BTN: Birmingham Telecommunications News COPYRIGHT 1988 July 1988 Volume 1, Issue 4 Table Of Contents ----------------- Article Title Author Policy Statement and Disclaimer................Mark Maisel Editorial Column...............................Mark Maisel QuickBASIC 4.0.................................Jay Enterkin Life In The Old Days...........................Tom Egan The Creation of Swiss Army Shell...............Steve Lee (or The Birth of A Monster) From The Kitchen...............................Chez Stephan PC-Board Short Cuts............................Michele Cahoon Gremlin Attack & Gremlin Cure Program..........Douglas Childs A Rebuttal To The Rebuttal.....................Paul Lyndof A Nail In The Coffin...........................Bubba Flaval It's Cold And It's Dark Out Here...............Gary Godsey Gamer's Corner.................................Osman Guner Known BBS Numbers..............................Mark Maisel ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer and Statement of Policy for BTN We at BTN try our best to assure the accuracy of articles and information in our publication. We assume no responsibility for damage due to errors, ommisions, etc. The liability,if any for BTN, its editors and writers, for damages relating to any errors or ommisions, etc., shall be limited to the cost of a one year subscription to BTN, even if BTN, its editors or writers have been advised of the likelihood of such damages occurring. With the conclusion of that nasty business, we can get on with our policy for publication and reproduction of BTN articles. We publish monthly with a deadline of the fifteenth of the month prior to publication. If you wish to submit an article, you may do so at any time but bear in mind the deadline if you wish for your work to appear in a particular issue. It is not our purpose to slander or otherwise harm a person or reputation and we accept no responsibility for the content of the articles prepared by our writers. Our writers own their work and it is protected by copyright. We allow reprinting of articles from BTN with only a few restrictions. The author may object to a reprint, in which case he will specify in the content of his article. Othewise, please feel free to reproduce any article from BTN as long as the source, BTN, is specified, and as long as the author's name and the article's original title are retained. If you use one of our articles, please forward a copy of your publication to: Mark Maisel Editor, BTN 221 Chestnut St. BHM, AL 35210-3219 We thank you for taking the time to read our offering and we hope that you like it. We also reserve the right to have a good time while doing all of this and not get too serious about it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Editorial by Mark Maisel Welcome to issue number 4 of BTN. Based on the responses and support we have received, I hope that I can assume BTN is a success. Our group of regular contributors is steadily growing and submissions from individuals also keep coming in to us. I am glad that the concept has borne such sweet fruit. I desire BTN and its readers to continue this trend. As you will see from reading this issue, BTN is getting bigger and more varied in the kind of material that it carries. We have something for everyone this time around. Our feature this month is an article on Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.0 by Jay Enterkin. It will reach you in two parts and will be of great interest to BASIC programmers. Our resident dinosaur (HA HA), Tom Egan wrote an article about what things used to be like in micro-computing. You should find it both informative and amusing. With a little coaxing on your parts, he might turn it into a series. We have received an article from Steve Lee of Anniston. Steve is the author of Swiss Army Shell, a shareware DOS shell that handles ARCs, that has been floating around our local BBSs. His article details the fun he had in creating SAS. Some time you are going to have to get up from that terminal and eat. Therefore, we have included a delicious dinner recipe for you to prepare so you can hurry back to your computer. Hopefully, we will have an easy to prepare recipe each issue so you can add some variety to your dining. Michele Cahoon, our resident feminist, has come up with some great short cuts for navigating on PC Board systems. Try them as they will save you lots of time. Douglas Childs has provided us with some humor and it takes the edge off of the current troubles with Trojans, Viruses, and such. We have two articles in the never-ending war between the sexes. One is a rebuttal of Bubba Flaval and his philosophy and the other is another message from Bubba. We are trying else new this month with Gary Godsey. I will leave it to you to comment and let us know what you think of "It's Cold And Dark Out Here". Of course, we will close BTN with our two standards, Gamer's Corner by Osman Guner, and our Known BBS List. I trust you will enjoy this issue immensely as I have done. Please post your comments in the new BTN conference on Channel 8250. To get there, do the following from the prompt: door 7 j 6 The means to hit "ENTER" or "RETURN" as the case may be with your terminal. If you cannot get on 8250, as is often the case, leave your comments on any EZ NET node. By the time you read this, there should be at least three with more on the way. Till next month, keep writing and reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QuickBASIC 4.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- by Jay Enterkin Part 1 of 2 Here, in part 1, we will cover some of the history of QuickBASIC as well as what the 'experts' have to say about the new 4.0 release of QuickBASIC and how it compares to QuickBASIC 3.0. Part 2 will be a review of QuickBASIC 4.0 based on my own tests and experience with it. The QuickBASIC series is descended from the Microsoft BASCOM BASIC language compiler family, versions of which have also been marketed over the years by IBM. BASCOM is now in its sixth release (6.0). The current BASCOM version does offer some features and capabilities not found in any QuickBASIC release, including OS/2 support, more string space and the ability to create larger programs (with or without a separate runtime library). The story of the development of QuickBASIC by Microsoft is this: Microsoft learned that Borland was going to introduce a new BASIC language compiler (Turbo BASIC). Fearing that Borland would become the dominant player in the BASIC language market with Turbo BASIC, much as it already had with Turbo PASCAL, Microsoft brainstormed to determine the best way to retain the lion's share of this market. One reason for Turbo PASCAL's popularity was its' low cost compared to Microsoft PASCAL. (Even today, Microsoft PASCAL costs about twice as much as Borland's Turbo PASCAL and doesn't sell as well). The plan Microsoft came up with was two-fold: 1. Set up Development Team A to bring out a BASIC language compiler AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE to keep Borland from gaining an insurmountable lead in the BASIC marketplace. This team would build upon the foundation of the BASCOM compiler, but without the high price tag that had kept BASCOM almost unknown to PC users, most of whom were using BASICA or GWBASIC. 2. Set up a second Development Team, B, to create a powerful new BASIC language compiler 'from the ground up'. The purpose of this team was to create a powerful BASIC for the future that would outstrip Microsoft's own existing products, and, more importantly, give Microsoft an edge over Borland in the long term. QuickBASIC, QuickBASIC 2.0 and QuickBASIC 3.0 were all developed by Team A. The original QuickBASIC was quickly replaced by QuickBASIC 2.0, which itself only lasted a few months before being replaced by QuickBASIC 3.0. The fact that the original QuickBASIC and QuickBASIC 2.0 did not last long was due to two reasons: a. they both had significant 'bugs' and shortcomings. b. Borland's Turbo BASIC was considered by most to be better by comparison than QuickBASIC or QuickBASIC 2.0. QuickBASIC 3.0 has proved to be a very solid product that has performed very well in the marketplace and was Microsoft's BASIC flagship for well over a year before the release of QuickBASIC 4.0. QuickBASIC 4.0 is an entirely new product developed by Microsoft's BASIC Development Team B. It offers many new features and capabilities, some of which are: -- recursive functions and procedures -- long integers -- object code which can be linked with other languages -- automatic source formatting (some love it, some hate it!) -- threaded p-code for instant in-memory compilation (direct mode) -- an 'improved' editor and programming environment (this is another change that is loved by some and hated by others) -- CodeView compatibility (but CodeView is not included in the package, you need to have another MicroSoft language that it is supplied with) -- context-sensitive on-line help screens -- allows more than one watch variable -- multi-file/multi-window editing -- user-definable types and record structures -- new FUNCTION statement -- support for the Hercules graphics card So, how does QuickBASIC 4.0 compare in performance and utility with the 'old standby' 3.0? Here are some opinions from people who are well-qualified enough to be considered 'experts'. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Hanlin, the creator of both the ADVBAS and PROBAS QuickBASIC Assembly Language Subroutine Libraries has this to say about the new QuickBASIC 4.0: " ...this version represents an entire rewrite of the compiler. The result is in general much more powerful than earlier versions of QuickBASIC, but does have its own quirks. Problems: there is a new library format for the environment -- QLB instead of EXE. Old assembly routines usually need to be modified to work with QB4 whether or not the environment is used. Procedures and functions are kept in separate areas from your main program, and it takes several keystrokes to get at them. If you are particular about the style of your code, you may hate the reformatter. Code produced is about the same size or larger, but is much slower unless you have a numeric coprocessor (8087, 80287, or 80387) installed. There is less string space available than in QB 3.0, which may cause trouble with large programs. Personally, I really like most of the changes. I have been looking for some of these features for a long time, and it's great to see them. There are a lot of drawbacks too, though, and many people don't like the new compiler. You'll have to come to your own conclusions on this one." --- excerpted from the ADVBAS40 QuickBASIC library documentation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- There is something that really disturbs me in Mr. Hanlin's comments, "Code produced is about the same size or larger, but is much slower unless you have a numeric coprocessor (8087, 80287, 80387) installed. There is less string space available..." I have been using QuickBASIC 3.0 for a year now, and I am very pleased with it for the most part. But compared to ASM, C, or even PASCAL, it still creates programs that are larger and somewhat slower (although it is lightning compared to interpreted BASIC). Now I don't know what percentage of users have math coprocessors, but I sure don't, and I'd bet the percentage is not that large. So to find out that QuickBASIC 4.0 is SLOWER than 3.0 (without the coprocessor) and creates files that are as large or larger, well, that doesn't make me happy to say the least! And the fact that less string space in available in 4.0 than in 3.0 means that it may be more difficult to create large programs or programs that must handle a lot of text. I consider these to be significant drawbacks. On to our next 'expert' opinion from Justin Crom, PC Tech Journal, May 1988 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "QuickBASIC 4.0 is a striking improvement ... tipping the contest in favor of Microsoft ..." (as opposed to Borland's Turbo BASIC) He goes on to say that he likes the direct mode support that provides most of the conveniences of a BASIC interpreter, and the ability to bypass the compilation step when debugging. Also noted is the fact that QB4 is still a medium-memory model, that is, no more than 64k for all data, including strings and static arrays. Dynamic numeric arrays are allocated outside of the data segment and may exceed 64k. Mr. Crom seems to be of the opinion that the advantages of QuickBASIC 4.0 outweigh it's disadvantages (as compared to QB 3.0 and Turbo BASIC). He did note the following problems, some of which we have already discussed: -- In many cases, standalone .EXE programs created with QB4 are slower than those created with QB3, especially without the math coprocessor. -- When loading source files, there is occasionally a bug which requires you to 'move around' among the menu bar selections before it allows you to select one. Apparently this only occurs from the keyboard and if you're using a mouse this won't be a problem. -- The results obtained when debugging (in-memory code) are not always identical to results obtained from the resulting standalone programs!! Microsoft says this is because in-memory variables are 8 bytes while standalone variables are 10 bytes. Imagine debugging a program only to find out the actual results are different when you compile to .EXE! -- When in trace debug, there is no viewing window as in QB 3.0, and the screen 'flips and flickers' between the trace and the program. --------------------------------------------------------------------- There are also several more QB 4.0 quirks and bugs that have been pointed out by software vendors and users groups. Some of these, listed by syntax, are: CALL (asm) Effective with QB 4, assembly language subroutines must preserve the SI and DI registers and make sure the direction flag is cleared before returning to BASIC. CALLS When CALLS (note the "S") is used and you compile with "/D" (debug), the segment of of a string element descriptor does not get passed on the stack. In other words, if you have an assembly language subroutine that uses CALLS, you should not compile with "/d". CHAIN Unreliable when using DOS 2.x. CIRCLE The start and end angles must be LESS than 2*pi. Previously they could be less than or equal to. Compile to EXE QB issues an unusual LINK command in the form of: LINK Prog+YourLib.Lib; This causes LINK to bring the entire library into your program! The solution is to exit QB, and run BC and LINK yourself. CONST Must be included in all program modules that use the constant. Place in the file at the top, rather than inside SUB's. DATA When a DATA statement is encountered inside a SUB...END SUB structure, QB moves it into the "mainline" portion of the code when you are in the environment. FRE(-1) If a Quick Library is loaded, this value may return incorrectly. QB 4 seems to forget that the library is loaded and thinks that the space is available. But, QB 4 won't let you use the space for dynamic arrays. FRE("") Using BRUN gives approximately 4K more than BCOM. FUNCTION Cannot be used in $Include files. LINK When building a Quick Library, be sure to specify BQLB40 in the library field. Example: LINK /QU ObjMods,Lib,,BQLB40; LOAD If you receive an "out of memory" error, try breaking your program into logical pieces (using subprograms). Then use COMMON SHARED for all variables that you need in the entire program. The exact same COMMON SHARED declaration must appear in all the modules in the program that need access to the variables. LOAD If you download a QB 4 program in "fast load" format, many modem transfer protocols pad the file out using a number of CHR$(0)'s. This will cause QB 4 to crash when you attempt to load the program. Use DEBUG to view the file, then write the program to disk after changing the CX register to shorten the length of the file so that the trailing CHR$(0)'s are not included. The other solution is to download this type of file using an ARC program that restores the original length of the file. RESUME If you compile to an EXE from inside the environment, a "/X" is generated by QB even though it's not needed. Be sure to recompile with "/E" outside of the environment if your program doesn't need "/X". SAVE If you edit a new program and save it, QB defaults to "fast load" format. The file cannot be handled by a text editor. Fix by using "save as". SELECT CASE Doesn't allow periods in variable names that are "plain" variables. If using a TYPE'd record element (which does indeed use periods), QB 4 will accept that with no problem. SIGNAL Keyword reserved for future use. SLEEP Keyword reserved for future use. STATIC When used with a subprogram, makes the subprogram faster, since local variables are not initialized on each call. String Space Drops you out to DOS without saving Corrupt your program. The solution is to save often! SUB...END SUB QB 4 Cannot be used in $Include files. Cannot have the same name as a variable (regardless of the variable type). TYPE..END TYPE There has been an unverified problem reported in QB when the record length is an odd number. A "FAR HEAP CORRUPT" error is generated. The problem reportedly occurs when the record length is an odd number of bytes. It does not seem to appear in BC, only QB. If you have an unusual, otherwise unexplained problem, try changing the record length to an even number. VAL Generates an error (rather than value of 0) when "%" is the first character in the string. --------------------------------------------------------------------- So, while QB 4.0 obviously has great potential, my personal feeling is that Microsoft hasn't really got it fine-tuned yet, as evidenced by the 'bugs' and other problems listed above. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Coming: Part 2, Hands-on testing and evaluation of QB4. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bibliography: ADVBAS40 by Thomas Hanlin. Product Watch, QuickBASIC 4.0, Justin Crom, PC Tech Journal, May 1988. QBQUIRK, Public Domain Text File compiled by Mark Novisoff, MicroHelp BASIC Users Group. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Life in the Old Days by Tom Egan Ever wonder what it was like in the days before computers ( BC )? Or during those Dark Ages when computers were just beginning to show up? For all of you young'uns out there, I will try to provide a little glimpse into the world BC. My first computer (?) was an IMSAI 8080. This was a great machine. It had all of the power we could possibly need. It lacked a few peripherals, but that was okay, they could be purchased separately from other vendors. It didn't have a keyboard, tape drive, or floppy drive. It used the much more dependable and friendly switches on the front for inputting instructions and data. Throw a few ( 16 ) switches, verify that the right lights were lit, and push the enter button to put that instruction in memory, and then go to the next one. It came as a kit, which took me about 22 hours to build, and only cost $595, a real bargain for a full blown computer. It also came standard with 2 k of static ram memory, but that could be expanded, if necessary, for really huge programs with lots of data. Of course, it took about 2 days to toggle enough instructions in to fill up that 2 k, so most people didn't need the expanded memory. Clock speed on this computer was a blazing 730khz.or .7 mhz to compare it with todays terminology. It was absolutely glorious to sit back in the evening, and watch the lights on the panel flicker as it added and subtracted numbers. Of course, like all computer users, I was soon searching for ways make it more powerful. First I added a board that had a set of IC's attached to it. This provided BASIC to play with, of course, it only had two-letter commands at that time, but was still better than toggling in machine code one instruction at a time. Next came a keyboard. ( Actually, that and BASIC were ordered the same day ). And for saving those mammoth programs, I added a tape drive, so I could avoid the constant typing of programs into memory. By the way, that's not the same tape drive you youngsters use now-days. This was a dependable, fast, and accurate PAPER tape drive. A roll of thin, narrow paper tape with punched holes in it recorded the programs permanently ( unless a mouse ate them, or the paper tore ). Just put the tape in the reader, and after a few minutes of clackety, clackety, clack, behold, your 1.5 k program was reloaded and ready to run. Of course, a 150k program would have taken around 29 hours to load this way, plus a couple miles of paper tape, but 1.5k was HUGE, and nobody would need more than that, unless it was a company processing large data bases, or customer lists. Eventually, I did have to add more RAM, finally getting up to 8k after a few years. This column will be a continuing feature of the newsletter, bringing back recollections from the old days, if enough people want to see it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Creation of Swiss Army Shell (or The Birth of a Monster) by Steve Lee 5/5/88 Swiss Army Shell is a file and archive management program which interfaces with the PKARC and PKXARC archive creation and extraction utilities written by Phil Katz. SAS allows you to tag files for copy, delete, move, arc and unarc operations. It has a point and shoot interface which provides a visual directory tree and scrollable subdirectory listing. Swiss Army Shell, and the reason I picked that name, are the result of several things coming together at once. I have been close friends with Steve Turner (Sysop of The ST [Service Technician's] BBS) for 15 years. In late 1987 I had not seen him in over a year, and I discovered that he, like me, had become addicted to PC's. He was trying to get The ST BBS up and running, and I immediately gave him about 3 megabytes of software I had downloaded from Compuserve. I also introduced him to Directory Scanner 2.30 which I had been using for over a year. Ever since I discovered Directory Scanner on Compuserve, I have considered it to be the best file management program available, bar none. I had tried numerous shell programs both Shareware and commercial, but DS beat them all. There was only one feature missing - archive management. I had six 10 meg Bernoulli cartridges, 30 meg of backed up storage, with less than 2 meg free. I was also spending a lot of time on Compuserve and running out of room to store the downloads. I had .ARC files whose contents were a mystery and I couldn't find files that I needed. I was continually unarcing files just to see what was there. The continual unarcing, copying, deleting, and rearcing of files was fragmenting my Bernoullis like a hand grenade, and at the time I had not found a defrag program that would work on them (I recently found Packdisk which does work). This led to frequent sessions of recreating directory structures on reformatted cartridges and copying files from one cartridge to another (at least I had dual Bernoullis and DS!). During Steve's introduction to DS I made the statement "This thing is a regular Swiss Army Knife. I just wish I could tag and arc files with it." One of those cartoon light bulbs exploded in my head, and there you have it! In just such innocuous ways are monsters born. I had already written some batch files to take care of compressing directories, extracting archives, and listing archive directories. I had already tried using ArcMaster, but had found the user interface non-intuitive and harder to use than remembering PKARC command line switches. Using Directory Scanner had been very intuitive since the first day (I can count on one hand the number of times I have invoked its help function), so I started considering the idea of cloning DS, adding the archive management functions I needed. I had just received an upgrade to Turbo Pascal 4.0 and it seemed to have most of the tools I needed. I immediately downloaded most of the subroutine libraries from Compuserve's BPROGA (Borland Programmers Forum) to find some window routines (They are available on The ST BBS). Unfortunately what I got ranged from ridiculously inept to superbly crafted but unnecessarily complex. The good stuff didn't include source code, so I sat down to write my own. The result was SLWindow.Pas and MenuUnit.Pas, two TP4 units which are also available on The ST BBS (SLWINDOW.ARC), and which I have placed in the public domain. The idea for SAS didn't grow, it just emerged full blown as a project to clone DS, adding the capability to tag files for submission to PKARC. The idea for ArcView, the VIEW component came later, although the earliest version of SAS did include piping verbose archive listings into LIST.COM to allow perusing the contents of archives. Although the idea for SAS emerged full blown, the program didn't. The first routine, reading and displaying a directory listing, was written on January 1, 1988. I then spent about a week writing and debugging the screen saving and restoring routines in SLWindow. I proceeded to add a bar cursor and tagging files in the directory display. Moving and deleting files were easy features to add since Turbo Pascal 4.0 includes those functions (You can move a file by renaming it). Copying was originally done by shelling to DOS. Submitting tagged files to PKARC was one of the first features added. As soon as that was implemented I began using SAS from inside DS. I then added scanning and sorting the directory structure of a disk. These were recursive routines and were surprisingly easy to write. Creating the diagram for the directory window, however, was not easy. I originally wrote a non-recursive routine to do that, but it didn't work correctly all of the time. It did work well enough for me to delay fixing it for awhile, so I proceeded to start adding features. During this period I found that I needed to be able to selectively tag and extract files I found in archives and I decided to write ArcView to handle this. Since it would need PKXARC to extract the files I had to make it an external program. I literally wrote ArcView.Exe in an afternoon. Of course I had been working on SAS for two months and all the basic tools were already there. ArcView allows you to examine the contents of an archive and selectively extract or delete files from it. Since ArcView was so easy to write, I decided to make it Freeware. It also should be good advertising for SAS on large boards such as Compuserve. Around the first of April I again tackled the diagram routine, and during the next two weeks I must have rewritten it 20 times. The biggest problem was interruptions. I was attempting to write a recursive routine that dealt with a non-recursive structure, an array of strings. Writing a recursive procedure requires total concentration, and every time I would get four or five levels into a trace I would be interrupted. (I came up with some definitely non-publishable analogies to writing recursive routines. Just ask Steve Turner!) I finally beat it into submission around Tax Day (I filed an extension as usual). After that it was just tidying up loose ends and writing the docs. Immediately after the release of SAS (4 days), despite extensive testing, bugs began to raise their ugly heads. I don't use 123, so I never thought of handling numbered directories. That is taken care of now and SAS101.ARC has replaced SAS10.ARC. It was also discovered that when SAS copies files it changes the date to the current date, something else I just didn't think of. SAS originally shelled to DOS to copy files, but shelling for each file copied was very slow. I wrote an internal routine to do that which resulted in much faster copying, but it also increased memory requirements by 64K, and introduced the aforementioned side effect (undocumented feature?). I don't have a quick fix for that, but I am working on it and SAS 1.02 will be out shortly. This monster consumed most of my free time for four months, but I intend to continue development of SAS. Future versions will add interrogating the environment to find COMMAND.COM, support for MDA, Hercules, EGA 43 line and VGA 50 line modes, re-configurable colors and command keys, and user definable commands (macros if you like). If enough interest is shown I will also add support for ARC512. I would also like to reduce the memory requirements - SAS is somewhat of a memory hog at the present time. I am very interested in feedback. If you have anything to say about SAS, either good or bad (be gentle), please leave me a message on The ST BBS 836-9311 300/1200/2400-8-N-1. My userid is Steve Lee. Swiss Army Shell is my first Shareware release, but hopefully not my last. I just hope that some people find it useful enough to use it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From The Kitchen This is a new endeavor that I wish to undertake for the purpose of helping you all in the kitchen. I will try to get at least one recipe in each month, plus answer any questions you might have about certain chemical reactions that take place in cooking o r any other food related matters. There are numerous boards around town where you can leave questions but I would prefer that you leave them on one of the two boards that now support EZ Net. This will allow me to gather your queries from either board. From time to time I will also try to update a list of where in town to get the freshest herbs, fish, meat and so forth. I will also try to give a complete menu with each recipe so that some of you bachelors or bachelorettes might use them for entertaining. Well here we go with dinner #1. This will serve 2: Salad: Endive with Stephan Dressing Main Course: Pasta Stephan Dessert: Peaches Frangelico We'll start with the salad. Enough Endive for 2 salads. Don't be bashful your date may eat a lot. Wash the endive in COLD SALTED water. Drain. Cover and set aside in the fridge. Stephan Dressing: 1/2 cup sour cream. 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard 1/4 teaspoon tarragon 1/4 teaspoon sweet basil 1/4 teaspoon white pepper 1/4 teaspoon paprika dash black pepper 1 tablespoon white wine 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar Mix all ingredients in a bowl, cover and refrigerate. This should be made at least 4 hours before serving. It can be made the night before. When serving salad arrange endive on plate and add dressing. Sprinkle bread crumbs and grated romano cheese on top. The Main Course: This may be the easiest dinner you have ever made. Take enough pasta for two people (usually 12 to 16 ounces). Cook according to package directions. While the pasta is cooking melt 1 stick of butter over medium heat in a med saute pan. Add 1 large sweet (Vadilia) onion and one large clove of garlic finely chopped. When onion is transparent add 2 cups of peeled diced tomatoes. Add 1/4 teaspoon white pepper ,1/2 teaspoon oregano ,1/4 teaspoon black pepper , a dash of cayenne pepper, a dash of salt. Simmer until pasta is cooked. Drain pasta and toss with onion tomato mixture until well mixed. The main course should be served with hard rolls and softened butter and a nice Chianti wine.(a salesperson at one of the local wine stores will be glad to help you with your selection) Dessert: Take 1/2 stick of butter and melt it in a saute pan at med high heat. Add 2 cups of fresh sliced peaches. Add 3 tablespoons of Frangelico ( this is a liquor that is like Amaretto but made with hazelnuts), 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon crushed cloves. Heat thoroughly and serve over a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. I hope you enjoy these recipes and next month I will go over some things you need in your kitchen and some terms. Enjoy Chez Stephan! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PC-Board Short Cuts by Michele Cahoon This will demonstrate and hopefully explain the short cuts which are available on PC-Board. I will take one step at a time from the first prompt you receive when you logon. ***The symbol as used below refers to hitting your 'Enter' key! FIRST PROMPT YOU SEE: Do you want graphics? N;Q;NS (this one is for no graphics) Do you want graphics? Y;Q;NS (this one is for graphics) The 'N' and 'Y' are fairly straightforward. The 'Q' means quietly and will bypass the opening screen of the bbs. The 'NS' means non-stop and will bypass the system news and go straight to the logon sequence. CHECKING FOR PERSONAL MAIL: Main Board Command? Y;N;A;NS (this will give you your mail all over the board) ***When you see X;X;X;X, the 'X's stand for numbers. READING BULLETINS: Main Board command? D;X;X;X (this will give you, for example bulletins 1,2,3.) DOWNLOADING AND UPLOADING: Main Board Command? B;ALLFILES.ARC (this will tell the system you wish to download a file called allfiles.arc.) ENTERING MESSAGES AND REPLIES: When you want to enter the same message to several users you can send it to the first receiver and when you get to the command line to save it,use 'SC' instead of 'S' which means save the message and send a carbon copy. The system will save the message and ask for additonal names of users to receive the message. When you reply to a message and wish to delete it after replying, use 'SK' to save your reply and kill the message to which you are replying. When you reply to a message and do not wish to see the message again, use 'SN' to save your reply and go ahead to the next message. FILE DIRECTORIES: If you want to look at all file directories or just a few... Main Board Command? F;X;X;X;X (this will give you for example directories 1,2,3,4.) JOINING CONFERENCES: At the main prompt you can type 'J;X' for the number of conference you wish to join. You also do not have to abandon the conference which you are in to join another one. Just type the same thing again but with the number to the other conference. OPENING DOORS: You can type 'OPEN;X' and it will open the appropriate door. READING MESSAGES: This will take a little more explaining. 'R'is for read, 'S' for since the last message you read, 'Y' for mail addressed to you, 'F' for mail from you, 'N' for read the next higher message, and 'P' for read the next lower message. You can combine these any way you like for examples: 'R;S', 'R;Y', 'R;F', 'R;N', 'R;P'. You can also 'R;1000-' (this will read all messages from 1000 back to 1). You can 'R;X+'which will read from the value of 'X' to the newest message. These are all of the short cuts which I can think of right off hand but there is one small last remark to be made; you can replace all the semicolons (;) with spaces. I hope this makes your life easier, I know it did mine! editor's note: These command short cuts will work on most of our local systems. They are completely reliable on all systems running version 12.0 or higher. Some of the commands will not work on earlier versions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gremlin Attack by Douglas Childs I HATE these little GREMLINS THAT are jumping UP AND DOWN on my CAPS LOCK key. Its DRIVING ME batty. !N!o!w! !T!H!E!R!E! !I!S! !o!n!e! !j!u!m!p!i!n!g! !O!N! !M!Y! !!! !k!e!y! !$T!$h!$e!$y!$ !$A!$R!$E !$M!$U!$L!$T!$I!$P@!$L&@!$Y%&@!$I MESSAGE FROM GREMLIN COMMAND:We have captured your computer. We have control of this BBS and we WILL capture the entire computing world! Excerpt from the New Warp Times: June 20,1988 Gremlin invasion begins! Gremlins have overtaken the Birmingham, Alabama Telecomputing community. They used a clever system to capture all BBSes in the area. First They would infect a host computer. They would hide in their disk library infecting all their diskettes and hard drives. They caused a few I/O errors but nothing major. After capturing the entire library they announced their presence, while the host system was connected to a BBS. They would infect that BBS traveling through telephone lines. After the person hung up. Any callers who called the system would be infected, starting the cycle all over again. They reproduce when an I/O error occurs. Once a system has been infected, the only cure is to ----------|CENSORED|----------MESSAGE FROM GREMLIN COMMAND:HAHAHAHAHAHA. We won't show you that. Your computer, along with this BBS IS infected with gremlins! YOUR COMPUTER IS UNDER OUR CONTROL!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gremlin Cure Program Copyright (c) 1988 Douglas Childs This program will rid your computer of pesky gremlins. Loading Gremcure.exe I/O Error MESSAGE FROM GREMLIN COMMAND:Do you think we would let you do that. Loading Gremcure.exe All of a sudden, you here whispering, as gremlins go everywhere! You look inside your computer and find a picture plastered to the disk drive controller. It reads "Come to America Online. we have over 198 megs and 5,000 downloadable arcs." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Telecommunications and Women: A rebuttal to the rebuttal of Bubba Flaval By: Paul Lyndof After reading the rebuttal of Bubba Flaval I felt as if I had been thrown back into the 19th century. The article was the largest collection of garbage I have seen in a long time. I don't even know where to begin my rebuttal. Bubba, your perception of the truth is quite distorted. The generalizations made in the rebuttal are a sign of ignorance. Not all women sit around thinking about Toni Perm all their lives, although that may be true for a city like Birmingham. I have met many women who are very knowledgeable in the field of computers. It is true that I have met my share of women who care nothing about computers and would rather spend their time talking about Tony Perm.. but I have also met my share of men who would rather sit around all day bragging about their 4 X 4s and guzzling down beer like it came out of springs. I could not believe how foolish the rebuttal was. Bubba stated: "As far as women on bulletin boards using a man's name; Why not! As long as they leave sensible messages". Are all messages by men sensible? I think not! In fact, the few messages I have read by women I found quite interesting. The reason you don't find women on Bulletin Boards isn't because they aren't capable of writing messages on computer related subjects, but because they are rejected by ignorant sexists like Bubba Flaval. It was never written anywhere: "To the Humans: Men should be in computer related fields, women should not." Women might be more interested in computers if men would leave them alone. That means the 'turbo hormonal teenagers' too; 4 years ago when I was in my 'turbo hormonal stage' I was still able to talk to and respect a woman just as I could a man. Individual cases are different, and making generalizations is just going to make people angry. Contrary to popular belief, Bubba, there are many men who are more ignorant about computers than your average woman. Many men, if told that DEVICE=ANSI.SYS goes into the CONFIG.SYS file, will return a vacant stare just as any woman. I would love to have more women in the field of computers so that when I got married it would be because we both enjoyed programming, calling bulletin boards, or whatever.. not because she was good in bed ( although I won't deny the fact that I believe that is also an important quality ). As far as I'm concerned, I would prefer if you stick to washing your 4 X 4 and stay off the bulletin boards where you corrupt young minds with your ludicrous opinions. I would really like to find out what others think on the subject of women in Telecommunications. If anyone wants to voice their opinion please leave me mail on Alley, Sperry, or Channel. If I get a good response I will include my findings in my next article. For now, so long. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Nail in the Coffin By Bubba Flavel "WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS STUFF!!!?????" "It's on all the local Bulletin Boards, Bubba. I thought that since you took such a personal interest in the last one, you'd be interested in this one also. Especially since it seems to re-inforce your views on the subject. Does your wife mind cleaning up the stains where you have chewed on the carpet?" "She's outside waxing my 4 X 4. She'll never notice it unless she steps on it with her bare feet." I quickly scanned the printout again. "If it's not one dippy broad its another. If this guy had just read my article he'd be O.K. now." With a sense of Duty, I once again fired up my system, loaded my word processor, and prepared the Truth for the public to see; Hopefully, this time they will listen... Since my last article on Truth was published by the good offices of the BTN, I had heard rumors that the Truth had offended the female telecommunications users to whom it reached and that they planned a rebuttal; I have but one word for this: Good! If they stick their heads up we will know who to whack out of the Systems. This Ms. Cahoon even had the nerve to write a reply to my reply. I had somewhat expected this and wasn't too upset when I saw it; What wound me up was seeing the printout of where this OTHER dippy broad from Indiana was suing a BBS Sysop for unprotecting a message of her's (She's going for $112,300, fer God's sake! Musta been one heck of a message!) That was what got me wound up but it happened in another state and it is now in the hands of the legal beagles (maybe they'll see the light and make it illegal for women to use BBS's). At any rate I'll just try to reason with Ms. Cahoon at the moment. (I'm going to go point for point reply to Ms. Cahoon's message) Ms. Cahoon, I drive my 4 X 4, my wife has seen her wifely duties and waxes it so that I have time to reply to such nonsense as your last article. Yes, women apparently can do more for the public than stay barefoot and pregnant; They can bring ridiculous suits against System Operators! Besides, I didn't make that statement; It was attributed to my grandfather (I could have made it though, it is true.) I pride myself on being a modern thinker, however, not the stone age man you attribute me to be. (And I'm not a lonely man; I have plenty of girlfriends.) I call em' like I see em', sweety; I am not misinformed. I saw your article and I replied; You are in the business of misinforming people, not I. Women are at this moment infesting the BBS world and we men are in the process of weeding them out. I would expect a message more along the lines of "Tide suxs" from a woman (By the way, don't talk about my man Paul 'the Bear' Bryant like that!) Please think a little; If I could not get my word processor fired up, you would not have gotten a reply. I will leave it to the people who read these articles to decide whether or not I have brain cells that need saving. I double-checked my article and nowhere in it did I make the assertion that women are assets; I said that young males going through 'turbo-hormonal changes' were assets. In addition, if you are referring to my catching myself in my zipper let me assure you; It won't close on something that large. Hardrive.sys is not an MSDOS specified device driver so I assume that it is either an application specified type driver or specific to your type of machine. I suspect that it is similar to the MSDOS driver lastdrive.sys, though. Try a question that is not 'trick'. If I can't copy from my floppy drives to my hard disk then the 11 or 12 meg that is on there must have appeared there by magic. Yes, I composed my own autoexec.bat and config.sys file and when I boot my system up it first plays "Dixie", tells me if the next issue of Hustler is due yet, opens me a Bud, and brings up my word processor. Is that enough or should I have it tap dance to please you? I couldn't even begin to tell you how to cook quiche nor am I interested. You need to ask one of your female BBSer's for that. As far as my dying out; I have 9 kids and I plan on teaching them very well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title #1:It's Cold and It's Dark Out Here by Gary Godsey Geez, it's cold. I probably wouldn't have been as miserable if I had stayed home. I will never understand why it has to be so hard. She seems to always be at my throat. I just can't seem to do anything right. But who am I to tell you about stuff like that? We've all been through it; right? The water is as black as marble. It's the kind of black I always try to get in my so called artistic photographs. You know what I mean; when you buy the Kodak black and white film and decide that you are finally able to shoot your 35mm like Ansel Addams did his 24x24. Only problem is they always turn out like aunt Mary June shot them right after chemo therapy. The only light is from the Bradshaws' across the slough and it is the kind of light that plays off the green line Strentex the way your hair used to look in the mirror after a day or two of some orange sunshine or purple micro dot. It always seems that after a fight (argument) that I get in one of these moods where I have to sit here and act like I understand the Peter Principle when I really have no earthly idea what the damn Peter Principle is all about. But somebody's got to do it; right? It's really to cold for catfish. Darn good fish you know. I always think about the fact that eating catfish is a lot like eating the garbage man. I mean who the heck wants to eat someone or something that goes around cleaning up what everyone else has left behind? But someone has got to do it; right? She never seemed to get in my head about things like this before but all of a sudden (actually our little girl is almost two now) she wants me to stay home all the time but still bring home a hundred grand a year. Before, she worked for the bank and traveled most of the time and I did my thing for the local manufacturer. Together we were pulling down some pretty good pay. We just did not have a whole lot to get rid of it on. I mean heck you can only own so many cars and do so much travel in a year. Now it seem that we/she have all the time in the world but no cash to really to it with. Holy Christ, what a bite. I can guarantee that that was grandpa. He took it all but as I sit here with my good buddy Black Jack trying to sort it out I still have to come out the loser. I hope the rooster that so graciously allowed me to use his liver in the name of sport does not hold me responsible for that loss. I feel sure his hen had given him some trouble in his lifetime. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GAMER'S CORNER -------------- by Osman Guner We are going to interrupt our routine to give an update on the on-going "1st America Online Chess Tournament." This tourney has been going on for quite some time now with two preliminary sections consisting of five players in a round-robin format. The first two finishers of each section and a wild-card player (the best of the rest) will advance to the final round, after which the "1st A.O.L. Chess Champion" will be determined. The games in the second section are still in progress, while all the games in the first section are completed. Here is the cross table: 1 2 3 4 5 Points ------------------------------------------ | 1) Osman Guner | X | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 +---------------------+---+---+---+---+---| | 2) Bert Pittman | 0 | X | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 +---------------------+---+---+---+---+---| | 3) Van Cooper | 0 | 0 | X | 1 | 1 | 2 +---------------------+---+---+---+---+---| | 4) Kelly Heeth | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 1 | 1 +---------------------+---+---+---+---+---| | 5) Tom Egan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 0 ------------------------------------------- The details of the ten games played in this section are as follows: Game 1: Guner vs Heeth; London System; Guner won in 39 moves. Game 2: Heeth vs Pittman; Three Knights Game; Pittman won in 37 moves. Game 3: Pittman vs Guner; Alekhine's Defense; Guner won in 83 moves. Game 4: Guner vs Cooper; Colle System; Guner won in 30 moves. Game 5: Cooper vs Heeth; Richter-Veresov Attack; Cooper won in 33 moves. Game 6: Heeth vs Egan; Richter-Veresov Attack; Heeth won in 33 moves. Game 7: Egan vs Pittman; Stonewall Attack; Pittman won in 26 moves. Game 8: Pittman vs Cooper; Sicilian Defense; Pittman won in 26 moves. Game 9: Cooper vs Egan; Bird's Opening; Cooper won in 33 moves. Game 10: Egan vs Guner; Bird's Opening; Guner won in 31 moves. The final round of this tournament will start sometime this summer. Yours truly have withdrawn from the finals due to other commitments. Bert Pittman and Van Cooper have earned a spot in the finals due to their results in the first section. Kelly Heeth may also play in the finals as a wild card player, depending on the results of the second section. The games are continuing rigorously in the second section, while Mark Howland and Robert Pitts are emerging as the early leaders, and Kevin Hope and Matt Allbritton, trying to catch up... The following game is a demonstration of a brilliant attack, executed by Bert Pittman against Tom Egan, who suffered the consequence of a few inaccurate moves. It is also the shortest game from the first section... White: Tom Egan; Black: Bert Pittman (Stonewall Attack) 1) d2-d4 ; d7-d5 Classical Queens pawn opening moves, so far. 2) f2-f4 A little too early; with this move, Tom is committing himself to what is so-called "Stonewall Opening"; however, such an early advancement of the King-bishop pawn causes a serious weakness in the White's king side, as well as the important central square "e4". 2) . . . ; g8-f6 Bert is developing his knight; this is quite conventional, also controls White's weakened 'e4' square. 3) g2-g3 This causes another serious weakness in the light squares for White; Tom should have developed his knight to 'f3'. 3) . . . ; c8-f5 A strong developing move; Bert not only overwhelms 'e4', he is also increasing the pressure at White's light squares. 4) c2-c4 Tom should have developed his minor pieces; he is looking for trouble. 4) . . . ; c7-c6 Bert does not win a pawn by capturing the c4 pawn, because of Q-a4 check when Tom may recapture the pawn at c4. 5) g1-f3 The knight is finally developed, but is it too late? 5) . . . ; e7-e6 Bert is opening a diagonal for his Bishop. 6) c4-c5 And Tom is closing it; however, with the expense of weakened queenside. More: (Y), (N), (NS)? 6) . . . ; b7-b6 Bert is determined to open that diagonal. 7) b1-c3 Oops... Tom should have protected his pawn at c5 with b2-b4. 7) . . . ; b6xc5 8) d4xc5 ; f8xc5 Bert not only won a pawn, but also established full control at important central squares. 9) f3-e5 Tom is starting an immature attack here; he should have completed his development first. 9) . . . ; d8-b6 Queen is now supporting the g1-h7 diagonal, with a deadly thread of c5-f2 check. 10) d1-b3 An attempt to exchange Queens, but... 10) . . . ; c5-f2 check 11) e1-d1 ; b6-d4 check A very strong attack; Tom is in serious trouble. 12) c1-d2 ; O-O Bert decides to provide safety to his King first; a passive move at this stage, he should have continued his attack with f2-e3. 13) e2-e3 ; f2xe3 The pawn was not protected, because Tom's Bishop at d2 is pinned; now there is an immediate mate thread. 14) d1-e2 A blunder; Tom finally cracked under pressure; the Bishop at d2 should have been protected via either e5-f3, or c3-b1. 14) . . . ; d4xd2 check The game is now over... 15) e2-f3 ; d2-f2 checkmate. If you liked this game and like to see more, you are all welcome to join us at the Chess Conference in America-Online. If you are interested in participating in the next tournament, the preliminary rounds for the 2nd A.O.L. Chess Tournament will start around August. See y'all there... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Known BBS Numbers for the Birmingham Area NAME NUMBER BAUD 68FREE 933-7518 300, 1200 Scott's Penny Arcade 226-1841 300, 1200, 2400 America Online 324-0193 300, 1200, 2400 American BBS 674-1851 300, 1200, 2400 Amiga Alliance 631-2846 300, 1200 Apple Valley Node 1 854-9661 300, 1200, 2400 Apple Valley Node 2 854-9662 300, 1200, 2400, 9600 Birmingham BBS Node 1 251-2344 300, 1200 Birmingham BBS Node 2 251-8033 300, 1200 Birmingham Business BBS 856-0679 300, 1200, 2400 Bus System BBS 595-1627 300, 1200, 2400 Channel 8250 785-7417 300, 1200, 2400 Commodore Club-South 853-8718 300, 1200, 2400 Fear & Loathing 985-4856 300, 1200, 2400 Nouveaux BBS 871-5551 300, 1200, 2400 LZ Birmingham 870-7770 300, 1200, 2400 Magnolia BBS 854-6407 300, 1200, 2400 Misty Mountain 979-8409 1200, 2400 Point of No RETURN 664-9609 300, 1200, 2400 ST BBS 836-9311 300, 1200 Southern Regiment 647-9176 300, 1200, 2400 Sperry BBS 853-6144 300, 1200, 2400 The Connection Node 1 854-9074 1200, 2400 The Connection Node 2 854-2308 1200, 2400 Ziggy Unaxess 991-5696 300, 1200, 2400 RiverSide 663-6015 300, 1200, 2400 Misty Mountain II 969-2052 300, 1200 This is hardly a complete list of local bulletin board systems but these are a good start. If you have any to add, please let me know.