May 3, 1999
Windows2000 News:
Microsoft started selling Windows2000 beta3 last week for $59, which
includes the CD, a manual, and a subscription to their update newsletter.
The beta version is usable for 444 days before it expires.
Windows2000 is an excellent alternative to other "high performance"
Operating Systems such as OS/2 and Linux, and will be a big enhancment
to current and future Windows based BBS software.
WWIV BBS News:
The development of WWIV 4.30 is currently underway, with many changes
being added including fossil driver support. WWIV is one of the early
BBS packages, which other BBS programs such as telegard and renegade
were modeled after.
Galaticom News:
Galaticom Technologies had been in major financial trouble during the
past two years, due to a major decline in sales of their software products.
Peter Berg, former CEO of Galacticomm Technologies said, "The acquisition
will allow Galacticomm to bring its vision of the future of online computing
to a realization. With TOTALe resources and Galacticomm Technology, we hope
to change the Online Community as we see it today."
Peter Berg will no longer be part of the new Galaticomm, and plans to become
an independent consultant working with educational institutions and providing
solutions using TOTALe's/Galacticomm's resources.
Telegrafix News:
These constant attacks on Telegrafix date back to the early 1990's
when they marketed their "RipPaint" package for $500. Many sysops
felt their pricing and policies were out of line. Nowdays, years after
their prices were lowered substantialy, the flaming still continues.
Some of the more vocal critics argue that RIP will never become popular
as long as Telegrafix charges $$$ for the RIPterm/RIPtel terminals.
Last year Telegrafix bought out two BBS programs, Searchlight and
ProBoard BBS. Telegrafix plans to release Y2k versions of these
BBS packages, and then incorporate much of the code into a future
high end server product along with their RIP technology. A number of
sysops running these BBS packages felt betrayed by the change in
ownership.
EleBBS News:
In the October 1998
BBS News we reported that NetModem 2.0 was finally close to being released.
I spoke to Dedrick Allen again this weekend, and he confirmed that
although NetModem 2.0 is still not functional, it is "very close"
to being released as a public alpha. Visit the October Link for some
screen shots and additional info.
Also reported in October 1998
was news that RemoteAccess BBS was going to be updated with structural
changes which would break compatibility with third party doors and utilities.
RA Developer Bruce Morse has desided to take a differnt approch, rather then
breaking existing compatibility he will store the new date-digits in
seperate (currently unused) parts of the records.
Bruce is still working on getting RA 2.53 released "shortly", which will
be the first update since 2.50 was released 3 years ago. Afterwards he
plans to also release a Y2K complient version, which will probally be known
as RA 2.60 (not 3.0 as originally announced).
While not directly BBS related, the big news this month is that Microsoft
is now offering Windows2000 beta3 to the public. Win2K, originally
known as NT5, is a much better suited operating system for running a
multinode (or telnet) BBS then any of the previous versions of Windows,
combining the power/stability of NT4 with the functionality of Win98.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/preview/order.asp
WWIV BBS is back in development. The original author Wayne Bell has passed
the source code along to a team of programmers and WWIV sysops known as
the "WWIV Software Services".
http://wss.wwiv.com
Galacticom Technologies, the former developer of MajorBBS and Worldgroup
BBS, was sold on April 29th to TOTALe Incorporated. TOTALe purchased
all of Galaticoms assets, including software and the Galacticomm name.
http://www.gcomm.com/
Telegrafix owner Pat Clawson recently announced they are seriously
re-evaluating their plans to continue serving the BBS community.
According to Clawson, this is a result of the constant flaming from
BBS Sysops, and a high rate of software piracy and credit card fraud
by Sysops using their products illegally.
http://www.telegrafix.com
The service release for EleBBS gamma-4 which was scheduled to be released last
month to fix the remaining bugs has been postponed. Several unforseen problems
became apparent during recent beta testing of EleBBS, and the author has desided
that the planned G-4 service release will be skipped so that he can work towards
another full gamma-release (called v0.05.g1) which he hopes to get out as soon
as possible. There has not been a release date set at this time.
http://home.wxs.nl/~elevator
Old News Revisited:
Since there was not much news to report this month, lets take a look
at some news from half a year ago that has yet to take place.
If you have any additional BBS related news, please send to mike@pcmicro.com