PCBoard

Last updated
PCBoard
Developer(s) Clark Development Company, Inc.
Initial release1983;41 years ago (1983)
Final release
15.3 / September 1996;27 years ago (1996-09)
Preview release
15.4 beta / June 1997;27 years ago (1997-06)
Operating system DOS / OS/2
Type Bulletin board system
License Proprietary
Website(defunct)
PCBoard Software Mug Shot.jpg

PCBoard (PCB) was a bulletin board system (BBS) application first introduced for DOS in 1983 by Clark Development Company. Clark Development was founded by Fred Clark. 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. Like many BBS companies, the rise of the Internet starting around 1994 led to serious downturns in fortunes, and Clark Development went bankrupt in 1997. Most PCB sales were of two-line licenses; additional line licenses (in ranges of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 and 1000) were also available.

Contents

A native 32-bit IBM OS/2 version became also available with PCB V15.22 and higher. There were also a few tools available for PCBoard, which were specifically developed for the OS/2 2.0 and OS/2 Warp operating system.

Multinode support

PCBoard supported the 16C550 UARTs (universal asynchronous receiver transmitter), such as 16550 UART ("Fifo"), 16554 UART and 16650 UART, which made it possible to run multiple nodes of the BBS on a single (multitasking) computer using either using IBM OS/2 or the DOS multitasking tool DESQview in combination with the memory manager QEMM. Some sysops tried to run PCBoard on the (then) new Windows 95 operating system by Microsoft [1] and reported mixed results. Stability was critical for a BBS, which was usually running 24/7, and the early version of the Microsoft 32-bit operating system lacked it. Windows 95 was never officially supported by CDC.

Standard PCs then and today have only one or two (if any) serial ports (COM ports), which are needed to connect an external modem to a computer. This made multiport cards like the G-Tek "BlackBoard", "BBS550" or "SmartCard" and the "DigiCard" by Digi International popular among sysops. Other options were internal multi-modem cards and multiple computers connected by local area network.

PCBoard also supports ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and Telnet access via the Internet. The open source terminal emulator SyncTERM, available for Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Mac OS X can be used for example to connect to the few remaining PCBoard BBS installations that are connected to the Internet.

Multi-BBS networks

Starting in 1988, the RelayNet, also known as RIME for RelayNet International Mail Exchange, allowed BBS's running PCBoard to join a network that exchanged messages with other BBS's in a system similar to the older FidoNet.

History

The first version of PCBoard was released in 1983.

Clark Development Company (CDC) pioneered the FILE_ID.DIZ format [2] as well as a powerful scripting language (PPL), which supported modifications and to a large degree replacement of most standard commands and processes. A compiled interpreter script written in PPL was called PPE (PCBoard Programming Executable). PPEs were generated by the PCBoard Programming Language Compiler (PPLC), which was an optional tool provided by Clark Development Company and was also available for purchase as stand alone tool. It was less than $100 by itself and less than $50 in combination with any BBS license. This allowed programmers to develop PPEs for PCBoard without having to purchase a PCBoard BBS license.

Also optional and available by itself were the printed PCBoard manual and the printed PPLC reference handbook.

The script language was introduced with version 15.0 and made this version of PCBoard even more successful than PCBoard V14.5.

Various door programs were in use, including Sam Smith's Prodoor, which added a full screen editor and other features which were later included in PCBoard itself.

The script language PPL and PPE's which became more and more available, increased the popularity of PCBoard and emerged by the mid nineties as the de facto-standard BBS system for warez BBS on the IBM PC. The warez BBSs used mostly pirated versions of the BBS software and thus did not appear in any official sales or usage statistic for the software.

Despite the high price tag Clark Development Company sold more than 50,000 PCBoard licenses by 1995.

The last full release of PCBoard by Clark Development Company was version 15.3 in September 1996.

Clark Technologies, a division of Clark Development Company announced on July 29, 1996 the availability of source code and OEM licenses for the PCBoard BBS software. [3]

The final release was 15.4 beta, which had a one-month trial period. Later, the lead software engineer from Clark Development Company released information on how to bypass the trial period timeout; [4] the timeout had been inserted as a reminder and had not been intended to permanently disable the software.

Clark Development Company went bankrupt in July 1997 and closed its offices without prior warning, leaving a great number of upset customers behind. Customers were never notified by the company, and customers who had just purchased licences for the software were not notified, refunded or provided access to the software they had paid for. [5]

PCBoard after CDC

Sysops continued to use PCBoard around the world, even after support by CDC stopped when the company went out of business. Help was available from many individuals who created tools and documentation for the PCBoard system.

The company did not exist anymore when the Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem or millennium bug, made headline news. However, PCBoard only had a few minor problems with the year 2000 (and 2001) and fixes were made available by several individuals. [6]

The last full release version of PCBoard, version 15.3, never really caught on and most systems that were online after 1997 continued to use the previous 15.2x versions of the software.

PCBoard is still in use today by nostalgic BBS fans. There is a freeware FOSSIL driver called NetFoss which allows PCBoard to be accessible via telnet under Windows. There was also a DOS-based PCBoard add-on "PCB Internet Collection" which allowed telnet access by installing a (DOS-only) packet driver.

Awards

PCBoard programming language / PPLC compiler
BBS Software

Features

Requirements

PCBoard/M

PPLC versions

PPE/PPL groups

Thousands of PPEs were developed and published, often available free of charge, by individuals or scene groups. A number of commercial PPEs were also developed, mostly under shareware licensing. A number of release groups who were specialized in PPE and other PCB/BBS tool developments were formed, such as the French group Aegis Corp, the Russian group Brutal PPE/PCE/PRO Coders (BPC) and the German groups Peanuts (PNS) and Paranoia (PNA).

Warez groups Such as PWA and DOD released several PPEs which were used by many sysops, including the PWA "NewScan" PPE, the PWA "Files-Reverse" PPE and the DOD "LARS Upload Processor".

The French group Aegis Corp distributed a PPE De-compiler (PPLX) written by Lone Runner, which allowed the de-compilation of PPE binaries back to human-readable PPL code. Lone Runner also wrote the Aegis PPL compiler, which produced smaller and faster code than Clark Development's original PPL compiler. Other tools for PPE developers followed. Another PPE De-compiler was PPLDecompiler (PPLD) written by CHiCKEN, a member of the "Swiss Coding Division" of the group Electronic Rats (EcR).

PCBoard Metaworlds

Metaworlds was an attempt by CDC to establish a BBS-like environment on the Internet, basically a closed mailbox in HTML format online. Access to the content was only possible for registered users who had to authenticate themselves with username and password to access the system. Metaworlds supported the parallel operation with the standard ANSI based PCBoard BBS software and used Microsoft SQL Server as underlying database. A runtime-version of Microsoft SQL Server came with the Metaworlds software. CDC went out of business before Metaworlds was finished. Metaworlds was developed by CDC to make the transition to the Internet when the decline of the BBS became apparent. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bulletin board system</span> Computer server

A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), was a computer server running software that allowed users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user could perform 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.

Telegard is an early bulletin board system (BBS) software program written for IBM PC-compatible computers running MS-DOS and OS/2. Telegard was written in Pascal with routines written in C++ and assembly language, based on a copy of the WWIV source code.

Trade Wars is a series of video games dating back to 1984. The video games are inspired by Hunt the Wumpus, the board game Risk, and the original space trader game Star Trader.

FILE_ID.DIZ Plain-text file describing the archive to which it belongs

FILE_ID.DIZ is a plain-text file containing a brief description of the content of 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superior Art Creations</span> Underground group of computer art scene enthusiasts

Superior Art Creations (SAC) is an underground artscene group which caters primarily to and is well known within the warez scene. SAC members have made, besides ANSI and ASCII art, VGA bitmap graphics, tracker music, and a variety of other works. SAC's character graphics have also been used in bottles and FTP servers.

ISCABBS, also known as ISCA, is a bulletin board system ("BBS"), formerly based at the University of Iowa. Dave's own version of Citadel, an early branch of the Citadel/UX BBS software, was developed to run ISCA. Like most Citadels, the focus is almost entirely on conversation among users.

WWIV was a brand of bulletin board system software popular from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. The modifiable source code allowed a sysop to customize the main BBS program for their particular needs and aesthetics. WWIV also allowed tens of thousands of BBSes to link together, forming a worldwide proprietary computer network, the WWIVnet, similar to FidoNet.

VBBS is an acronym for Virtual Bulletin Board System. It was a shareware bulletin board system (BBS) for DOS that was conceived by Roland De Graaf in 1990. Written from scratch in QuickBASIC, it developed a loyal following. Originally it was a door for WWIV, but quickly grew into an original BBS concept on its own. By 1993, there were thousands of computers running VBBS around the world. VirtualNET, the largest VBBS message network, had close to 1500 members by version 6.14 in 1993.

Mystic BBS is a bulletin board system software program that began in 1995 and was first released to the public in December 1997 for MS-DOS. It has been ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, OS X, and Linux. Mystic was designed to be a spiritual successor to the Renegade (BBS) and Telegard bulletin board systems.

T.A.G. is a DOS-based bulletin board system (BBS) computer program, released from 1986 to 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spitfire (BBS)</span>

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.

Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer, and were not ported from other platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RemoteAccess</span>

RemoteAccess is a DOS Bulletin Board System (BBS) software package written by Andrew Milner and published by his company Wantree Development in Australia. RemoteAccess was written in Turbo Pascal with some Assembly Language routines. RemoteAccess began in 1989 as a clone of QuickBBS by Adam Hudson. It was released under the shareware concept in 1990 and became popular in North America, Europe, UK, South Africa, and the South Pacific. Initially the main advantage over QuickBBS was its ability to run multiple nodes under Microsoft Windows, Quarterdeck's DESQview and OS/2. RA could also operate over a network or even a combination of network and multitasking operating systems to provide multiple "nodes per station" capabilities.

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.

Qmodem was an MS-DOS shareware telecommunications program and terminal emulator. Qmodem was widely used to access bulletin boards in the 1980s and was well respected in the Bulletin Board System (BBS) community. Qmodem was also known as Qmodem SST and Qmodem Pro.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZOC (software)</span>

ZOC is a popular computer-based terminal emulator and Telnet software client for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh macOS operating systems that supports telnet, modem, SSH 1 and 2, ISDN, serial, TAPI, Rlogin and other means of communication. Its terminal emulator supports Xterm emulation with full colors, meta-keys and local printing, VT102, VT220 and several types of ANSI as well as Wyse, TVI, TN3270, and Sun's CDE. It supports full keyboard remapping, scripting in REXX and other languages, and support for named pipes.

References

  1. ↑ Running PCBoard under Windows 95, NT 3.5x and 4.x, UE-00149.TXT, Underground Empire, retrieved June 16, 2007
  2. ↑ Richard Holler (May 17, 1994), FAQ file_id.diz, ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals), online version from Textfiles.com retrieved August 4, 2007
  3. ↑ MURRAY, Utah, Clark Technologies Offers Source Code and OEM Licenses for PCBoard, PR Newswire via Highbeam.com, retrieved June 7, 2007
  4. ↑ David Terry (June 16, 1997), (1 Mw-tech) PCBoard Beta Patch, bbsdocumentary.com, retrieved June 4, 2007
  5. ↑ Lisa Carricaburu (Friday, June 20, 1997), "Clark Development Is No More" (online at textfiles.com),The Salt Lake Tribune
  6. ↑ PCB Y2K patches collection of patches from various sources
  7. ↑ "Winners for the 1994 Dvorak Telecommunications Excellence Award". 1994. Archived from 1994 the original on 2007-08-08. Retrieved 2007-09-25.{{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  8. ↑ "Winners for the 1995 Dvorak PC Telecommunications Excellence Awards". 1995-04-06. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  9. ↑ Shareware Industry Awards Foundation, The Shareware Hall of Fame Archived 2007-06-21 at the Wayback Machine , SIAvoting.com, retrieved June 7, 2007
  10. ↑ The Mighty SCI,PCBoard Newsletter #2 - FAQ Section (German),Underground Empire, retrieved June 16, 2007
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.