• Added another overflow check to the parsing of PC16 (add node) protocol message. PacketCluster sends crap from time to time, this caused run-time error 201 at 0567:4FEE.... also found out that my byte-sized variable for storing user counts on PacketCluster nodes was too small - some REAL busy servers overseas seem to handle more than 255 users at a moment. This used to cause another overflow error 201, moved the upper limit to 65535. Should be enough, huh.
• User and node tables are now stored in a linked list. This means that memory for them is allocated dynamically, and your free base memory is the only limit for the amount of users and nodes...
• Also moved a lot of user & socket information from static to dynamic memory.
• User and node lists are sorted alphabetically. Looks nice. Happy, Mar? 8-)
• Tracing of sockets to files. At first, only for PC links, but in the future, for any (user/link) socket, to a file or the screen... See links.ini for details on tracing links.
• As always, some minor cosmic changes.
• Two new cluster commands: Shout (announce full) and SAy (Ann local).
• A new file: text\login.txt is sent to users on login, right after the qth/information string in clusse.ini. You can omit this file if you don't need it...
• Another new file: data\last.clu is used to store last users list and some other actions (shutdowns, crashes) and can be viewed using the command lc (List Connections). There's also a new command to view the error log, le (List Errors).
• A new prompt (nr. 6) with time and date.
• Added a bunch of XMS handling functions in the code. Not really used yet, but some day they might get useful.
• NOW you can REALLY /invite local cluster users to the conference mode. I wonder how it took so long to fix it. Now it works, anyway. I tried.
• Added a feature in the users command: you can also give the callsign of a specific node to get the user list of that particular node.
• PacketCluster version compatibility: Clusse has been succesfully linked (at least) with PacketCluster versions 5.3-05, 5.4-32 and 5.4-77. I have seen reports that Clusse won't talk properly with versions before 5.0, and i suspect the problem is in the differences of the linking protocol. I don't have such an old version running nearby so i cannot debug the differences out, sorry folks...
• A new News system. The format of news.txt has changed, take a look at it. Involves a new command 'news'.
• You can now connect console to node, by pressing CTRL-F2. You'll have the console call, if you have the ENABLE_LINKED setting in BPQCFG set to A or Y. Otherwice you'll have the BBS call. I suggest setting it to A, as Y could be considered dangerous. Press ctrl-f2 again to hard disconnect.
• Fixed BPQ stream handling. Now can use any stream set, used to not work if the first stream used was not stream 1.

© Heikki Hannikainen <hessu@pspt.fi>