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SUBBS

A note on SuBBS: SuBBS was based on John Lorance's first version of QBBS written in turbo pascal 3.01a for DOS. At this time, the BBS (which used Wayne Conrad's low level communications routines and keystroke input library) had many 'glitches' which caused fatal errors, leading to file disruption and program abend.

AT the prodding of my son, then a teenager, I fixed the file errors and got the program so the places where it would abend were predictable and avoidable. A couple of years later when I ran the program myself, I found it was not stable enough for my tastes. Over the next several years, I re-wrote several parts of the program, including the message editor and the high level modem routines in order to make the program, not only very stable but also unhackable.

This came in handy when the second BBS I ran, a free voice BBS encouraged the worst BBS war our town had ever seen. Every BBS was spammed and SuBBS was able to withstand the spamming and did not crash. After I re-wrote the high level modem routines, you couldn't modem crash it either. (sometimes the dirty phone lines modem crashed a BBS by itself).

I did not add a files section (wasn't anything I cared about) and used the bulletins as a sort of text files section. I never moved it to another version of turbo pascal which means I had to work with the size restriction of TP 3.01a. This involved making ALL the code lean and mean. The final version still has the Wayne Conrad communications module in tact and a few other original routines but has mostly been re-written. AT the time I put up my last BBS, I realized a files section would be an asset (this was 1991).

I checked into different options including shelling out to a black box which was working well for several other BBSes. But I also quite by chance, came upon a very nice commercial package called Wildcat which was almost as configurable as SuBBS. I decided to switch to Wildcat - not being into re-inventing the wheel. :) I offered SuBBS free for download and through the 1990's various users ran the software and enjoyed it. It was very fast and especially appropriate for under powered equipment. The last user to run it that I know about was a young man who later became the program director for a major TV station - he ran Subbs for about 6 months in 1995. ( http://www.suewidemark.com)

-Sue Widemark

Download SUBBS

SUBBS (SUBBS.ZIP)