.TOPIC:
VBBS CD-Rom Documentation
                                     VBBS 6.12 Documentation -- 15-B-1
         ͻ
           CHAPTER 15 ANNEX B       VBBS CD-ROM DOCUMENTATION            
         ͼ

         VirtualBBS is able to support the use of Compact Disks for
         it's Transfer Files feature. There are many outstanding CD's on 
         the market today with hundreds of megabytes of shareware programs 
         on each one just waiting to be accessed by your users. This is an
         excellent way to provide thousands of programs and files for
         download with minimal effort and space.


         Basic Requirements
         
         The basic requirements for utilizing this feature are:

         1. A Compact Disk player for computer use.
         2. A Shareware CD
         3. Utilities: VCDROM11.EXE, FBBSCV12.EXE, CKIF560A.EXE
         4. A copy of VirtualBBS of course!


         Hardware Setup
         
         It seems to be the consensus of several sysops consulted 
         that using D: as the drive letter for your CD-ROM does not always 
         work well. It is better to use E: - Z:. Why this is true is not 
         exactly known, and it may have to do with the particular device 
         driver your brand of CD player uses. Most use MSCDEX (Micro Soft 
         Compact Disk Device Driver).

         Usually, upon the installation of your CD player, the CD
         software assigns "the next available drive letter" to your CD
         player. If this will assign D: as the drive letter for CD player,
         this might be the perfect opportunity to set up a small RAM drive
         for your BBS. It will not only make your BBS sail faster along and
         reduce Hard Drive searches for menus, function blocks, and scripts,
         but will use D: as it's drive letter, thereby "kicking" the CD
         player down to use E:. See OPTIMIZING VBBS.


         Getting Started
         
         The next step is to get VBBS to read, and somehow upload the
         info on the CD to the VBBS files database so that your users may
         down load from it. There are 2 utilities to do this: VCDROM11.EXE,
         which works with NightOwl's CD's, and PC SIG CD's, (but NOT
         including PC SIG 11), and FBBSCV12.EXE, which will work on all
         CD's that have ASCII directories with descriptions that correspond
         to the directories on the CD containing the files themselves.

                                     VBBS 6.12 Documentation -- 15-B-2
         VCDROM11.EXE will work ONCE with NightOwl's CD, since it
         creates the .dat and .bin files called "DIR1.DAT, DIR1.BIN, 
         DIR2.DAT, DIR2.BIN", etc. If you should decide to use an 
         additional NightOwl's CD, the .dat and .bin files would need 
         different names. This is easily accomplished by using FBBSCV12.
         EXE.

         The basic idea here is to 1). Create the .DAT and .BIN files
         required by VBBS to interface with the compact disk, and, 
         2). Upload the CD info to the TRANSFER FILES area.


         ASCII Description Files
         
         There are two components to the CD which require attention: 
         The ASCII descriptions of the programs on the CD, and the 
         directories which contain the actual programs.

         The ASCII descriptions are the descriptions of the downloadable
         programs written in text that can be read using an ordinary text
         editor or word-processor. Generally, there will be a directory
         containing the descriptions for each directory of programs.


         The .DAT and .BIN Files
         
         .DAT and .BIN files (and .QSC) files are the files which are
         created in VBBS in the \VBBS\DB directory as you put
         information into the message and files databases in VCONFIG.
         VBBS interprets these files as the descriptions and filenames
         you see in your FILES TRANSFER areas. See DATABASE CONFIGURATION.


         Using VCDROM11.EXE
         
         To create .dat and .bin files using VCDROM11.EXE, place it in
         an empty temporary directory on your Hard Drive. Type VCDROM. It
         will prompt you for the drive letter of your CD ROM drive. Say,
         for example, your CD ROM drive letter is E:. Type E. It will then
         ask you if you are using PC SIG, or NightOwl's CD. (at present,
         VCDROM.EXE only supports these two). Let's use as an example the
         NightOwl CD and you select it. The program will automatically 
         begin creating the .dat and .bin files. Once it has finished, you 
         now have a complete set of .dat and .bin files ready for use with 
         the CD.  Copy these files to the \VBBS\DB directory.

                                     VBBS 6.12 Documentation -- 15-B-3

         Uploading Files Made with VCDROM11.EXE
         
         To upload the programs on the CD to the files database in VBBS,
         go to VCONFIG. In this example, (using VCDROM11.EXE), the FILENAME
         to enter will simply be: DIR1. The PATH will be: E:\ (VCDROM11.EXE
         writes information into the .dat and .bin files which lets VBBS
         know that they are CD ROM files; therefore, *ONLY* the E:\, or
         whatever your CD ROM drive letter is, is necessary). The LONG
         DESCRIPTION will be the name of the first topic on your CD which
         corresponds to DIR1, i.e. "Alternate Op Systems", in the case of
         NightOwl's #7. Do this for each topic you desire to upload. Make
         sure to sort and compile the data after you're finished.


         If you used VCDROM11.EXE to convert a PC-SIG CD, it will have
         made .dat, .bin, and .fdx files. Copy these to your \VBBS\DB dir-
         ectory. The upload procedure is the same. Due to the format of
         PC-SIG, VCDROM11.EXE converts the entire CD into ONE complete data-
         base group. You CANNOT split it into topics.

         The listing of programs in the Transfer Files area will show up
         with ONLY the name of the program (which will be "Diskxxxxx" which
         tells the user nothing). The description of the program will show
         up in the "extended description". It will be up to you to somehow
         let your users know where and how the descriptions may be found.
                                                          
         It is recommended to use a door program with PC-SIG since it
         does not have ASCII descriptions. The file descriptions are hard
         coded into a hyper-reader menu format.


         Using FBBSCV12.EXE
         
         Another method to use shareware CD's with VBBS is to use the
         utility called FBBSCV12.EXE. Again, make sure your CD has ASCII
         text directories with the descriptions for the programs on the
         actual directories containing the programs on the CD.

         EXAMPLE: DIR1 contains the ASCII descriptions for directory 001A
         on the CD.  DIR2 contains the ASCII descriptions for directory
         001B on the CD. These directories could be "001A Games" and "001B
         Recipes" or whatever is actually in the directories.

         Copy the ASCII description files to a temporary directory
         on your Hard Drive. Type FLBCVT. It will prompt you for "Name of 
         file to convert:" Type DIR1 (or whatever the ASCII description 
         filename is on your CD). It will then prompt you for "VBBS 
         Database Filename:" Type a filename that will be easy to remember 
         and different than any others.

         Example: For NightOwl's #8 CD, I used "8NOCD1" to convert DIR1,
         which would correspond with directory 001A on my CD.

                                     VBBS 6.12 Documentation -- 15-B-4

         FBBSCV12 then creates the .dat and .bin files for that dir-
         ectory. They would be called 8NOCD1.dat, and 8NOCD1.bin.

         Do this for each directory, then copy the .dat and .bin files
         to your \VBBS\DB directory.

         Uploading Files Made by FBBSCV12.EXE
         
         To upload the programs on the CD to the files database in VBBS,
         go to VCONFIG. Continuing with our example above, the FILENAME 
         will be: 001A. The PATH will be: E:\8NOCD1. (Note: the path is 
         complete, here, not partial as in the case with VCDROM11.EXE). The 
         LONG DESCRIPTION would be: Games. Make sure to sort and compile 
         the data when you're finished.

         Using the CKIF560A.EXE Utility
         
         Not all CD's are the same. Occasionally, a CD uploaded in the
         manner described above, still will show a "File Missing" message
         when a user tries to download. In almost every case this can be
         corrected by running CKIF560A.EXE. This utility will automatically
         toggle the files on your CD "online". Start CKIF560A.EXE and let
         it run. This will take quite some time since most CD's have up to
         650 Megabytes to toggle online. 

         -->  IMPORTANT NOTE: Some sysops are using a utility called
                              VLOAD56A.EXE to convert ASCII descriptions
                              to VBBS files descriptions.  If you choose
                              to try this you *MUST* run CKIF560A.EXE to
                              toggle files online.

         Final Note
         
         These methods should work well to get you started using CD-ROM
         drives and shareware compact disks with VirtualBBS, allowing users
         to access and download files straight from your VBBS Transfer
         Files databases. It has been our experience that users as well as
         other SysOps will appreciate your BBS all the more.

         Please note that there are utilities being written almost
         daily by others that will prove to be extremely useful to SysOp's
         using a CD-ROM !

