€€€€€€€€€€€€€ DIALER v1.0 €€€€€€€€€€€€€ €€ Copyright (C) 1992 by Gary Weber €€ €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ This is a simple, yet very useful auto-dialer for your NEC PC-8201/8300 and your Hayes-compatible modem. This program assumes that your modem is configured to give VERBOSE response messages to your computer. If you are unsure if your modem is set to do this, go into TELCOM's Term mode and send this command to your modem: ATV1&W The TELDIR.DO file ------------------ DIALER expects the file TELDIR.DO to exist in your RAM directory. The format of this file is fairly straight forward. Each "record" of the dialing directory contains two lines. The first line is the name of the BBS or online service that you are calling. This line ABSOLUTELY MUST BE IN UPPER CASE! The second line contains the TELCOM STAT setting that you wish to be used for this entry, followed by a colon, and then the telephone number, followed by a carriage return. Here's a sample TELDIR.DO file: PORTABLE 100'S BBS 5N81XN:1-603-924-9770 TELCOM 80 5N81XN:1-404-995-0144 CLUB 100 BBS 5N81XN:1-510-939-1246 THE OMEGA QUADRANT 5N81XN:1-503-693-0442 COMPUSERVE 3E71XN:555-1212 In this example, we have five entries in the directory. Of course, if you are local to any of these area codes then you'd want to strip off the long distance stuff from the beginning of the phone number. The only limitation to the number of entries is your computer's own RAM size. Just keep adding new two-line records to the end of the file. OPERATION --------- Once you have created a TELDIR.DO file, you may run the DIALER program. You will be presented with the current STAT setting and a Select: prompt, as well as five function key assignments at the bottom of your screen. Here are their functions: f.1: [ Call ] ------------- The word "Call" will be displayed, after which you may type in a phone number that you wish to dial. Use this for dialing anything that doesn't have an entry in your TELDIR.DO file. It will dial the phone number until a connection is made, hanging up and re-dialing whenever it receives a "BUSY" or "NO CARRIER" message from your modem. You can abort the dialing by hitting any key, which will return you to the Select: prompt. Once a connection is made, DIALER will put you *directly* into your own TELCOM's Terminal mode! f.2: [ Find ] ------------- The word "Find" will be displayed, and you may type in any series of characters which will be used to match entries in the TELDIR.DO file. You may type as many or as few characters as you wish, depending on how narrow you want your search to be. When it finds an entry that matches, you will be presented with A prompt. Hitting Y will cause the number for that entry to be dialed. Hitting N will cause it to search for the next entry which matches the same search string you specified, and if no more entries are found you will be returned to the Select: prompt. If you don't type in any characters for the search and simply press , it will list each entry in your TELDIR.DO file, in order, prompting you for every time. This is useful if you just want to page through each entry sequentially. With the sample TELDIR.DO file above, if you type in OMEGA, the entry "THE OMEGA QUADRANT" will be found. If you type in COM, it will find "TELCOM 80". If you hit N, it will search for the next occurance of COM, and in this case it will display the "COMPUSERVE" entry. Once you press Y to tell it you've found the one you wish to dial, it will dial the phone number for that entry, following exactly the same behavior as the "Call" function mentioned above. f.3: [ Stat ] ------------- The word "Stat" will be displayed, after which you may type in any valid PC-8201 or PC-8300 stat setting. The setting you enter will only be active if you use the manual number Call routine (see f.1 above) or go directly into Term mode (see f.4 below). The setting is overridden by any entry selected from TELDIR.DO using the Find function (see f.2 above). f.4: [ Term ] ------------- This function will send you directly into TELCOM's Terminal mode, without doing any dialing. The stat setting shown right above the "Select:" prompt will be used. f.5: [ Menu ] ------------- I'd say this is pretty self explanitory. It gets you out of the DIALER program and puts you back at your main menu. Exiting TELCOM's Term mode -------------------------- After your online session is completed, if you exit the Term mode, you will be put back at your computers main menu. You will need to run DIALER again from the main menu to use it again. Unfortunately, there is no way to cause the exiting of Term mode to send you back into the DIALER program automatically (at least none that I have found). Special note to PC-8300 Users ----------------------------- You'll probably notice that the TELDIR.DO file used by DIALER is very similar to the format that is specified for use with TELCOM and the optional internal 300 Baud modem. The key difference is that the stat settings in this TELDIR.DO file don't need to contain the "P1O" designation at the end (i.e. 5N81XNP1O). That designation isn't necessary when using the DIALER program as it's only purpose is to control the optional internal 300bps modem. But if you intend to use the same TELDIR.DO for DIALER as well as TELCOM (if you have the internal modem), feel free to include the "P1O" (or similar) designation at the end of the stat settings. DIALER is only going to pay attention to the first 6 characters anyway! *END OF DOCUMENT*