- RBBS-PC
RBBS-PC (
acronym for Remote Bulletin Board System for the Personal Computer) was apublic domain ,open source BBS software program. It was written entirely inQuickBASIC by a large team of people, starting with Russell Lane and then later enhanced by Tom Mack and including Ken Goosens and others.It supported messaging conferences,
questionnaires , doors (through the DOORDEF.DATdropfile ), and much more.History
In
1983 , Larry Jordan of theCapital PC Users Group started modifying some existing BBS software that had been ported fromCP/M by Russell Lane. The first major release of this effort, RBBS-PC CPC09, in May 1983 was written in interpreted BASIC and included the Xmodem file transfer protocol added by Jordan. In June, 1983 Tom Mack received a copy of the software and soon became the lead developer. The first release under Mack, version 10.0, was releasedJuly 4 ,1983 . New versions and features were released steadily through out the rest of the 80's. The final complete version, 17.4, was releasedMarch 22 ,1992 .Since version 17.4 at least four other code paths have developed. Some work has been done to unify the code paths and to develop version 18.0 (see [http://netmation.com/rbbs.htm RBBS Bulletin Board System] ). Dan Drinnons CDOR Mods and Mapleleaf versions were further enhanced by Beta testers Mike Moore and Bob Manapeli using Ken Goosens LineBled program to manipulate the source code to endless variations of the program.
Philosophy
From the beginning of RBBS-PC's development, the authors of the software had two goals as stated in the [ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/rbbs/r174-doc.zip RBBS-PC documentation] :
* To show what could be done with the BASIC language and that "real programmers can/do program in BASIC."
* To open a new medium of communication where anyone with a personal computer the ability to communicate freely. This idea was summarized as "Users helping users for free to help the free exchange of information."External links
* [http://www.eunet.bg/simtel.net/msdos/rbbs.html RBBS-PC files at SimTel]
* [http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/IBM/DOS/RBBS/ The BBS Software Directory - RBBS]
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