The Major BBS Forums (Archive)

Okay, I've obviously forgotten something. I've reloaded the 6.2x setup from tape, onto a 486, 66mhz machine. I'm trying to get to the main menu just to see configuration stuff but cannot get past BREQUEST in the bbsbtr command inside BBS.BAT. It issues the command, the machine just plain *stops* at this point.

I have DOS 5.0 loaded, as was backed up at that point in 1993. I restored the entire root, so all Config and Autoexec files are original.

I have a separate install of Btrieve from about 1989, in a different directory and that btrieve engine will load fine, and it's utilities work great with any of the data files in BBSV6

So what have I forgotten here?

Thanks!

Gary Martin wrote:Okay, I've obviously forgotten something. I've reloaded the 6.2x setup from tape, onto a 486, 66mhz machine. I'm trying to get to the main menu just to see configuration stuff but cannot get past BREQUEST in the bbsbtr command inside BBS.BAT. It issues the command, the machine just plain *stops* at this point.

I have DOS 5.0 loaded, as was backed up at that point in 1993. I restored the entire root, so all Config and Autoexec files are original.

I have a separate install of Btrieve from about 1989, in a different directory and that btrieve engine will load fine, and it's utilities work great with any of the data files in BBSV6

So what have I forgotten here?

Thanks!

possibly that BTRIEVE.EXE is corrupted? just for testing sake try typing
on a command line all by itself:

BTRIEVE >NUL /P:2048 /F:60 /M:64 /E

see what happens. the lockup seems to me like its either a corrupted btrieve binary or its a memory error.
how much memory is in the pc?

Also, make sure you set FILES=255 in CONFIG.SYS. I think there also was another one... make sure you load as much high as possible, too.

dspain wrote:

Gary Martin wrote:Okay, I've obviously forgotten something. I've reloaded the 6.2x setup from tape, onto a 486, 66mhz machine. I'm trying to get to the main menu just to see configuration stuff but cannot get past BREQUEST in the bbsbtr command inside BBS.BAT. It issues the command, the machine just plain *stops* at this point.

I have DOS 5.0 loaded, as was backed up at that point in 1993. I restored the entire root, so all Config and Autoexec files are original.

I have a separate install of Btrieve from about 1989, in a different directory and that btrieve engine will load fine, and it's utilities work great with any of the data files in BBSV6

So what have I forgotten here?

Thanks!

possibly that BTRIEVE.EXE is corrupted? just for testing sake try typing
on a command line all by itself:

BTRIEVE >NUL /P:2048 /F:60 /M:64 /E

see what happens. the lockup seems to me like its either a corrupted btrieve binary or its a memory error.
how much memory is in the pc?

16 megs in the PC. You know, I just did a /facepalm, this setup was on a Novell network, running Bserver with Brequest on the client PC the BBS ran on. I must have modified the original setup so that it would work in a client/server build. Doh, need to get it back to client run Btrieve again.

I'm in to the main menu now. I've disabled all of the modem banks but I'm having Btrieve error 2s on Galmsg.dat The one I restored was about 75 meg, I'm trying a different backup. May just have to get a fresh file.

Gary Martin wrote:I'm in to the main menu now. I've disabled all of the modem banks but I'm having Btrieve error 2s on Galmsg.dat The one I restored was about 75 meg, I'm trying a different backup. May just have to get a fresh file.

this a backup of one of your old servers? if you recreate or use a virgin copy of it all you would lose is old emails.
havent seen any error 2's post mbbs.

It was apparently just a bad GALMSG.DAT restore. I restored it off another tape and that one reindexed just fine.

Heh, fired it up and it started importing the Maillink packets.

This backup unfortunately is back to MBBS 6.12, doesn't have all of the addons, etc. I assume it's probably pointless to try and get those other addons going since these backups are the only complete set of data we still have?

I know we were on MBBS 6.25 at one point. I thought we were on DOS 6.20 as well, not DOS 5.0 (that's the vintage of this backup)