The first part of this page contains information about some THEOS tools I have written and give away to anyone interested. The second part contains some links to THEOS software available by anonymous download. Please make sure to check the apropriate copyrights before you use any of these programs.

COPYRIGHT and DISCLAIMER:

This document and the software described in here is Copyright (c) 1999-2000 by Thomas Baumgart. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this document under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that this copyright notice is included exactly as in the original, and that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Nobody is responsible for what happens to your hardware and operating environment but yourself. If your any piece of your hardware goes up in smoke (...nearly impossible!) I take no responsibility. ie. THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO ACTIONS TAKEN BASED ON THE INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THIS DOCUMENT OR RUNNING ANY OF THE SOFTWARE DESCRIBED IN HERE.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A WORKING BACKUP OF YOUR DATA BEFORE USING ANY OF THE TOOLS.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

If you are intending to incorporate this document into a published work, please contact me, and I will make an effort to ensure that you have the most up to date information available. In the past, out of date version documents have been published, which caused developers and users undue grief from being plagued with questions that were already answered in the up to date versions.

Table of contents:

 
PWRDOWN
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What is it?

PWRDOWN is a tool, that let you turn of the power of your computer by issuing a command from the CSI or from within an EXEC. In order to use this tool, your BIOS must support the APM (Advanced Power Management) version 1.1 specification and APM has to be activated. (You should turn off all power management features, but not turn off APM itself)

I have tested this tool under the THEOS 4.1 operating system. Depending on the boot-strap loader, it might work with 4.0 systems as well.

PWRDOWN is usually called without any arguments. It prepares the system for shutdown, does a reset and before re-booting it beeps and turns the power off. If it continues to beep forever, please check the message on the display. To stop this noise, you can either turn off your computer manually or use Ctrl-Alt-Del.

How does it work?

Since there is no way to access the necessary BIOS parts directly from THEOS, PWRDOWN uses a simple trick: it modifies the boot-strap routine of the current S disk and includes the code to do the power off. Before actually turning off the power, it reverts the changes back to the original layout. This ensures, that the computer reboots when power is turned back on.

For the paranoia: Don't want me to write to your boot-strap loader on drive S but still want to check this tool? No problem: Create a boot disk using the MAKEBOOT command, insert this disk in your F drive (assuming DOS A:) and execute

PWRDOWN F

from the command line. Leave the disk in the drive until the power is turned off. To check if the hehaviour is as described above, turn power back on and boot from the floppy. Once confident, you can run the tools without the drive letter.

How can I get it?

Nothing easier than that: try to save

http://www.net-bembel.de/download/pwrdown.zip

to your THEOS disk and use UNZIP to extract the enclosed PWRDOWN.CMP file. Run the THEOS EXPAND utility to extract the program file PWRDOWN.COMMAND from that CMP file.

Contributions

Thanks to Norbert Schmidt of ONYX Computer GmbH in Hofheim, Germany for asking me, if I have such a tool for him. He got me inspired to sit down and write it.

Thanks also to my daughter Annika, who always inspires me with new ideas. Check her out on the picture, while she is showing me some weird Object Oriented design that I still do not understand. ;-)

Further ideas

  • Only allow to run from SYSTEM account
  • Wait with power down until everybody logged off
  • Block other users from login when waiting for power down
  • Have timeout to force power down even if users are logged in
  • Anything I did not think of yet ....

Want your idea here? Just send me a mail.
 
SMTPSEND
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Next

What is it?

SMTPSEND is a tool, that lets you send e-mails from a THEOS computer without the need for the full-blown THEO+MAIL package. All you need is

  • the latest version of THEO+NET installed
  • access to an intranet or the INTERNET
  • and the hostname/IP-Address of a system (UNIX, THEOS, ...) running SENDMAIL on port 25 that will deliver your mail to the recipient(s).

For more information about the program, what it does for you, how you use it from within your application, read the file README.

SMTPSEND is distributed under the GPL (GNU Public License). Please see the file COPYING.TXT that comes with the distribution for more details.

How can I get it?

Nothing easier than that: try to save

http://www.net-bembel.de/download/smtpsend.zip

to your THEOS disk and use UNZIP to extract the enclosed SMTPSEND.CMP file. Run the following command running as SYSTEM user to extract the enclosed program file SMTPSEND.COMMAND from the CMP file: 

      EXPAND SMTPSEND.CMP SMTPSEND.COMMAND
The source files are also included in this CMP file.

Contributions

Thanks to Kurt Emanuelson of Bold Technologies, Ltd. in Gurnee, IL for asking me, if I have such a tool for him. He got me inspired to sit down and think about it.

Thanks also to Andrew Tridgell for his bug tracking tool jitterbug, from where I took all the SMTP relevant code. Jitterbug is part of the SAMBA package, an excellent free UNIX/LINUX replacement for expensive Windows-NT server licenses.

Further ideas

Since the source for SMTPSEND comes with the package, you might change it to your needs. It might also be a good idea to share your extensions with other users of the SMTPSEND utility. If you have any ideas, I am more than happy to discuss them with you.

Software mentioned in this document beyond this point is not written by me nor do I have any rights on it. Please check the source of the programs for apropriate copyright information before you use the software.
 
ASC2FMT / FMT2ASC
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Next
 What is it?

The two utilities covered here have been especially designed to reformat files written with a BASIC program, or with the ACCESS command. ACCESS is the SQL-like engine in Phase One Systems' Freedom Report Writer. You'll find the utilities handy when you need to merge your data with a word processor or port it to a 'foreign' computer system.

The FMT2ASC command may be used to convert a BINARY formatted sequential file written with the SELECT or SSELECT verbs in Phase One's ACCESS or with the WRITE statement in BASIC to an ASCII format. This file may then be used with the THEOS editor or a word processor such as SCRIPT or WINDOWWRITER or ported to a WINDOWS system for use with MS Excel, Word, or similar programs.

The ASC2FMT command will work on an ASCII sequential file and convert it to a BINARY format. ASC2FMT may be used, for example, to reformat a file created under another operating system (and ported to THEOS) to a structure compatible with Phase One's ACCESS.

Both tools have recently been enhanced to support larger field and record sizes. The current limits are (old values in parenthesis):

  • Recordsize : 64KB (4KB)
  • Fieldsize : 64KB (255 Byte)
  • # of fields per record: 8192 (32)
You can download the files from

ftp://ftp.phaseonesystems.com/cet/theos/access/ascfmt-2.0.zip

 
Note:

At present, you are not able to use the tools directly. You have to serialize them to the serial number of your THEOS operating system. In order to do that, please contact Ron Gibbs at Phase One Systems to obtain activation keys. Please tell him the serial number(s) of your THEOS operating system(s) and receive the activation key(s)

for free.

  
 
ZIP / UNZIP
Previous
 What is it?

ZIP and UNZIP are the THEOS incarnation of these well known tools.

The ZIP and UNZIP port to THEOS is maintained by Jean-Michel Dubois. I just keep a link to the software here for completeness. If you have any questions regarding these two programs, please contact Jean-Michel directly. I will not answer any questions related to these tools. Sorry :-(

How can I get it?

You can download the files from

ftp://ftp.ibcfrance.fr/pub/zipunzip/zipunzip.zip
I hope, you enjoy using the tools mentioned above. If you want to add something to this list that I should have forgotten or just comment on it, please send me a mail. I really appreciate your feedback.