

      This file is Bulletin #17 off my BBS.  I thought I would include it
             here for more information about the CALLERID program.






          SOME TIPS/HINTS/INFORMATION ABOUT MY CALLERID PROGRAM
          *****************************************************


                          LATEST VERSION IS: 11/11/91



    I have had such a large response to my FREEWARE CALLERID program that
    I thought I would post a bulletin to answer the most asked questions
    and misunderstandings about using the CALLERID program and what hardware
    is needed.  So here goes...



    Q: I load your CALLERID program and it loads just fine as a TSR.  But
       it sits there and does nothing.  What am I doing wrong?

    A: You must have a SERIAL CALLER ID BOX!!!!!!  You cannot get Caller
       ID information off the phone line with your modem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



    In most areas the Caller ID information is not provided to you for
    free by your local phone company.  In Frederick, Maryland we have to
    subscribe to Caller ID and pay a monthly fee of $6.50 on top of our
    monthly phone bill.


    Once you have established the service from your phone company you must
    purchase "some kind" of box to make use of the Caller ID information
    which is sent to you (on the phone line) either immediately before or
    after the first ring.


    Most people buy the little Caller ID Box with the LCD display.  This
    is fine for the "normal" person, but a Sysop (most of us are not
    normal) needs more if he/she wants to automate the task of gathering
    Caller ID Phone Number Information about his/her users.


    In comes the SERIAL CALLER ID BOX.  I have been told that you can call
    AT&T at 1-800-523-0552 and order the TCC M10 (also known as the
    Classmate 10) for a cost of $49.95.

    (I wish I had a source to get them, cause I could have sold a bundle
    by now.  I never thought that my CALLERID program would be so popular.
    I'm receiving about 5 calls a day about this program!)


    The Classmate 10 has no LCD display for viewing.  It has a serial
    output that you can connect to a serial port on your computer, a
    serial printer, or a serial terminal.


    There is no magic involved here.  You could run a communication
    program like Qmodem, and let it sit there all day and have it
    "capture" the phone numbers to a file.  But what good is this if you
    are trying to run your BBS software on the same machine?  Qmodem does
    not run as a TSR, and uses about 400K of memory.


    In comes my CALLERID program.  It loads TSR in about 19.5K of memory and
    in it's simplest operation will log the phone numbers, sent in by the
    Classmate 10, to a disk file.


    CALLERID goes a few steps further.... you can have a Trash Can file
    filled with "bad" phone numbers (numbers of people you don't want to
    call your BBS).  If someone calls from that phone number, CALLERID
    will create a "flag" file on the disk. You can check for the existance
    of this flag file from your batch file.  If your batch file finds this
    flag file on disk, you know that someone from the Trash Can list is on
    the line and you can do whatever you want.  You can send them a
    message, or you could hang up.  Of course you need some sort of
    utility program to hang up the modem or send a message from the DOS
    prompt.


    In our area people can disable their Caller ID phone number from being
    transmitted when they make a call.  This is sometimes called blocking.
    In this case the Caller ID Box reports that this caller's number is
    "PRIVATE."   CALLERID will detect this and create a flag file to
    indicate this condition.  Some Sysop's will hang up on anyone who
    calls in with their number "blocked" figuring they must be up to
    nogood.


    There are a few things to note about my CALLERID program.

    1. CALLERID will support ANY COM port configuration you have.  This means
       it will support COM3 and COM4, and anything else you can throw
       at it.


    2. CALLERID is FREE!  I am not trying to make a buck on this program.
       Call me stupid, cause if there were any program I have ever made
       that would make money, it would probably be CALLERID.  I can't
       believe the response I have had about this program.

       I figure us Sysop's get nickeled and dimed to DEATH by all these
       damn $20 door program registrations.  I admit that $20 is pretty
       darn good for many of the programs out there, but when you run 20
       doors on your board that adds up fast.


    3. I like to see people use and enjoy my program, especially when they
       are free.  Call my board and let me know how it's working.  Feel
       free to give suggestions, but keep in mind that the more stuff
       added to this program the bigger it will get.  At 19.5K-bytes, it's
       pretty big already for a TSR.


    4. With some BBS systems the "log" file that CALLERID writes to can be
       your caller's log that the BBS software uses.  Some BBS programs
       don't open the caller's log in a shared mode, so CALLERID can't
       write to it and you will have to write it to a seperate file.  But
       some Sysops have found that when they drop to DOS or a Door, the
       caller's log is closed by the BBS software, and they will COPY/
       APPEND the seperate log file to their BBS caller's log file, then
       delete the seperate file.


    5. Many Sysops will immediately Drop to DOS (a Door) and check for the
       CALLERID information.  They can check for the "flag" files (Trash
       Can or PRIVATE) and do something about that condition.




    Okay.... that's it.  I can't think of anything else that people have
    asked me about.  It is assumed that most users of CALLERID are Sysops
    and you are good at working with DOS, your hardware, and your
    system.  This sure would make my job easier.


    Enjoy...


                                            John Crouch
                                            Sysop : The Tech Line BBS
                                            Author: CALLERID.EXE


