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Information about Synchronet

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Synchronet Control Panel in Windows XP environment. Server windows display status on telnet/email/ftp/web/nntp/IRC/other services


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 has been dropped in recent versions.

History

Synchronet was originally written by Rob Swindell (a.k.a. Digital Man) due to his dissatisfaction with the lack of certain features in WWIV, such as support for multiple simultaneous nodes, batch uploads and bidirectional file transfer. The bulk of the programming for the first version of Synchronet was done during a two-month period in 1991 when Swindell was house-ridden while he recovered from surgery. The software was named for its ability to run synchronously on a network.

In July 1991 the author began running his own BBS, Vertrauen, on Synchronet. Initially, he had no intention of releasing Synchronet publicly, but as word of his software spread and he received offers to buy copies of Synchronet, he eventually relented, formed a company called Digital Dynamics, and sold copies of Synchronet at a price of $100 without source code, and $200 with source code. In April 1992, Swindell's employer went out of business and he began to rely exclusively on commercial sales of Synchronet for his livelihood, placing advertisements in the BBS-related magazines Boardwatch and BBS Callers Digest. The first copy of Synchronet sold through the magazine ads was in June 1992.

Synchronet was the first BBS package to support QWK message networking natively without requiring any external utilities, in version 1a revision 10, released June 25, 1992. It was also the first BBS package with RIP support, in version 1b revision 1, released January 23, 1993.

Interest in Synchronet began to dwindle in late 1994, finally becoming nonexistent in 1995. Digital Dynamics went effectively bankrupt in the fall of 1995. Despite this, a beta version of version 2.30 of Synchronet for MS-DOS and an alpha version for OS/2 were released in early 1996. In August 1996, Swindell announced the uncertainty of Synchronet's future. In 1997, version 2.30 of Synchronet was released as freeware, and the source code was released into the public domain later that year.

In April 1999, Swindell revived Synchronet development, revamping it considerably and converting much of the code to C++. Another version, 2.30c, was released in December 1999, fixing Y2K bugs and introducing some minor new features from the upcoming 3.x series. Version 3.00b was released June 25, 2000 and was the first official release of the 3.x series, featuring a native 32-bit Windows version and many new Internet-related features, such as a built-in telnet server. For this release, dial-up support was dropped making it a TCP/IP-only system. In October 2000, Synchronet was released under the GNU General Public License.

Since then, a light cross-platform development kit and a reimplementation of Borlands conio library which uses the Windows console, ncurses, SDL, X11, and ANSI for output have been developed and the code now compiles and runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Linux (on x86 systems only). Vertrauen includes a Linux box in its setup.

Since release 3.10a, Synchronet has included an embedded JavaScript engine using the SpiderMonkey project from Mozilla. More internet servers have been added including finger, gopher, IRC, SMTP, POP3, NNTP, and HTTP.

Current Development

Synchronet is under fairly constant improvement, and is currently moving towards a final release in the 3.x series. After a stable release of 3.x, development will begin to focus on a new 4.x series with an eye towards removing legacy limitations on the system. Big endian support is mostly completed (but not currently in CVS) and was originally started to support Mac OS X. Since Apple has moved to Intel processors, this is a less pressing goal. However, as one of the developers now owns a number of SPARC systems, 4.x is expected to run on (at least) Solaris/SPARC, Linux/SPARC, and FreeBSD/SPARC. As these systems have used 64-bit support in differing manners, this is also expected to help with porting to the ia64 and AMD64 architectures. However, as of Aug 2nd 2006, no-one has began an ia64/AMD64 porting effort.

Version 3.14 was released on December 31, 2006. New features included SSH support, UART emulation, and various Web / Mail Server improvements. [1]

External links

Cross-platform is a term which can refer to computer programs, operating systems, computer languages, programming languages, or other computer software and their implementations which can be made to work on multiple computer platforms.
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Bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line (or Telnet) and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, reading news, and exchanging
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Computer software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer programs, procedures and documentation that perform some task on a computer system. [1]
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porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed (e.g. different CPU, operating system, or third party library).
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Microsoft Windows

Screenshot of Windows Vista Ultimate, the latest version of Microsoft Windows.
Company/developer: Microsoft Corporation
OS family: MS-DOS/9x-based, Windows CE, Windows NT
Source model: Closed source

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Linux (pronunciation: IPA: /ˈlɪnʊks/, lin-uks) is a Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be
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Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the UNIX derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley, starting in the 1970s.
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MS-DOS (short for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system commercialized by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the dominant operating system for the PC compatible
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OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as the preferred operating system for IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of
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Organizations:
  • Aka in burmese martial arts
  • a.k.a. Cartoon, Canadian animation company
  • Aga Khan Academy
  • Alpha Kappa Alpha
  • American Kickboxing Academy
  • Australian Koi Association, a group which promotes the protection, preservation and improvement of Koi in

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For World War IV, see World war


The WWIV Bulletin Board System was among the most popular dialup computer bulletin board software during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.
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Uploading and downloading are related terms used to describe the transfer of electronic data between two computers or similar systems. More colloquially, they are sometimes applied to transfers to/from removable media such as CDs.
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A list of notable file transfer protocols:

List of file transfer protocols

Primarily used with TCP/IP

  • FTAM
  • FTP
  • HTTP
  • rcp
  • SSH file transfer protocol
  • Secure copy
  • Simple File Transfer Protocol
  • FASTCopy
  • rsync


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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1960s  1970s  1980s  - 1990s -  2000s  2010s  2020s
1988 1989 1990 - 1991 - 1992 1993 1994

Year 1991 (MCMXCI
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Synchronicity or synchronous can refer to the following meanings:
  • synchronization, the coordination of events to operate a system in unison.
  • Synchronization (computer science)
  • Synchronization (alternating current)

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as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is generally limited to an area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
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source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements and/or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language.
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Boardwatch began as an important publication for the online Bulletin Board Systems of the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately evolved into the primary trade magazine of the ISP industry in the late 1990s.
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QWK is 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.
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The Remote Imaging Protocol (RIP), also referred to as RIPscrip (and frequently, yet incorrectly as RIPscript), was an early vector graphics protocol, created by Jeff Reeder, Jim Bergman and Mark Hayton, founders of TeleGrafix Communications.
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Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time. Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development.
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Public domain comprises the body of knowledge and innovation (especially creative works such as writing, art, music, and inventions) in relation to which no person or other legal entity can establish or maintain proprietary interests within a particular legal jurisdiction.
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C++
Paradigm: Multi-paradigm
Appeared in: 1983
Designed by: Bjarne Stroustrup
Typing discipline: Static, unsafe, nominative
Major implementations: G++, Microsoft Visual C++, Borland C++ Builder
Dialects: ISO/IEC C++ 1998, ISO/IEC C++ 2003
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Year 2000 problem (also known as the Y2K problem, the millennium bug or the Y2K Bug) was the result of a practice in early computer program design that caused some date-related processing to operate incorrectly for dates and times on and after January 1, 2000.
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For the packet switched network, see .


TELNET (TELecommunication NETwork) is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area network (LAN) connections.
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GNU (pronounced (help info ) ) is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software.
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GNU General Public License
Author: Free Software Foundation
Version: 3
Copyright on the license: Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Publication date: 29 June 2007
OSI approved: Yes
Debian approved: Yes
Free Software:
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Win32 console is a plain text window within the system of Windows API. A Win32 console has a screen buffer and an input buffer.

Win32 consoles are typically used for applications that do not need to display images (e.g.
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ncurses is a programming library providing an API, allowing the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It also optimizes screen changes, in order to reduce the latency experienced when using remote shells.
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Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform, multimedia, free software library written in C that creates an abstraction over various platforms' graphics, sound, and input APIs, allowing a developer to write a computer game or other multimedia application once and run
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