You mentioned keeping an eye on the Silver Xpress door - I think I got it working properly on Another Millennium BBS. (though I am a bit frustrated after typing a long message and then losing it when the Silver Xpress reader puked due to low memory. booo!)

There were a few issues I had to solve to get Silver Xpress working:

#1 - Silver Xpress door 5.03 for Maximus is for Maximus 2.x and I am running maximus 3.01. Silver Xpress is looking for a Maximus 2.x AREAS.DAT file that is no longer used by Maximus 3.x, but it can optionally be created - I hadn't created the AREAS.DAT file since 2021 and none of the areas were configured correctly. After running "silt max -2a" to create the Max 2.x AREAS.DAT file, Silver Xpress sees the correct areas.

#2 - The Silver Xpress door would only open on telnet node 3 (and the 2 dialup nodes) of the BBS - this is because the shareware version of Silver Xpress
only supports 3 nodes. After registering the door with a serial number starting with "ML" there is no limitation on number of nodes. I was able to generate a registration code using SXCODE.ZIP from The Titantic BBS.

#3 - Dates in Silver Xpress would have the word "Bug" in them instead of the name of the month. Additionally, messages uploaded via Silver Xpress had "grunged dates" causing Squish to not pack and send them as echomail. I was able to disassemble the Silver Xpress door executable and found that there is
a subroutine checking dates for validity, requiring years to be >= 1988 and
<= 2000. After a one-byte patch, the check for years <= 2000 is bypassed and current dates seem to be working fine.

I haven't had the issue with the door opening in ASCII-only mode since generating the Maximus 2.x-compatible AREAS.DAT, perhaps the issues were related.


Chris/akacastor

* Evaluation copy of Silver Xpress. Day # 1
--- via Silver Xpress V4.01P [NR]
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)