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From: MACTEST@CZHETH5A.BITNET.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8703210651.AA07530@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sat, 21-Mar-87 01:52:47 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8703210651.AA07530
Posted: Sat Mar 21 01:52:47 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 22:52:59 EST
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Approved: info-vax@sri-kl.arpa

We have been running (for a year by now) a public Bulletin
Board entirely dedicated to the Macintosh family, on a VAX
8600 with VMS.

Our BBS is not an award winner, especially not in its
user friendliness, but at least it works without trouble.
The few improvements we made were not really substantial,
because we are working on a newer, better, even more
interactive BBS (sounds like a commercial), which would
eventually fully use the Macintosh resources (Menues,
scroll bars, buttons, dialog boxes, etc) when used
together with a custom built Macintosh application, and
which would behave like a normal BBS when used with
a terminal.
The new software would also offer a mailing utility and an
interactive conferencing system (chatter).

We have several chatter projects here, one using a daemon which
collects the messages and writes it onto a Message-logfile.
Every now an then, the daemon would open a new logfile,
wait until all users have read the old one and have skipped
to the new one, and finally erase the old logfile. The daemon
would be killed when the last user quits the chat area, and
would be born again when someone enters the area as only
user.

Now my questions:

- what priority should the daemon be set to to make the
  system behave normally (the BBS user's process priority
  varies from 4 to 9, depending on what he's currently
  doing, but it normally is 6) ?

- is there a better way to do it ?

- Does a public-domain chatter running VMS already exist ?
  If yes, could you send it ?


Thank you in advance for your reply.


                        Danny Schwendener
                        Macintosh Bulletin Board
                        Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

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