-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Filename....: FDTN-003; FrontDoor Technical Note #003
Rev.........: 002
Dated.......: 10-Mar-1994

Subject.....: Using the USRobotics Courier V32terbo modems with FrontDoor
              2.12, FrontDoor 2.20b.mL and above

Author......: T. Edward W. Hobson
              2:258/24@fidonet
              44:1000/29@chatnet

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Revisions: 001 25-Jan-94 tewh Creation for FrontDoor 2.11 and 2.20a.mL.

           002 01-Mar-94 tewh Revised to support FrontDoor 2.12 and
                              2.20b.Ml and dropped support for previous
                              versions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Preamble and History
====================

The USRobotics V32terbo modems suffer from various bugs currently, the
degree of which depends on the Supervisor revision installed in your
modem.

The earliest ROMs, dated autumn 1993 exhibited problems with the modem
not answering the line when S0 is set to 0 and an ATA was sent (it would
pick up the line and initiate the call). With compression enabled, HST
mode would lock the modem up. Also the fax side of things was
dramatically different from the current Supervisor.

I currently use the 10th December Supervisor and find it to be fine
except for one drawback (however this is still not fixed in the latest
Supervisor upgrade - 31st January 1994). That is that when a call is
answered and no connect results, as soon as the modem begins its fax
answer tones having cycled through all the modem tones, Carrier Detect
(CD) goes high, and stays high, even when the defined timeout is
exceeded and the modem aborts the answer sequence.

The following configuration assumes that you are using a V32terbo with
Supervisor dated 8th December or later. If your V32terbo has an earlier
Supervisor, then contact USRobotics for an upgrade, as the 'kludges'
necessary to make the following work are not worth documenting.

FOSSIL Configuration
====================

You should lock your FOSSIL at as high a speed as possible. I would
recommend locking at 57600 or 115200 BPS. If you are using X00 the
command-line parameters would be similar to:

        X00 E B,0,57600 R=2048 T=512

This locks FOSSIL port 0 (COM1) at 57600 BPS, and configures 4096 bytes
of receive buffering and 512 bytes of transmit buffering. If your
computer or serial port has trouble receiving without errors, then
increasing the receive buffer size may well ease the situation. You
really need to be using a buffered serial card (one fitted with a
16550AFN or compatible, with 16 bytes of FIFO buffering) to use the high
locked port speeds. If your serial port has FIFO buffering, then include
the FIFO=15 command on the X00 command-line too.

FrontDoor configuration
=======================

FDSETUP is used to configure the modem options. Configure the following
options in each of the sub-menus under the MODEM menu.

  +---------------------------- Hardware +
  |                                      |
  | Serial port                   1      |
  | Locked port                   Yes    |
  | Maximum baudrate              Fixed  |
  | Reset modem to connect speed  No     |
  | Lower DTR when busy           No     |
  | Lower DTR to terminate call   No <---- * This is necessary *
  | Toggle DTR before dialing     No     |
  | Carrier detect mask (CDMASK)  128    |
  |                                      |
  +--------------------------------------+

  +----------- Connect messages +
  | 300         CONNECT         |
  | 1200        CONNECT 1200    |
  | 1275        CONNECT 1200/75 |
  | 2400        CONNECT 2400    |
  | 4800        CONNECT 4800    |
  | 7200        CONNECT 7200    |
  | 9600        CONNECT 9600    |
  | 12000       CONNECT 12000   |
  | 14400       CONNECT 14400   |
  | 16800       CONNECT 16800   |
  | 19200       CONNECT 19200   |
  | 21600       CONNECT 21600   |
  | 24000       CONNECT 24000   |
  | 26400       CONNECT 26400   |
  | 28800       CONNECT 28800   |
  | 38400       CONNECT 38400   |
  | 57600       CONNECT 57600   |
  | 64000       CONNECT 64000   |
  | 115200      CONNECT 115200  |
  | Fax         +FCO            |
  +-----------------------------+

  +------------ Status messages +
  |                             |
  | Error       ERROR           |
  | Busy        BUSY            |
  | No Carrier  NO CARRIER      |
  | Ok          OK              |
  | Ring        RING|           |
  | No Dialtone NO DIAL         |
  | No Answer   NO ANSWER       |
  | Voice       VOICE           |
  |                             |
  +-----------------------------+

  +----------------------------------------- Command strings +
  |                                                          |
  | Escape code    +++                                       |
  | Return on-line ~ATO|                                     |
  | Onhook         ATZ|                                      |
  | Offhook        ~ATM0H1|                                  |
  | Dial           AT                                        |
  | ÃÄPrefix       M1+FCLASS=0DT                             |
  | ÀÄSuffix       |                                         |
  | Delay          5                                         |
  | Init-1         AT&F1&K2E0H0X7S13=1S15=72S19=4S28=20|     |
  | Init-2         ATS32=2S34=8+FCLASS=2.0|                  |
  | Init-3         AT+FLI="0829-782667"|                     |
  | Down           ~ATM0H1|                                  |
  | Attention      AT|                                       |
  |                                                          |
  +----------------------------------------------------------+

  (NB, change "0829-782667" to your desired FAX ID, usually your modem
  telephone number, or dedicated FAX number)

  +----------------------------------------- Answer control +
  |                                                         |
  | Manual answer Yes                                       |
  | Force answer  ATB0M1+FCLASS=2.0|~AT+FAA=1+FNR=1,1,1;A|  |
  | Answer delay  1                                         |
  | Enable LDFRS  No                                        |
  |                                                         |
  +---------------------------------------------------------+

You must use an ATZ| in the modem 'on-hook' string to fix the problem
with the USR fax modems leaving CD high after a failed connect. When
this has been fixed, it can be restored to the normal ATO|, and 'Lower
DTR to terminate call' can be re-enabled. Note this bug exists in
Supervisors up to time of writing (currently the most recent one I know
of is 31st January 1994). Because we use ATZ|, ensure that the next time
you load FrontDoor, you enter terminal mode and type AT&W to ensure that
the NVRAM is stored at the current DTE speed.

Using the commercial version of FrontDoor, in the FAX sub-menu, turn the
internal fax receiver OFF as this only allows faxes to be received using
ZyXEL modems.

If you have a bulletin-board running as well as FrontDoor, remember to
configure the errorlevels for speeds 300-21600 BPS to define the
errorlevels with which FrontDoor exits when a human caller wants to use
the system. These errorlevels are configured under FDSETUP's MAILER
'Errorlevels' menu.

In FDSETUP's MANAGER menu, configure the following under the Modem
sub-menu. It is important to ensure that you copy the following order:

        HST             ATB1|
        V32             ATB0|
        H14             ATB1|
        V32B            ATB0|
        H16             ATB1|
        V32T            ATB0|
        UV32T           ATB0|

This will ensure that your modem dials out using the fastest available
protocol when calling other system. This does rely on systems carrying
the correct capability flags in the nodelist, so if you are seeing
slower connects than you would expect, it is important to check that the
system you are calling is equipped with the correct nodelist flags. Note
that there are two entries for V32terbo, 'V32T' and 'UV32T'. This is
because there is currently no official nodelist flag for the V32terbo
modem. It is however recognised as a valid user flag. For details of
user flags, take a look at the information at the end of the nodelist.
Basically though, user flags are the last flags on a node's listing. The
first user flag is prefixed with a capital letter 'U', and can be NEC,
NC, V32T, VFC or some other flag agreed by the ZC or RC. Subsequent user
flags are not prefixed with a 'U', so if a system has more than one user
flag, they may either have the 'V32T' flag or the 'UV32T' flag.

Using the commercial version of FrontDoor, configure the following in
FDSETUP's EDITOR menu under the FAX sub-menu, if you wish to use ZFAX,
and would like to use CTRL-F3 to view fax attaches, or to have FM
automatically view unreceived faxes. Note that you should replace
'K:\FD\FAX\ZFAX\' with the correct path to your ZFAX software.

  +------------------------------------------------------ Fax +
  |                                                           |
  | Viewer     K:\FD\FAX\ZFAX\ZFAX 4 =F                       |
  | Automatic  Yes                                            |
  | Remove     No                                             |
  |                                                           |
  +-----------------------------------------------------------+

In FDSETUP's MAILER menu, under ERRORLEVELS, configure an errorlevel for
FAX connects, of the highest possible value - 255 is best. Also enable
FrontDoor's option to create a BAT.File. The reason for the high
errorlevel is that once a fax connect has been established, the fax
software needs to be called up as quickly as possible in order to
prevent the calling fax from timing out. It must take less than two
seconds for the transition to take place in order for a fax to be
received correctly. You should then add a section in the batch file
which calls up FrontDoor, to execute BGFAX (or your own FAX receiver).
BGFAX should be available from your local BBS shareware distributor.
BGFAX110.* is the current version. To ensure minimum delays loading
BGFAX, it may be helpful to copy BGFAX.EXE to RAMDISK. The BGFAX
environment variable points to the directory containing the BGFAX.CNF
configuration file. (eg SET BGFAX=K:\FD\FAX\BGFAX)

The following batch file section could be used to call up BGFAX with
sound effects disabled, to receive a fax on COM1 and store it in ZyXEL fax
format in the directory 'K:\FD\FAX\FILES'.

        :FAX
        F:\BGFAX.EXE /FCO K:\FD\FAX\FILES 1 Z /NS
        CALL K:\FD\FAX\FILES\DOPRINT.BAT
        DEL K:\FD\FAX\FILES\DOPRINT.BAT

(NB, change K:\FD\FAX\FILES to the path where received faxes should be
stored. If you wish BGFAX to store its received faxes in QuickLink II
format, replace the 'Z' on the BGFAX command-line with a 'Q')

Note that BGFAX creates a file called DOPRINT.BAT which contains a line
for each fax received. This 'FAX' section of your main batch file calls
up the DOPRINT.BAT file which will execute another batch file called
EXEPRINT for each fax received. Each line of the DOPRINT.BAT file is in
the format:

        EXEPRINT <name of fax file>

You may then create a batch file called EXEPRINT which prints the fax
file, or moves it to a different directory, sends you a message to say
that a fax has been received, or forwards the fax to another system.
Alternatively you could ignore it! I personally post a message in my
netmail folder with a fax-attach (a special feature of the commercial
version of FrontDoor) which allows me to view the fax directly from FM.
This employs joaquim's XROBOT utility, available from your local
FrontDoor support site as XR301DOS.* or XR301OS2.*

In order to use XRobot to automatically send a netmail message to
someone - either yourself, or another forwardee, the following could be
included in the EXEPRINT.BAT file:

        @ECHO OFF
        XR SEND /F%1 /R2:258/24 /N1 /MB+

(NB, replace 2:258/24 with the forwardee's node number, and the number 1
with the number of the user (1-10) which the message should be sent
'By'. Your own name will be in position 1.)

The BGFAX configuration, BGFAX.CNF, found in the BGFAX directory should
be as follows:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
po=1                      <- COM port for the V32terbo modem
ft=z                      <- 'q' for QuickLink II format fax files
sp=57600                  <- Locked port speed
rp=K:\FD\FAX\BGFAX        <- Path to the BGFAX system directory
tc=ATHM                   <- Command to terminate the call
si=ATH0+FLI="0829-782667" <- Replace text inside quotes with your FAX ID
si=AT+FNR=1,1,1
ds=ATDT                   <- Your dial command - ATDP for pulse dialling
dt=60
mb=1
mf=1
sw=5
in=AT+FCLASS=2.0
in=AT+FLI="0829-782667"+FNR=1,1,1 <- Again, insert FAX ID inside quotes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

BGFAX may be set to store received faxes in ZyXEL or QuickLink II
format. If you choose ZyXEL FAX format, you will need to use another
utility to view the faxes once they have been received. ZyXEL's own
receiver utility, ZFAX is available from the ZyXEL BBS, and can be used
to view and print the files. Alternatively, BGFAX is due to have its own
viewer added to the next version.

Software information
====================

FrontDoor and XRobot are Copyright (C) joaquim homrighausen, Absolute Solutions
BGFAX is Copyright (C) B.J. Guillot
ZyXEL and ZFAX are Copyright (C) ZyXEL Corporation
QuickLink II is Copyright (C) Smith Micro Software
X00 is Copyright (C) Ray Gwinn

End of document
===============