Canada Remote Systems, or simply CRS, was a major commercial bulletin board system located in the Toronto area. It was one of the earliest commercial systems outside the "big iron" companies such as CompuServe or The Source. At times it was among the largest BBS systems in the world, often trading that position with the US-based Exec-PC, based on the number of telephone lines and its 10,000 user subscriber base. [1] It won the 1992 Readers Choice award in Boardwatch Magazine . [2] [3] It survived into the 1990s, before being overwhelmed by the Internet and closing down.
CRS was founded by Jud Newell in 1979 as Mississauga RCP/M, a small one-line system running on RCP/M on CP/M that later became Toronto RCP/M after a move. It became CRS when Newell decided to make the growing system a full-time job in 1985, moving from CP/M to DOS and from RCP/M to the then top-of-the-line PCBoard system. [4] It grew over the next few years to become one of the first really large BBS systems, which allowed its users to carry on conversations with thousands of local residents. [4] At the time the average BBS system was run on a single 300 or 1200 baud modem and had extremely limited storage space for messages or files (hard drives were not yet common). At the other end of the scale, larger online services offered thousands of files and messages, but at a fairly high per-hour cost. CRS offered a practical middle ground between the expensive mainframe systems and the local BBS, both in terms of pricing and features. By 1989, the system had grown to 16 lines as well as three connections for long-distance users over DATAPAC and Telenet. [5]
During the late 1980s the growth of the FidoNet upset this balance somewhat. Now a user could call into their local free BBS system and have conversations with users from all over the world—although practically this was limited to North America at the time. PCBoard did support a Fido-like system known as RelayNet (or RIME), but this was supported by PCBoard only and thus had a much smaller amount of traffic than the platform independent Fido. For some time CRS offered RelayNet hub service [6] known as NAnet to other PCBoard operators throughout North America in order to increase the user base, going so far as to offer a 1-800 number for these BBSes to call in on.
CRS's file area remained its major draw, with a library hosted on a number of networked servers that no small BBS could hope to match. Through the late 1980s and into the 1990s they added considerable amounts of storage and greatly improved modem speeds. In 1992 they could claim to be the largest PCBoard system in the world with over 250 lines and about 10,000 paid members. [6] Throughout this period their main competitor in Canada was another Toronto PCBoard based system, Rose Media, but Rose remained smaller at about 50 lines.
Their aggressive growth was also expensive, and forced the company into receivership in August 1990, with a sizable debt primarily owed to Bell Canada. A group of private investors then purchased the system and restarted the company. [4] By 1991 Jud had left the company. He was briefly involved with the formation of the Toronto Free-Net before eventually leaving the industry. In 1992, CRS changed its name to CRS Online and added another BBS system aimed at online chat, which PCBoard did not support very well, at least in large multi-machine installations. In late 1994, CRS introduced a Windows-based Internet access service called Frontier that incorporated standard Internet functions including email, news and gopher, as well as access to its large file library. FTP and Telnet access were also added. [6]
In March 1995, CRS was acquired by Delrina to serve as the foundation of Delrina's push into the services market. [7] Within months of this acquisition, Delrina was itself acquired by Symantec, a US-based software company with little interest beyond Delrina's core software products, notably WinFax. [8] In January 1996, Symantec sold CRS to Ottawa-based internet service provider, iStar Internet. It appears their interest was primarily in CRS's customers, which they absorbed into its standard Internet access offerings. CRS itself quickly disappeared. [9]
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user performs functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting. In the early 1980s, message networks such as FidoNet were developed to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to internet-based email.
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems (BBSes). It uses a store-and-forward system to exchange private (email) and public (forum) messages between the BBSes in the network, as well as other files and protocols in some cases.
FILE_ID.DIZ is a plain-text file containing a brief description of the content of the archive to which it belongs. Such files were originally used in archives distributed through bulletin board systems (BBSes) and is still used in the warez scene. FILE_ID stands for "file identification". DIZ stands for "description in zipfile".
Synchronet is a multiplatform BBS software package, with current ports for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and BSD variants. Past versions also ran on MS-DOS and OS/2, but support for those platforms were dropped in version 3.0.
XMODEM is a simple file transfer protocol developed as a quick hack by Ward Christensen for use in his 1977 MODEM.ASM terminal program. It allowed users to transmit files between their computers when both sides used MODEM. Keith Petersen made a minor update to always turn on "quiet mode", and called the result XMODEM.
The Bread Board System (TBBS) is a multiline MS-DOS based commercial bulletin board system software package written in 1983 by Philip L. Becker. He originally created the software as the result of a poker game with friends that were praising the BBS software created by Ward Christensen. Becker said he could do better and founded eSoft, Inc. in 1984 based on the strength of TBBS sales.
PCBoard (PCB) was a bulletin board system (BBS) application first introduced for DOS in 1983 by Fred Clark's Clark Development Company. PCBoard was one of the first commercial BBS packages for DOS systems, and was considered one of the "high end" packages during the rapid expansion of BBS systems in the early 1990s. PCB was used as the basis of some of the largest bulletin board systems of the era, like Canada Remote Systems.
Delrina Corporation was a Canadian software company active from 1988 to 1995. The company was best known for WinFax, a software package which enabled computers equipped with fax modems to transmit copies of documents to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. It also sold PerForm and FormFlow, electronic form software. Delrina was acquired by the American software firm Symantec in 1995.
FirstClass is a client–server groupware, email, online conferencing, voice and fax services, and bulletin-board system for Windows, macOS, and Linux. FirstClass's primary markets are the higher-education and K-12 education sectors, including four of the top ten largest school districts in the United States.
C-Net DS2 was a full featured, single-line, bulletin board system (BBS) software system released in 1986 for the Commodore 64 microcomputer. The DS2 system was notable in that its authors proved that it was possible to perform significant and useful serious computing tasks on a hardware platform with such severely limited resources that even the manufacturer called it only a "game machine".
QWK is a file-based offline mail reader format that was popular among bulletin board system (BBS) users, especially users of FidoNet and other networks that generated large volumes of mail. QWK was originally developed by Mark "Sparky" Herring in 1987 for systems running the popular PCBoard bulletin board system, but it was later adapted for other platforms. Herring died of a heart attack in 2020 after being swatted. Incident is known as 2020 Tennessee swatting. During the height of bulletin board system popularity, several dozen offline mail readers supported the QWK format.
WinFax is a discontinued Microsoft Windows-based software product developed and published by Delrina designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.
Cyberjack was a Web browser application created by Delrina in 1995. It was sold as a stand-alone product, and was also bundled as part of Delrina's CommSuite 95 offering.
WinComm was a terminal emulator program for Windows that was offered by Delrina in the mid-1990s.
RelayNet was an e-mail exchange network used by PCBoard bulletin board systems (BBS's). By 1990, RelayNet comprised more than 200 bulletin board systems. BBS's on RelayNet communicated via a communications protocol called RIME.
SPITFIRE is a DOS-based bulletin board system written by Mike Woltz (1945-2022), published by his company Buffalo Creek Software of West Des Moines, Iowa.
McBBS was a Bulletin Board System developed by Derek E. McDonald and distributed by DMCS Technologies between October 30, 1989, and May 30, 2000, and operated over 18 versions.
Searchlight BBS is a bulletin board system (BBS) developed in 1985 by Frank LaRosa for the TRS-80. LaRosa formed a company, Searchlight Software, through which he marketed and sold Searchlight BBS. In 1987, LaRosa expanded the software and sold it as shareware written for the PC in Pascal. The features of Searchlight BBS included a full screen text editor, a remote DOS shell, and file transfer via the XMODEM protocol. Searchlight BBS rapidly grew in popularity, and appeared frequently in Boardwatch magazine and at BBS conventions across the United States. Eventually, Searchlight BBS supported FidoNet, ZMODEM, Internet e-mail and telnet connectivity.
GT Power is a bulletin board system (BBS) and dial-up telecommunications/terminal application for MS-DOS. It was first introduced in the 1980s by P & M Software, founded by Paul Meiners. GT Power can be used both to host a BBS as well as to connect to other BBS systems via its full-featured dial-up "terminal mode". GT Power was a shareware package that required a registration fee in order to access its proprietary network mail transport/handling software and, by default, the GT Power Network. The software is distributed in two "flavors": a terminal-only version, nicknamed GTO, and the full-featured host and terminal version.