BBS Software Development News

December 1, 1998

COM/IP Telnet News:

Tactical Software, the makers of the COM/IP Telnet server for Windows 95/98/NT, is about to announce a "BBS Friendly" version of their software called COM/IP 2.0. COM/IP was the first telnet driver/server software for Windows 95/NT, and has proven to be a very stable product over the years.

Unlike previous versions of COM/IP, Version 2.0 will offer true multinode support all using the same port number to recieve connections (ie: port 23) and then the connections are rerouted to available ports to allow additional nodes to connect as well. Once the maximum defined number of users are connected, additional connections will recieve a "BUSY" signal.

According to David Yon at Tatical Software, COM/IP 2.0 should go into public beta in the next month or so. Anyone will be able to download the 2.0 beta evaluation version, not just registered users. David says that further details will be posted on their web site shortly: www.tactial-sw.com

When asked about using COM/IP 1.24 for BBS use, Tactial Software suggests including the following commands in your BBS init string: ATS1002=1 S1003=7 S1005=0 S1008=23 &D2|

S1002=1 S1005=0  These set the binary mode to allow file transfers.
S1003=7          This sets the echo mode to work with all client software.
S1008=23         This sets the incoming port to 23.
&D2              This sets the proper carrier detection.

NetModem 2.0 News:

Another popular Telnet server for Windows 95/98 is also about to release a 2.0 public beta version within the next month or so... NetModem 2.0 will offer many advanced features not found in the previous version, such as opening additional BBS nodes on-the-fly as connections are made, 16550 UART emulation for non-fossil driven software, and internal multitasking.

Netmodem author Dedrick Allen recently released a patch for the current versions of NetModem which considerlbly improves reliability and prevents most of it's "blue screen of death" crashes. The new version is said to elimiate such crashes alltogether.

Tornado BBS News:

Konstantin Klyagin has released a new version of Tornado BBS today. Tornado version 1.65gamma is now shareware instead of freeware, but the registration prices are very inexpensive compaired to simular software. There is also no limit to the amount of days it can be run in "evaluation mode" so registration is not mandatory.

Tornado 1.65g now supports lightbars and cursor keys. Konstantin is currently implementing built-in telnet and finger internet support in both the Windows and OS/2 versions.

EleBBS News:

Maarten Bekers has made considerable enhancments to EleBBS since the last public gamma release. Beta testers are currently testing a built-in telnet server and IRC client in the Windows versions, and Maarten plans to include simular services in the OS/2 version. Maarten says the telnet implemintation was not designed to run external doors, but NetModem 2.0 will also be supported for sysops needing door support, and COM/IP has also been tested with both the DOS and Windows versions of EleBBS.

Both Windows versions (GUI and textmode-console) now also have greatly enhanced I/O routines. Additional scripting commands have been added to all versions of EleBBS as well. Maarten plans to release a new public version in early 1999.

ProBoard/Searchlight/Cherokee News:

Pat Clawson of Telegrafix Software purchased the rights to ProBoard on November 18th. Telegrafix plans to combine elements of the ProBoard/32 3.0 source with elements of Searchlight 5 which they also aquired earlier this year, along with Telegrafix existing RIPscrip graphics technology. The resulting product will be an Internet BBS Server that is codenamed "Cherokee".

Searchlight BBS includes a very good Windows telnet server which we expect they will combine with the RemoteAccess style userbase and menu editor which has made ProBoard very popular over the years.

At this time it appears that Telegrafix plans to keep the current ProBoard (for DOS) and Searchlight (for DOS and Windows) products alive at least into the year 2000. Pat Clawson is expected to make a public statment on their intentions for those products this weekend after he returns from Europe.

WildCat! BBS News:

On November 19th Hector Santos of Santronics Software aquired WildCat! BBS and Winserver from Mustang Software. Santos says he feels that WinServer is an ideal solution for the Internet with features unique to the market. Santronics is known for their Silver Xpress propritary offline mail reader and door, which they plan to inergrate with their newly aquired BBS products.

Other BBS News:

Neither RemoteAccess or QuickBBS will be releasing an update this month as originally expected. RA author Bruce Morse needs more time to develop and beta test the Year-2K structural changes in progress.

QuickBBS author Benjamin Schollnick is still working on developing a FileDataBase for version 2.90, and hopes to release a pre-release version next month sometime. Benjamin is also making several small sections of QuickBBS "Open-Source", starting with the drop-file section. The reason for selecting the drop-file code first is apparantly due to many requests people have made for QuickBBS to use the "industry standard" EXITINFO.BBS drop file structure used by RemoteAccess, ProBoard, EleBBS, tcRA32, Tornado, and others.

A new BBS program called X-Board that was scheduled to be released on November 12th appears to be vaporware. Several Sysops have confirmed that the author had set release dates earlier this year as well, yet each time the date arrived it was further postponed. Apparently the author is finishing school exams and plans to get x-board finalized once they are over with.

If you have any news about any other BBS software this month, please email mike@pcmicro.com


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Older News:
BBS News November 1998
BBS News October 1998
BBS News September 1998
BBS News August 1998
BBS News July 1998
BBS News April 1998
BBS News March 1998
January 1998 ProBoard/32 release date postponed
December 1997 RemoteAccess was finally sold!

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