Renegade (BBS)

Last updated
Renegade
Developer(s) Cott Lang, Miri Spence, Gary Hall, Jeff Herrings, T.J. McMillen, Chris Hoppman, Lee Palmer, Lee Woodridge, (Rick Parrish Win32 Ports Only)
Initial releaseJune 1991;33 years ago (1991-06)
Stable release
1.35/DOS / September 1, 2024;0 days ago (2024-09-01)
Written in Turbo Pascal
Operating system DOS
Type Bulletin Board System
Website www.rgbbs.info

Renegade is a freeware bulletin board system (BBS) written for IBM PC-compatible computers running MS-DOS that gained popularity among hobbyist BBSes in the early to mid 1990s. It was originally written by Cott Lang in Turbo Pascal, optimized with assembly language, based on the source code of Telegard, which was in turn based on the earlier WWIV.

Contents

Transfer of control

On April 23, 1997, after the decline of BBS popularity, Lang ceased development work on Renegade and passed it on to two Renegade BBS utility authors: Miri Spence and Gary Hall. Spence and Hall maintained Renegade for three years, releasing three updates with their new, ordinal date version scheme.

Jeff Herrings, another former third-party software developer, was handed the source by Spence in January 2000 after offering help when he found there was no Y2K-compliant version of the software. Herrings released a public alpha version of Renegade in March 2000 addressing Y2K-compliance problems. He stepped down as active programmer in October 2001 citing lack of time and desire.

Spence eventually handed the program over to Corey Snow in 2002, who intended to release an open-source, Java-based clone of the software which never saw the light of day.

T.J. McMillen received the source code in October 2003 from Miri Spence in a plea to have some much needed features added to Renegade. McMillen then added the help of Chris Hoppman, one of the few remaining Renegade BBS operators around. Together they released a few updates which addressed bugs and debuted some new features before Hoppman lost interest. Hoppman stepped down from the project in 2004 and is no longer involved. This left McMillen, once again, alone to carry on the Renegade code.

Herrings released his Y2K-compliant source code to the public via the Dreamland BBS in September 2005 citing he believed it was right to share a software he deemed mostly abandoned in hopes that it would see further and more active development. He claimed that due to a perceived immoral injustice by Miri Spence, he was no longer under any moral obligation to a previous agreement not to release the source code. [1]

With little free time, Renegade idled for more than a year until April 2006 when McMillen (also known as Exodus) added the talent of Lee Palmer to the Renegade team to replace Hoppman. Palmer (also known as Nuclear) is a former third-party software developer for the T.A.G. Bulletin Board System. Palmer disappeared sometime around 2012 and has not been heard from. McMillen was once again the lone code holder.

In 2013, McMillen released the v1.19 for DOS Source code on GitHub in hopes someone would add to it. No one stepped up in 7+ years, so McMillen once again resurfaced in 2020 to release version 1.22/DOS. With some time on his hands due to the pandemic, McMillen was able to hash out v1.25 for DOS on May 16, 2021.

Lee Woodridge was added to the RG Development Team in September 2021. Woodridge worked on his own fork of the v1.19a/DOS code and added quite a few fixes and updates. Woodridge was asked to join and to merge his code base with the v1.25/DOS code. This was done, and versions 1.30/DOS and v1.33/DOS were released.

Work has continued on Renegade rather slowly, but the team would like to release something new every year.

A full install and an upgrade package of v1.35/DOS (Sept. 01, 2024) can be downloaded from the Official Renegade BBS website listed below.

Current information

The current work is now being coded under 'The Renegade Development Team' name.

Version 1.35 for DOS Full Install and Upgrade versions were released on September 1, 2024.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netwide Assembler</span> Assembler for the Intel x86 architecture

The Netwide Assembler (NASM) is an assembler and disassembler for the Intel x86 architecture. It can be used to write 16-bit, 32-bit (IA-32) and 64-bit (x86-64) programs. It is considered one of the most popular assemblers for Linux and x86 chips.

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DOS Navigator</span> File manager for DOS, OS/2 and Windows

DOS Navigator (DN) is an orthodox file manager for DOS, OS/2, and Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PCBoard</span> Bulletin board system (BBS) application

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 were also available.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Watcom C/C++</span>

Watcom C/C++ is an integrated development environment (IDE) product from Watcom International Corporation for the C, C++, and Fortran programming languages. Watcom C/C++ was a commercial product until it was discontinued, then released under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License as Open Watcom C/C++. It features tools for developing and debugging code for DOS, OS/2, Windows, and Linux operating systems, which are based upon 16-bit x86, 32-bit IA-32, or 64-bit x86-64 compatible processors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blue Wave (mail reader)</span>

Blue Wave is a file-based offline mail reader that was popular among bulletin board system users, especially users of FidoNet and other networks that generated large volumes of mail. It allowed users to download all of their mail and messages, read and edit them offline, and then upload any replies. This reduced the amount of time they spent on line. The name "Blue Wave" originally referred to the client software, but as new clients were written that supported the same file format, the name came to refer primarily to the format itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows File Manager</span> File manager bundled with Microsoft Windows in the 1990s

File Manager is a file manager program bundled with releases of OS/2 and Microsoft Windows between 1988 and 2000. It is a single-instance graphical interface, replacing the command-line interface of MS-DOS to manage files and MS-DOS Executive file manager from previous Windows versions.

The JAM Message Base Format was one of the most popular file formats of message bases on DOS-based BBSes in the 1990s. JAM stands for "Joaquim-Andrew-Mats" after the original authors of the API, Joaquim Homrighausen, Andrew Milner, Mats Birch, and Mats Wallin. Joaquim was the author of FrontDoor, a DOS-based FidoNet-compatible mailer. Andrew was the author of RemoteAccess, a popular DOS-based Bulletin Board System. JAM was originally released in 1993 in C, however the most popular implementation was Mark May's "MK Source for Msg Access" written in Pascal which also saw its initial release in 1993.

Waffle is a bulletin-board system created by Tom Dell for the Dark Side of the Moon BBS which ran under DOS and later UNIX. The software was unique among DOS BBS software in many ways, including the fact that all of the configuration files were in readable text files, and that it fully supported Usenet and UUCP on the DOS platform.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandboxie</span> Open-source sandboxing computer program

Sandboxie is an open-source OS-level virtualization solution for Microsoft Windows. It is a sandboxing solution that creates an isolated operating environment in which applications can run without permanently modifying the local system. This virtual environment allows for controlled testing of untrusted programs and web surfing.

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.

StarDoc 134 is a Dos/Linux hybrid BBS running EleBBS maintained by Andrew Baker aka "RamMan, Dotel and Dotelpenguin".

OpenTG

OpenTG is an open-source implementation of a bulletin board system (BBS) software program written for Linux and/or Unix. Written from scratch in JRuby, the goal is to reproduce the look, feel, and functionality of similar legacy BBS systems such as Tag, Telegard, Maximus or Renegade, which were written for DOS and OS/2 during the pre-internet communication era. No original code from any BBS has been used nor referenced in order to focus on innovation and unique capabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FuelPHP</span> Open-source web application framework

FuelPHP is an open-source web application framework written in PHP which implements the HMVC pattern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadowsocks</span> Free and open-source encrypted proxy project

Shadowsocks is a free and open-source encryption protocol project, widely used in China to circumvent Internet censorship. It was created in 2012 by a Chinese programmer named "clowwindy", and multiple implementations of the protocol have been made available since. Shadowsocks is not a proxy on its own, but (typically) is the client software to help connect to a third-party SOCKS5 proxy, which is similar to a Secure Shell (SSH) tunnel. Once connected, internet traffic can then be directed through the proxy. Unlike an SSH tunnel, Shadowsocks can also proxy User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traffic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Terminal</span> Terminal emulator for Windows 10 and later

Windows Terminal is a multi-tabbed terminal emulator developed by Microsoft for Windows 10 and later as a replacement for Windows Console. It can run any command-line app in a separate tab. It is preconfigured to run Command Prompt, PowerShell, WSL and Azure Cloud Shell Connector, and can also connect to SSH by manually configuring a profile. Windows Terminal comes with its own rendering back-end; starting with version 1.11 on Windows 11, command-line apps can run using this newer back-end instead of the old Windows Console.

References

  1. Herrings, Jeff (October 7, 2001). "Resignation of Herrings".
Notes
The BBS Documentary's BBS Software Directory Renegade