an event is scheduled, FD will exit w/ an errorlevel (trapable in a .BAT file) so FIDO will just load and wait until the event time comes. If on the other hand a incoming call is detected, FD will exit w/ an errorlevel depending on the baud rate, telling the user that he's connected and the go and get FIDO!

The program requires a TRULY Hayes compatible modem such as the Miracle Tech WS3000 (w/ our modified EPROM in it!) and we do not intend to support any other standard.

It's really a great thing because the screen has got three windows in FD. One for all the "program messages" such as "Scheduled event in 10 minutes, getting FIDO...", one for the modem's response such as "OK" and other stupid messages that the modem might send. And finally one for the "action" that's happening. It's failsafe even w/ multitasking programs. The sysop has got two options, COM1 and COM2. Future versions may also support COM3. So all you sysops out there: Give me a mail, and I'll send it to ya! So far, it is only available from the Swedish Net (501), but I'll start uploading it to the US net to...the program was written by Peter Stewart (thanks Peter) and me (Happy Birthday to me on the 25th of Sep!).

"Let's keep FIDO running..."

Regards / Joaquim Homrighausen, Future Hacker Central FIDO


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This is also available at: www.textfiles.com/bbs/FIDONET/FIDONEWS/fido0338.nws

Some reflections:

1) Damn my skills in the English language sucked :-)
2) Damn I'm old
3) And so it began..