AmiTCPHelper is a program I wrote in order to make my internet access easier. I started the project in March '94 when I got back on the net after an absence of about a year, and it has developed from a very simple, fairly buggy little thing into a pretty major tool. Now, I'm not a programmer, as anyone who has read my work will know, but I put all this together anyway. How did I do it? The answer is CanDo. CanDo is a kind of Visual Basic for the Amiga - a lot is done for the user automatically, like creating windows, screens, menus, tracking the mouse and so on, and creating buttons and listviews is a matter of pointing and clicking. All that is then needed is a bit of scripting behind the interface and voila, a complete program. Famous programs that have been put together with CanDo include:- ProControl - a batch processor for ADPro
- Fiber Factory - an add-on for Lightwave that generates hair
- Amiga Format's CD1 interface
- and many more I can't remember at the mo...
Who's it for:
AmiTCPHelper is designed for anyone who uses Demon for their ISP, but it almost certainly works with other service providers' setups (although no-one has e-mailed me to confirm it). It was principally made to work with the DIS-AmiTCP95 installer written by Demon customers, but it does work with later revisions of the installer, just not as completely (it's mainly the dialscript that has changed).
What's it do:
AmiTCPHelper sits over the top of all those nasty shell scripts that you would otherwise have to get your hands dirty on. It runs the startnet script for you and lets you click buttons to link up, link down and run the most important internet packages like ftp and a web browser. In addition to this, it also has four buttons which let you ping and finger user-defined hosts and trace routes to them, it even acts as an easy way of telnetting to somewhere. The listview window contains the addresses (these change depending on which of the four buttons is selected) and double clicking on one will result in the appropriate operation being carried out.
AmiTCPHelper also handles multiple mailboxes if you use a mailer like Elm and will bring up a requester asking you which mailbox you would like to read when you click the mail button and will also warn you if you try to link down when there is still mail to be sent.
Just to finish things off, the program is easily installed using a standard Installer script provided for me by my good friend Neil Mohr (see, I told you I wasn't a programmer).
How to get it:
There are two versions of AmiTCPHelper on Aminet. One is for people who already have a previous version of the program, or who have CanDo v3.008; the other is for newbies. Be warned, if you have an older version of CanDo (say, from a coverdisk), I'm not sure how AmiTCPHelper will react. If you install the new cando.library, I'm not sure how your version of CanDo will react. Let me know.
Anyway, you can get either version of the program from Aminet (in the comm/tcp directory), these links are for wuarchive:
