File name : AVB103.ZIP Description: AVB maintains and verifies your city's BBS list. Author : JMCCORM@A.CS.OKSTATE.EDU (Josh McCormick) Address : AVB Register c/o Josh McCormick 9632 East 26th Street Tulsa, Oklahoma 74129-7010 Special Req: This program is designed for use with a computer bulletin board program that generates a DORINFO1.DEF file. It accesses the modem through a FOSSIL driver (X00 or BNU). Documents : 8 categorized .DOC files, 32k total Source Code: Not available File Size : 51k ZIPPED, 123K UNCOMPRESSED 10 lines description: The Auto-Verification Bulletin Board program introduces a new concept in bulletin board listings. Today, list of computer bulletin boards are usually hand-compiled, and often out-of-date by the time that they are published. AVB has three major functions. First, like a standard BBS list door, it allows users to add new numbers to a list. Second, each night it dials up every entry on the list to verify that the systems are still online. If a system does not answer for 20 days, it is removed from the list. Third, AVB generates an ASCII and ANSI list for you to distribute to your users, or through your network. What the call back verifier is to users, AVB is to bulletin boards. Long description: Since the dawn of public bulletin boards, there have always been those people who have compiled a list of systems that are online. As the number of systems in a city grows, the task of compiling a list becomes more and more time consuming. As well, systems are going down and popping up every week. Such BBS lists are out of date the moment they are released. AVB is a program designed to take the trouble out of managing a BBS list for a growing city. Like most bulletin board programs, AVB consists of a door that allows users to add new systems to the list. If that is all this program did, it would be a trivial creation. Luckily, AVB goes much further. When a user enters information on a new bulletin board, it is not immediately added to the list. Instead, over the next five days, AVB attempts to actually call up the system and verify that it is online! This is done as a precaution to protect against those who would try to post the number of something other than a bulletin board. As soon as AVB is able to establish a carrier, the entry is added to the list. Each night, AVB attempts to connect with every validated system on the list. If it is not able to get through on the first try, it can be programmed to try again later in the night. If an system fails to connect for 20 days, it is automatically dropped from the list, keeping your list completely up to date. During the validation process, AVB presents three windows. There is the bulletin board window, the modem response window, and the statistics window. The bulletin board window contains information on the system that AVB is currently validating. Included in the window is a line showing the status of the last 30 connects with the system. In the modem response window, all interaction between the modem and AVB is displayed. The statistics window contains several bar graphics representing statistics of the current dialing session. In the process of verifying systems, AVB automatically creates two files. They are BBSLIST.ASC and BBSLIST.ANS. These lists contain the name of the bulletin boards, their telephone numbers, computer types, their pay status, and the date they were last verified. Two samples of these files are included in the archive for you to inspect. Since AVB is a new concept to the modem community, it is necessary to introduce a few new terms. An AVB host is both the sysop of a system which the AVB software runs on, and then system itself which is running the software. The AVB host is generally responsible for the technical end of running AVB (configuration files, batch files, modem operations, etc). The AVB manager is a person who oversees the production of the list. The duties of an AVB manager may include tracking down new boards and adding them to the list, verifying the accuracy of the list, and managing special situations which may involve the used of the AVB Manager Edit Menu -- the tool used for modifying the list. An AVB node is a system which receives the AVB list on a regular basis, but does not generate the list locally. Usually, the list is received by the system automatically and on a regular basis using some form of a mailer. The overall concept behind AVB is to create the most up-to-date bulletin board list in your area. Since users will be allowed to add entries to the list, they cannot be expected to know detailed information about a system. For this reason, AVB contains few non-essential entries. AVB has been in development for almost two years before this initial release. In December of 1990, AVB was created. Over the next year, more and more features were added. At that point, program was turned over to Arnie Holder. For almost a year, no progress was made on AVB. Then, Arnie reported a few problems connecting with certain systems. I requested a copy of the source code and with a nip here and a tuck there, it is now being offered as shareware.