BBS
Steve,
On BBS-PC! to BBX file conversion:
– BBS-PC! contains a description of each file, the time and date of
upload, the uploader's name, the number of times accessed ,file type, path
status, whether file was uploaded remotely or locally, file size and
directory info. I would like to preserve all of it. There is a utility
called BBSINDEX which can be set up to dump all of this info to an ASCII
file, so all that we (sysops) would need is a way to feed the ASCII info
back into a program to rebuild the file base in BBX format.
– I don't know of any similar utility for managing the message base or
user records. It is possible in BBS-PC! to dump all of the messages to an
ASCII text file using F10 to define the file and then letting BBS-PC!
record a hand guided trip through all of the messages. I use this
technique to dump off messages that I use for creating my "best of"
sections. The "best of" menus and text files are then created from an
ARexx program with this ASCII text file as input. With appropriate arexx
commands in BBX, an ARexx program could pump messages from this ASCII text
file into a BBX data base.
– Some years back, I tried to hack out the struct of the user file and
may still have it here someplace. I'm not sure that I have the key file
though. MSS published the file structs in an early version but the current
one is different, so I had to guess at a lot of things. It won't be bullet
proof. At any rate, it is vital that all of the user file info be
transported to a new BBS. Unlike the method I mentioned of capturing
messages, there is no easy way to capture user information in a text file
(no non-stop command when listing). With 450 users, it would be a long and
tedious process to capture all of the users to a text file.
By message base isolation, I wanted something UN-like BBS-PC! I would
like to put different message bases into different files.
Mutli-tasking of file handling may not be necessary but it seems to me
[ MORE ]