January 1, 1999
Iniquity BBS News:
The Iniquity Development Team (currently headed by comatose) is looking for
other programmers to take over and lead the development of the DOS version,
so that they can begin development of other OS platforms. In the future they
plan to offer a Linux and Win32 port of Iniquity, and support for the JAM
messagebase.
As we reported last month, The 32-bit betas EleBBS also include a built-in
telnet server, and an IRC chat client!
Today Maarten was asked how soon he expects a public release version of EleBBS,
and he stated that he would rather not try and guess this, but he did indicate
that he plans to give the beta team some release canidates in a few weeks.
RemoteAccess BBS is nearing the end of the 2.53 beta cycle. Bruce Morse is
expected to release the proposed RA 3.00 specifications soon afterwards
to the public to get some feedback from third party developers before
the 3.00 beta cycle begins.
Instinct BBS 3.00 was just RE-released as 3.00d to fix a runtime error
bug as well as other minor things in the original release. This is a
scene based BBS that claims to contain features never seen before
in a BBS. I have not had a chance to look at this one yet.
The GoldEd message reader has just become opensource freeware.
Hopefully Odinn will not change his mind next month, as he when
he made Golded Freeware a couple years ago and then later changed
his mind after releasing a freeware key.
If you have any news about any other BBS software this month,
please email mike@pcmicro.com
Iniquity 2.0 final was released yesterday. Iniquity is a very popular
'scene based' BBS packages for DOS. Version 2.0 was rewritten from scratch
in order to elimate the many bugs from the 1.xx versions. Although it's
not internet aware, it is packed with quite a few features, including
lightbar support, rumors, 1-liner wall, bbs list, voting, and alot more.
It's got a decent menu editor if you don't mind the crude Telegard/Renegade
style ACS system. It includes an excellent pascal-like scrip programming
language called IPL which makes it very configurable. The only thing I did
not like about Iniquity is that it does not support standard messagebase
formats such as JAM or Squish. Iniquity is still freeware
http://www.iniquity.com
tcRemoteAccess32 BBS News:
tcRemoteAccess32 0.985 was also released yesterday. This version fixes
several minor bugs, and offers an improved GUI layout. tcRa32 fully supports
the original RemoteAccess/DOS structures. Still in the works is internal
telnet and html support.
http://slash.nl/~tcra32
EleBBS News:
EleBBS is adding additional internet support in their latest (private) beta
versions. The 32-bit versions now include EleNEWS - a program that grabs
newsgroups from a standard NNTP server and tosses them into your JAM or
Hudson messagebase. Users are also able to post in the NewsGroup message areas
and these messages are posted back to the newsgroup.
http://home.wxs.nl/~elevator
Com/IP News:
Tactical Software released their first public beta of COM/IP 2.0 last month,
a multinode version of their Win95/98/NT Telnet server. However they only
offered it for download on their ftp site, not on their web page. COM/IP 2.0b0
had one noticable bug: When handshaking with some telnet terminals (such as Mtelnet)
it would set the Echo mode incorrectly dispite the S1003 settings. This
bug is said to have been fixed in COM/IPb1, but they still have not released an
updated public beta version to replace it.
http://www.tactical-sw.com
NetModem/32 News:
NetModem is another Telnet Server for Windows, and Sysops have been
eagerly waiting for NetModem 2.0 for several months now. I spoke to
Dedrick Allen a few days ago, and he reported the following:
NetModems new fossil driver is almost done. He is working on the AT
command parser currently. It's taking some time as he is doing it all
in assembler. The server screen has a COMPLETELY new look. nothing
like the screen shot he sent us a few months back.
The first release will not have the comport emulation driver, just
the 32bit internal fossil driver. The NU.EXE utility is no longer
needed and has been removed.
http://www.cris.com/~drip
Maximus News
Scott Dudley, developer of Maximus BBS, has desided its time to move
on, and has therefore discontinued Maximus BBS and Squish sales.
They will continue to provide support for their commercial users for
up to a year after their purchase. They are also commited to provide
a Y2K compliant version at no charge before they finally call it
quits. Scott plans to release the Maximus source code to the public
under a GNU style licencing.
http://www.lanius.com/future.htm
X-Board News
Still no sign of the new BBS program called X-Board that was scheduled
to be released a few months back. Despite several release dates that
came and went, the author claims that X-Board is not vaporware, and
there will definaly be a release before 1999. :)
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~autotron/x
Sysops Corner Returns!
While not exactly BBS Development news, this is great news for
all BBS Sysops! The "Sysops Corner", started in 1995 by MaryLou
White (aka Catlin) was the internets best BBS resource up untill
she closed it down in August 1998. Last week Mark Hoover (aka Dev)
reopened Sysops Corner with MaryLous Blessing. Although it is currently
still under construction, it already looks great and offers much of
what the original site had.
http://bbs.pcmicro.com/sysopscorner
Updated BBS News January 3rd.
The next version of Tornado BBS will contain an internal full-screen message
editor and a full-screen chat. Also internal Doorway support is improved.
No release date was mentioned.
http://www.rapro.com
http://www.instinct.nu
http://www.goldware.dk