Introduction: Congratulations on your purchase of APBBS Version 3.01.12. I hope you will find this BBS system worthwile and worth the money you spent on it. Before I get into the BBS system I would like to discuss the history of APBBS. You may have seen APBBS version 2.00 out on the public domain. You may even had tried to get it running. The history of APBBS goes way back to October of 1987. I was a SysOp using a RSDOS based BBS system. It was a simple program that didn't even use the CoCo3's features such as 80 columns and the support for 2Mhz speed. I started with that because I wanted to see what it was like to be a sysop. I started using that BBS and found I liked being a sysop but the BBS software was far too limited for practical purposes. It didn't even have a Download section. At that time I had 2 double sided drives and I wanted a BBS to take advantage of it. I started searching around for a BBS system. I also decided I wanted it in OS9 for several reasons. 1: OS9 makes the best use of floppy media and its directory structure makes it nicer. 2: OS9 Multi-tasking capability allows you to run the BBS but let you run your programs while the BBS runs. So I started writing one but wanted it to be more then a simple BBS program since most BBS's will operate with limited hardware but then the BBS wasn't powerful. I wanted to show what a Color Computer BBS really can do. So thats how APBBS was started. The Summer of 1988 the BBS was coming along very nicely. I had built up a decent userlog and with sugegstions from users I was completing the BBS to my original specifications. I had aquired a 80 track drive so now I had three drives for storage. I also had a No-Halt Controller which helped. I also had bought a 20 meg hard drive system which was a major improvement to my Computer system. I was also getting feedback from other CoCo users that they were intrested in the software. I sat back and thought about it. At that time I never intended for the BBS to be shared. I was writing for my use and never considered placing out for other users to have. I did decide to place it in the Public Domain and see what reactions I would get. There was one major flaw with the BBS system: It was not written with the idea of someone else using it and had many aspects of it which would tend to confuse people. I found this out after releasing version 2.02 to the Public Domain. I know over 100 people have downloaded the BBS program but I was not getting any feedback on it. After a few months a few replies with people going crazy trying to get it up & running. The system Assumes the user has a good knowledge of OS9 and BASIC09 since in oder to run the BBS from floppy drives you have to edit the many files. Also it was my first attempt at writing documentation for such a large program. Needless to say to this date there are only 2 people that I know of that have gotten it to work. There were some people who could not get the BBS running did comment that it was an excellent BBS and should be made more user-friendly. So now I have re-written parts of it to make it easier to get it running. Also to make it easier to conform to other systems then mine. This manual will take a laid back approach to setting up and running the BBS. I hope this manual will be a signifigant improvement over my previous docs. Take the time to carefully read it as many times as needed to understand the procedures. The manual will explain one thing at a time so don't expect to get it all running in one session. (unless there like my sessions of 12 to 14 hours!) But a famous saying which should have been on the cover of the OS9 manual is DON'T PANIC! If you wish to contact me for any reason concerning APBBS: BBS: 717-586-2771 300/1200/2400 8/N/1 24hrs (latest info on APBBS) Voice: 717-587-5483 Call between 9am to 11pm Eastern Time Only! Or if you wish to mail me something: Mike Guzzi Stone Rd. Waverly, PA 18471 CompuServe ID: 76576,2715 Notes for those with APBBS Versions: 2.00, 2.02, 2.05, 2.10 I regret to say I can no longer support the public domain version. I have simply made too many changes to APBBS V2.XX and i do not have documentation on it anymore. This is due to a hard drive crash. If you are upgrading from 2.XX (The public Domain version) do not try to use the old files. Just delete it and start over.