BBS:INFO.TXT  Revised:  11-Nov-87

Digby's Bitpile is a timesharing system owned  and  operated
by  John  Wilson, who is occasionally known as Zippy.  Digby
is located in the pantry of the Tibbits Avenue Terminal Site
(TATS), much to the dismay of TATS' other occupants.

Digby is a DEC PDP-11/34a minicomputer, with 124KW of memory
(all  he  can address...  sigh...), an FP-11A floating point
processor, and two RK07 cartridge disk drives  (28MB  each).
He draws about a kilowatt.  He can support up to 16 users at
once, but only if they are very patient.  He runs the RSTS/E
V7.0-07 operating system, which is a general-purpose timesh-
aring system used mostly in schools.

Digby originally belonged to my high school, Concord Academy
(in  Concord, MA), where he was used for general student ti-
mesharing and some classes.

Aside from the BBS, the dial-up line can be used  to  access
regular  timesharing accounts;  if you want one, talk to me.
RSTS is a fairly amusing operating system, at least compared
to  some  of  the local competition.  For one thing, it DOES
have easy interjob communication.  Digby has one of the  ni-
cest  BASIC  compiler/interpreters  I  have seen, as well as
F4P, Small-C, and of course, MACRO-11 (the  only  REAL  pro-
gramming language).  He also has TECO V35 (a powerful editor
which isn't that easy to use)  and  EDT  (V2.00-4),  a  very
easy-to-use  editor which isn't that powerful;  both editors
strongly prefer DEC terminals.

Using Digby:
Obviously, you have already figured out how to log  in.   To
log out, type 'BYE' or CTRL/Z in response to the '@'.

Typing:
If you make a mistake typing, erase it using the DELETE  key
(177  octal),  *NOT*  the  backspace  key (CTRL/H)!!!!!  The
backspace key will move the cursor back a column,  but  will
not  erase anything.  To cancel an entire line, type CTRL/U;
to retype the line if it somehow gets messed up  (for  exam-
ple, if you DELETE a tab or a backspace - Digby doesn't echo
this properly), type CTRL/R;   to  see  if  Digby  is  still
alive,  type CTRL/T (this will give you a line of status in-
formation, which will probably mean nothing to you).   Digby
will  allow  a  lot  of  typeahead (no fixed number of char-
acters, since storage is dynamically  allocated);   it  will
will  be echoed AS YOU TYPE IT, not when it is read, so type
^R when Digby catches up with you to see what you typed.

CTRL/S halts typeout, and CTRL/Q continues it.  If you  type
CTRL/O,  Digby  throws  away  all  typeout until you type ^O
again.

CTRL/C will abort almost anything;  and anything which isn't
killed  by  one  ^C will be killed by two (most of the games
will return to the games menu on the first ^C).

Digby expects you to be using 8 bits,  no  parity,  and  one
stop  bit,  but he isn't too picky;  that is what he'll send
you, though.

Most of the games which do anything neat with your  terminal
will  work  only on DEC terminals (VT50 series and VT100-200
series).  Some of them will adjust to non-DEC  terminals  by
treating  them  as if they were hardcopy terminals, which is
slow, but works.  If your terminal can't emulate a DEC  ter-
minal, I don't want to hear it;  I'll be damned if I'm going
to rewrite all those games when the VT52 is so easy to  emu-
late  (grr!).   The PC-DOS ANSI.SYS driver doesn't quite cut
it as a VT100 - it's missing some important things, a lot of
which  are  used  by  the games.  Kermit or PVT (faster than
Kermit and  available  on  MTS  in  ETS4:PVT.EXE)  are  much
better.

The real-time games won't look too good at  1200  baud,  but
what can I do?  If you have a real thing about bad games and
want to play them at 9600 baud, drop by sometime, and  bring
food!

If you have a real problem with the terminal  handling,  for
example  if  you  need  fill  characters or software tabs or
something, talk to me - RSTS can do that, but at the  moment
Digby  just assumes everyone is using something similar to a
VT52.