Pascal Integrated Communications System (PICS) Version 1.0 August 1,1986 Les Archambault PICS.PAS and the associated support files (including this documentation file) are Copyright (c) 1986 by Les Archambault. Non-commercial, public distribution and use of this system is permitted. All commercial rights are reserved. Distribution of PICS should include this documentation. =============================================================== The documentation for PICS consists of several manuals covering the various aspects of the system as follows: PICSINTR.MAN - General Introduction, Author's Notes History and Acknowledgements PICSDEF.MAN - System Configuration Items and Defaults PICSINST.MAN - Installation for a new System PICSUSR.MAN - Users Guide PICSCMDS.MAN - Sysops Commands PICSTO.MAN - Theory of Operation =============================================================== GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO PICS The PICS program is written in Turbo Pascal. The Program has been designed to be a totally integrated system in one software package. At the present time, it is only available for CP/M machines that have Z80 processors. PICS doesn't require support from any other software program such as BYE, KMD, LDIR, LUX etc. All the functions of these programs are completely contained inside PICS. That means that once PICS is installed and running, no further changes will be required when upgrades are released. PICS provides a complete BBS and file exchange system that has total security, preventing callers getting to the operating system of your computer (callers never leave the PICS program.). Even in the event that there is a system crash, no caller can access the operating system because the modem drivers will be lost when PICS is exited. No changes or modifications to your CP/M (such as adding one of the ZCPR or ZCMD packages) is required. Source code for the entire system (EXcluding the Copywrited Turbo Toolbox routines described below) is being distributed. This allows customization by each Sysop and assurance that there are no 'back doors' into the system. PICS operates much like some of the systems available for the IBM PC's. It uses named message areas and named file sections. Random access files, dynamic variables with pointers in singly linked lists are used throughout the program. All this technical stuff means that PICS runs fast, takes up a small amount of disk space and is just as full featured as anything available. If you do not have at least a 54K TPA (free memory below CP/M) and at least 750K of disk space available (on one or more drives) you will probably not be able to compile PICS on your system. AUTHOR'S NOTES: 8/1/86 This software package is being released as source code with no executable object code. This is partly due to the need to compile the source on the machine where it will be operated so that the terminal routines will get installed and the full TPA (available RAM memory space) will be utilized. In addition to the above reasons, I believe that serious Sysops will appreciate the chance to customize their system and not have to depend on me for implementing their desires and sugestions. This will free me to work on further enhancements for the system. There is always the chance that someone will steal the code and change the name or even worse, release an update that doesn't work. I hope to prevent Sysops from getting hurt by that one by the registration offer that is outlined below. The software will be distributed on Bulletin Board Systems. At the present time there are three locations for distribution: TECHnet 415-574-3663 San Mateo, Ca. 415-595-5079 San Carlos, Ca. Eric Daniel - Sysop THE DESKTOP PUBLISHER 415-856-2771 Palo Alto, Ca. Freeman Bradford - Sysop ELCOM 1 SYSTEM 415-223-4579 San Pablo, Ca. John Van Hengel - Sysop If you want to contact me please leave a message for me at TECHnet in San Carlos. I will try to answer promptly. I have no plans at the present to distribute disks to anyone, but that may change if there is sufficient interest. I will support only registered sysops and only the distributed version of the software and updates that i release. If you change anything in the code or are not registered, you are going to have to figure it out for yourself. If you use PICS for a communications system, I request that you register it with me by leaving your name and address and description of the system you are using on the TECHnet BBS system. In addition please include your phone number. Here are my reasons: I will try to nofity by mail all of the registered Sysops about official updates to the software and the nature of the change. I will NOT support any Sysop that has not registered his system with me. The amount of interest shown in PICS will determine how much effort I will devote to PICS in the future. There is no cost for this registration. I hope that you will take advantage of the offer. If the postage gets to be too much for me, i'll probably ask you to send me a S.A.S.E. Please don't try to contact me for help with the machine dependent code because I probably won't be familiar with your machine, and probably won't have time to help over the phone. Instead, leave me a message on TECHnet. Instead try to find a friend who has a machine like yours. Believe me that works much better. All suggestions for improvement, features etc. from registered Sysops will be considered and will be added to PICS if i feel that they will benefit the greatest number of Sysops. I will however, make a file of all such suggestions and distribute it along with the source files so that even if I don't use all of them, they will be available for anyone who wants to use them. In this way, I hope to prevent users of PICS from feeling that they have such an important change as to require them to release an update of their own. This just leads to total confusion about the entire package and whether it works or not (the reason that more and more authors are not releasing their source code). I hope that you enjoy working with PICS as much as I have enjoyed the approximately 8 months that it has taken to develop and debug it. I'm sure that there will be changes and fixes even though the group of us have tried to make the first release (1.0) complete. HISTORY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The original SJBBS, written in Xitan Basic by Howard Moulton, was adapted to MBasic by Bruce R. Ratoff. Modifications to this system were made by Bruce Ratoff, James Underwood, Ron Fowler, Brett Berg, and many, many others. James Whorton and Eddie H. Curlin converted the RBBS to Turbo Pascal (copyright Borland International) in 1984 and called the system TPBBS. ROS version 1.0 (originally released as TBBS23 but changed to ROS to avoid confusion with TPBBS with which it shares no code or structure) was written using ideas gathered from these systems and from others operating on a wide variety of computers. Version 2.0 of ROS was revised to include indexed file support using B+ trees provided by Turbo Toolbox (copyright Borland International). Version 3.0 eliminated the need for support from programs such as BYE, XMODEM, and SD by incorporating these functions internally. Steve Fox of Albuquerque (505-299-5974) is the author of all of the ROS releases. The file structure of PICS is slightly different from that of ROS. The low-level routines ROS.MDM and ROS.MCH are the ones PICS uses. In the development of PICS, I have taken all of the wonderful concepts of the above individuals and expanded them and added more features to hopefully make this into a state of the art integrated message and file transfer system. Many thanks are due to Freeman Bradford, John Van Hengel, Lindsay Jones and Eric Daniel. This system would not have been possible were it not for the work of these individuals dedicated to making the concept of public access telecommunications work. Special thanks for the concepts go to Steve Fox, the author of the ROS series of programs, and Irv Hoff for the communications protocol details that he developed in KMD and IMP. Les Archambault