March 12, 1995 Dear AppleNET User, It is with great relief and some trepidation that I present to you what will probably be the final version of AppleNET. It's a great relief because it is finally being released to the Apple II community. It's with some trepidation because it marks my exit from the Apple II realm and because there are many things in AppleNET that remain unimplemented. There IS a reason why AppleNET just died out. There wasn't any support for it from the users. The more I talked about AppleNET, the more people tended to shy away from it. If there WAS any interest in it, I couldn't tell. The lack of shareware fee payments from AppleNET 1.5a and the lack of interest which I perceived were enough to convince me to call it quits and try to concentrate on my studies instead. AppleNET Pro v2.0 began sometime in 1992 when METAL became a public domain product. METAL represented a major improvement over Applesoft BASIC (which was what AppleNET was written in, at the time). Originally, I had promised that the new BBS software would be out in 1993; unfortunately, you're only seeing it now. Actually, AppleNET Pro has been finished since January 1994. The only reason it wasn't released back then was because I was determined to get through the daunting task of writing full documentation for it. (The Applesoft version's docs numbered about 100 pages. This version was set to number double that amount.) Unfortunately, the docs never progressed far past the 40th page when I realized I just didn't have the juice to continue with it. And so here is my final offering to the Apple II community -- a fully- functional BBS program. No features are disabled and best of all, no money to pay. The only terms which apply are those of the GNU Public License, which is enclosed with this archive. Originally, AppleNET was to be $25 shareware, but seeing as how I'm no longer going to be supporting the program, I figure it's in the best interests of everyone involved to just have this be free for everyone. Feel free to abuse the system as much as you want. There are a few people I must thank. I don't know if any of these people are still involved with the Apple II anymore since it's been so long that I've been out of touch with them, but their names deserve mention anyway. Thanks first and foremost to Michael Potter for letting me use his GEnie account. Since I left GEnie, I've been completely out of touch with the Apple II community and it just showed how important his generosity really was to keeping me in touch with the A2 folk. Hats off to Dean Esmay and the rest of the GEnie gang circa 1992. Dean was pretty patient with all those missed (self-imposed) deadlines for the release of AppleNET Pro v2.0 (which was the only reason I was on GEnie at the time). Thanks to Erik Kloeppel for just talking about life. Also, I must mention Doede Boomsma who was really patient with me even after I had repeatedly delayed the release of AppleNET Pro v2.0. Doede, if you're reading this, I still have your disk and would love to mail it back to you. But I've lost your address, so please mail me! Finally, thanks to everyone who supported me with their shareware payments for both AppleNET 1.5a and my Voting Booth (the whole two of them!). Although I've used AppleNET Pro on my BBS since late January 1994 with few problems, there ARE bugs in this version. And there are some places which look obscure. Some other features remain unimplemented. It is up to YOU to work them out. Sorry. What follows is a primer on AppleNET and some of the things which are more obscure about it. To toggle your chat status, press Open-Apple-Shift-1 to make yourself unavailable for chat. To make yourself available for chat by the user, press Open-Apple-1. Sysop status can be toggled the same way. To give a user temporary sysop status, press Open-Apple-4. To remove it, press Open-Apple-Shift-4. (AppleNET oldtimers will recognize that the "4" comes from the old user status code of sysops in previous versions of AppleNET.) BE SURE TO DISABLE SYSOP ACCESS AFTER THE USER LOGS OFF OR SUBSEQUENT CALLERS WILL ALSO GET SYSOP STATUS! The status flag is NOT reset when the user hangs up. To break into chat, press Open-Apple-C. To leave chat, use the same key sequence. To run a background task (i.e., hide all output and prevent all input from the remote user), press Open-Apple-L. Use the same key sequence to bring the user back. Sysop passwords are not implemented anywhere. It should be relatively simple to rectify that, however. You SHOULD be able to figure out how the menu system works by looking into the menus which are already available to you. AppleNET Pro v2.0 REQUIRES METAL 1.09.02. I don't believe it will work with any other version. Keep a RAM Disk of at least 256k for best performance. That's all I can think of off-hand. If you have any basic questions, feel free to contact me at the address below. I'm afraid I can't offer technical support (which is the main reason AppleNET is now free), but I'll try my best to help as best I can. The Emporium (which used to be the flagship for AppleNET) is still up and running as of this date, but we have gone to using FirstClass for the Macintosh. Nevertheless, you are all welcome to drop by and say hello. In the meantime, have fun and keep the spirit alive. Merci et au revoir. Sincerely, Derek Fong derek_f@vega.concordia.ca Eagle-Eyes' Emporium BBS St. Laurent, Quebec, Canada (514) 337-8844 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The GNU Public License has been included in this archive. You can only redistribute AppleNET if it has both this file and the GNU Public License enclosed. (In other words, please only redistribute the original archive.)