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BBS and terminal programs for MS-DOS, Amiga and Commodore 64 computers...

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punchy71

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Greetings,
Back in the day, what were some of the most common, popular and widely used BBS programs on the Sysops end of things for the MS-DOS, Amiga and Commodore 64 platforms and also terminal programs for the user end of things....
Also; are there any modern programs, written in modern times, that see use from time to time in this day and age for these same platforms? I'm kind of interested in comparing vintage programs with modern ones, mainly to see what, if any, improvements have been made since days of yore....

Thanks
 
To answer your question about BBS software (for MS-DOS), are you referring to running a BBS? A popular BBS system was Telegard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegard

Terminal software that I frequently used back in the day was Telix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telix

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The best way to get that nostalgia feeling is to connect to a BBS via an older vintage PC (i.e. 486 or earlier) and connecting it to your network/internet connection via ethernet. There are tons of ip based bbs's still running today.

Check out http://67.185.176.54:8088/mTCP/ - it's a set of tools for dos that let you connect to tcp/ip based bbs's and transfer files, etc.

You'll also need a packet driver and an ethernet card that will run on the old system. I use a 3com card (3c905-tx).

This site gives a sample of how to set up a 3com card and run the packet driver: http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/howto/lanconnect/router/hwsetup.htm

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If you don't have a vintage pc, then try going here: http://www.bbscorner.com/usersinfo/accessbbs.htm

You can download a telnet program, and connect via IP address. A list of BBS's available can be found here: http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/
 
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WildCat a common BBS program IIRC. Some SysOps used cli OS/2 to run the BBSs.

You can also connect via a serial port via a *nix box http://www.sorgonet.com/8086/8088_linux_dumb_terminal/ to access the above BBSs. Kermit was the terminal program used in that setup.

Graphical enviroments that ran on top of Dos such as GeoWorks and Windows 3.x have terminals as part of their suite of apps. Even earlier suites of Dos programs such as Enable, First Choice Spinnaker 8n1 etc had terminals.
 
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I second Telix. Used it for nearly a decade. Procomm Plus was the other very popular PC terminal.

I used Spitfire BBS for my board in the early 90's although it wasn't terribly popular (both the board and Spitfire). Wildcat, Major BBS, PCBoard, and WWIV were among the more popular PC hosting options.
 
Termite was and still is my favourite Amiga terminal emulator. It is a fine example of software on the Amiga that was so incredibly better than software on other platforms.
 
In the DOS ecosystem in my little neck o' the woods, it was mainly TeleMate and then Terminate on the end-user side, and either RemoteAccess or PCBoard on the sysop's side.
The perception amongst some people was that RemoteAccess was for lamers, while PCBoard was elite... mainly because it was more difficult to set up, *and* you had to either pay for it or pirate it - it wasn't shareware. ;-)

Let's not forget some essential supporting software. Most of my sysop buddies used DESQView to have their cake (run a BBS) and eat it too (use DOS for other tasks in the background). And if you wanted mail, the most popular options were offline readers such as BlueWave.
 
I was a big fan of Procomm version 2.4.3 for DOS. It was fast, included X and Y modem, and had reasonably good terminal emulation. Zmodem came a little later than that version of Procomm, but Ymodem with 1K blocks was reasonable.

I've not seen any new terminal emulators for classic platforms in recent memory; the old ones work well enough. I have seen some terminal emulators for new platforms that try to mimic old platforms, for example recreating a particular DEC font or the slight curvature of a CRT display. My Telnet program for DOS machines includes X and Y modem in case you get an urge to download something while you are in the middle of a Telnet session on a Unix machine. I was thinking of adding a "2400 bps simulation mode" to it, but that would have been very annoying after a few minutes. ;-0 The sound of a modem screeching to connect would be fun too.
 
I can say this, having been knee-deep in the business during the BBS to WWW transition...it was like overnight. Many of us jumped into the WWW world starting with gopher and primitive WWW sites, very abruptly. I'd say BBSs died because everyone developing code and services jumped over leaving the BBS world frozen in 1994. It was an exciting time.

I can say that I personally did not sit down and say ok I am going to make a web program that looks like and works like a BBS. HTML was more like old HELP files in Microsoft programs than BBS screen shots. I'd say personally that people were basing the earliest web pages on HELP files and hypertext in MACs as their template. BBS was old news.

USENET was around but not as popular before 1994. USENET died off as a popular means for people to converge with the advent of SPAM and THEN people started writing modern forum programs like this one (vintage-computer.com). There was a gap in the 94-96 period before databases were easy to work with. Early web BBSs were text file indexes.
 
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