-<P>Install your chosen Perl environment. Unless you have a very good
-reason for not doing so, I strongly suggest that you use
-ActivePerl v5.6. For my testing & development, I used build 623.
-You can get this from:-
-<A HREF="http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/Download.html">http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/Download.html</A><P>You will need to choose either the MSI or the AS package. My
-recommendation is that you choose the MSI package and deal with
-the consequences if your system isn't equipped with support for
-the latest MS Installer; you'll be better off in the long run.
-The build 623 download is 7,460 KB, so now is a really good time
-to have some tea if you're on a slow dial-up connection.
-<P>During installation, please ensure that you do choose the options
-to "Add Perl to the PATH environment variable" and "Create Perl
-file extension association"; it will make your life so much
-easier. Once the installation is finished, be sure to reboot your
-PC. You probably won't be told anywhere else that this needs to
-be done now, but it does. Really.
-<P>Once you've rebooted, open a "DOS box" (Start > Run > command
-might do it, if you can't find it elsewhere) and from wherever it
-lands, type PERL -v <ENTER> (it's better if that's a lower-case
-'v', because an upper-case 'V' means something else. You should
-be rewarded with some interesting information about your Perl
-installation. If you're not, you must go back to the beginning
-and discover what went wrong and fix it. It's pointless to
-proceed unless this simple check is passed. Assuming it did work,
-you may now move on.
-<P>
-<H2><A NAME="ss4.5">4.5 Additional packages</A>
+<P>Because DXSpider operates under Linux, connections can be made using just about
+any protocol; AX25, NETRom, tcp/ip, ROSE etc are all possible examples.
+Connect scripts live in the /spider/connect directory and are simple ascii files.
+Writing a script for connections is therefore relatively simple. </P>
+
+<P>The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords
+or symbols:-</P>
+<P>
+<DL>
+
+<DT><B>#</B><DD><P>All lines starting with a <CODE>#</CODE> are ignored, as are completely
+blank lines.</P>
+
+<DT><B>timeout</B><DD><P><CODE>timeout</CODE> followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a
+command to complete. If there is no timeout specified in the script
+then the default is 60 seconds.</P>
+
+<DT><B>abort</B><DD><P><CODE>abort</CODE> is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look
+for to abort a connection. This is a perl regular expression and is
+executed ignoring case.</P>
+
+<DT><B>connect</B><DD><P><CODE>connect</CODE> followed by ax25, agw (for Windows users) or telnet and some type dependent
+information. In the case of a telnet connection, there can be up to
+two parameters.
+The first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you wish to
+connect to and the second is the port number you want to use (this
+can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).
+In the case of an ax25 session then this would normally be a call to
+ax25_call or netrom_call as in the example above. It is your
+responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to work
+before going down this route!</P>
+
+<DT><B>'</B><DD><P><CODE>'</CODE> is the delimiting character for a word or phrase of an expect/send
+line in a chat type script. The words/phrases normally come in pairs,
+either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until
+it sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the
+left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it doesn't
+read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.
+When the left hand string has found what it is looking for (if it is)
+then the right hand string is sent to the connection.
+This process is repeated for every line of chat script. </P>
+
+<DT><B>client</B><DD><P><CODE>client</CODE> starts the connection, put the arguments you would want here
+if you were starting the client program manually. You only need this
+if the script has a different name to the callsign you are trying to
+connect to (i.e. you have a script called other which actually
+connects to GB7DJK-1 [instead of a script called gb7djk-1]).</P>
+</DL>
+</P>
+
+<P>There are many possible ways to configure the script but here are three examples,
+one for a NETRom/AX25 connect, one for AGW engines and one for tcp/ip. </P>
+<P>
+<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
+<PRE>
+timeout 60
+abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
+# don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
+connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
+'Connect' ''
+'Connect' 'c np7'
+'Connect' 'c gb7dxm'
+# you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
+client gb7dxm ax25
+</PRE>
+</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
+<PRE>
+timeout 60
+abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
+# this does exactly the same as the previous example
+# the '1' is the AGW port number to connect thru for g1tlh
+connect agw 1 g1tlh
+'Connect' ''
+'Connect' 'c np7'
+'Connect' 'c gb7dxm'
+# you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
+client gb7dxm ax25
+</PRE>
+</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+<BLOCKQUOTE><CODE>
+<PRE>
+timeout 15
+connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
+'login' 'gb7djk'
+'word' 'gb7djk'
+# tell GB7DJK-1 that it is connected to GB7DJK
+# you can leave this out if you call this script 'gb7djk'
+client gb7djk telnet
+</PRE>
+</CODE></BLOCKQUOTE>
+</P>
+
+<P>Both these examples assume that everything is set up properly at the other end.
+You will find other examples in the /spider/examples directory.</P>
+
+<H2><A NAME="ss4.7">4.7</A> <A HREF="installation.html#toc4.7">Starting the connection</A>