This is all free. I enjoy doing it as a service to the ham community, especially the NTSers. i have an email list to announce when a new update is available, or you can just run autoupdt occasonally until it finds a new update.
It will also build a local Canadian callsign database, which Callwin+ uses. (Callwin is for US calls, Callwin+ is US+Canada). The zlib1.dll file is required for updating the Canadian calls. If zlib1.dll is not present, the Update Canada button will be disabled, but autoupdt will function fine for updating the US callsign database.
The main Canadian database is updated daily, mon-fri. It is only a 2Mb file, so autoupdt downloads the whole file to create your local Canadian database for Callwin+.
You should be connected to the internet when you start autoupdt.exe, because it will immediately go to the update web site and look for updates. It will then download any updates that you need and install them (ie update your call.db file with each one).
Each of the weekly updates contains just the changes from the week before. Thus, they are small files, like 80kb. when i wrote these programs i only had dialup, so they "relate" to those with dialup.
But autoupdt keeps all the updates straight. It knows the date of your database (imbedded in the file), and which updates to apply, one week at a time, to get you up to date.
The download progress is shown on the left for each update file, and each db update is shown on the right, the number of new, deleted, and changed calls processed in the update.
Up to 8 files can be updated at a time. If you need more than that, press the Repeat update button, and up to 8 more updates will be processed.
The Clean up button will delete previous update files and previous databases. Each time the call.db database file is updated, a copy of the previous one is saved with its date, eg call0710.db would be the database from july (07) 10th. The database files are close to 40Mb, so you probably don't want to keep too many of them around.
The Update Canada button will update the Canadian callsign database cancall.db if you have the zlib1.dll file on your system (either in your callsign folder, or in a system dll folder). When updating the Canadian data, be sure to wait until the status column says done before you exit the program.
The SneakerNet buttons will let you easily copy the update file to a floppy for updating another computer without internet access. Floppy? Yeow!!! This sure dates the program. I will update it to "removable media", ie floppies, thumb drives, etc when i get a chance.
The lower window is for "interesting information", mainly to help me if there's a problem. So just enjoy it, or if you have a problem, right-click in the lower window and select all then ctl-c to copy it, then paste it into an email.
Second change is that autoupdt does not care if zlib1.dll is there or not. Before, you had to use autoupdate if the dll was not there, and you could only use autoupdate+ if the dll was there. autoupdt will use the dll if it's there, and not complain if it's not.
Oh.... a third change - this help file. Sorry... i try to make the programs "obvious". But obviously, what is obvious to one is not obvious to all. And it's in win7/vista-friendly webpage format.