IRC - This is the first VISK document in a series. I want to go over these utilities in more detail than the official documentation because they do not seem straight forward enough. But be sure to read those docs, along with the teleconference section in your Virtual Advanced documentation too (it goes into more depth there).

First of all, the VISK utility VAIRC.EXE is a wonderful program. It allows your users to connect to specified IRC servers by using the built-in teleconference program. If this was all, then it would be splendid - your users are already familiar with the look and feel of your chat section, so why not use it for Internet chat too! You also have complete control of what the program looks like too by using the VString utility.. you don't have to settle for an ugly program.

Setting up VAIRC is simple. Of course you have already installed the VISK utilities, so I won't go into that. Just make sure that you have a registered version of VISK (PROD5.ID). If you do not have a registration file, then you can only load VAIRC on your local node 0 for testing purposes.

The only thing you really need to do is edit a file called IRC-S.CFG in your \VA directory. In this file, you will list the IRC servers that you want your users to access, and what limitations they will have. For example my first line:

irc.at2k.org 6667 0

There are three columns in this file. The first column is the address of the IRC server. In my example, it is irc.thebbs.org. You can also place IP addresses here if you like. The second column is the port the server is listening to for connections. Most IRC servers use port 6667, but others use 7000. A lot of servers listen to a range of ports (i.e. 6663-6669). The third column tells what restrictions users have while they are on that server. All of the restrictions are listed in the VA docs. The '0' tells it that bots are off limits, and that the profanity filter is turned ON. You could also put a '1' there which would tell it that bots are off limits, and the profanity filter is turned OFF. I would only use one of these two settings. The other settings enables the bots, which are rather annoying to other users.

After you have created that file, you can run the VAIRC program. Be sure to have atleast one node of the BBS active before you load it. You will have to load one copy for each node of your BBS that you want to have IRC access. I have a four node BBS, so I load four copies of VAIRC. Here is how you load it:

VAIRC /ch=1 /path=e:

The '/ch=' parameter tells VAIRC what node of the BBS it is for. This example is for node 1. For your node 2, you will specify '/ch=2'. The '/path=' statement tells VAIRC where your CONTROL.DAT file is located as specified in VConfig. My CONTROL.DAT file is located on a ramdrive (e:). Do not put a trailing backslash on this path.

Until you load VAIRC, the BBS will tell you that IRC is not configured for your BBS. After it is loaded, you and your users can access those servers you have listed.

::Some important notes::

There is one major bug in VAIRC unfortunately. You will not be able to connect to servers that require verification. You can see what I mean by trying to connect to a server like bbs.pcmicro.com and then check your IRC.LOG file in your \WINDOWS directory. The IRC server will PING VAIRC, which is normal. Then in order to connect, VAIRC *should* PONG back whatever was PINGed. It does not do this.. it just PONGs nothing back. If you look at the log, you will see what was PINGed and you can manually type 'PONG x' (x is what was PINGed) in the teleconference program and you will connect.

You can connect to BBSnet by pointing VAIRC to irc.at2k.org on port 6667!

If anyone knows a work-around for this I'd love to hear it!

That is all for now. Contact me if you have any questions.