BBS Software Development News

January 1, 1999

Iniquity BBS News:

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

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.
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.

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.
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.

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.
http://www.rapro.com

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.
http://www.instinct.nu

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.
http://www.goldware.dk

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 December 1998
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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