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  • Synchronet bbs questions on old hardware

    From Booper to All on Tue Jan 27 15:55:55 2026
    Greetings. Been messing with synchronet off and on for quite a while now. I had a system running back at my highschool in 2008, as a quick way to get around the facebook and myspace chack blocks on the firewall. I miss having so many people online like i did with that system.


    Fast forward to today, i have a lot of spare hardware from my job at a surplus electronics relale and scrap place.

    Looking to run synchronet on old hardware. Sucessfully got a slightly older version running on windows server 2003 on a dual pentium 3 single board rackmount box. All is working well there.

    I am trying to get a older system, a pentium or pentium pro based system on windows nt or windows 2000 going. Looks like support for the older windows was dropped long ago. Tried the oldest download from sourceforge, 316, but that still will now work on win 2000.

    Looking to see if anyone here has a suggestion or can point me in the directon of a older version that will run on windows 2000.

    I realize that getting a minimal version of linux running on the pentium may be the best path foreward on this issue, but do not want to loose access to the windows based sysop gui.
  • From Digital Man to Booper on Tue Jan 27 18:52:37 2026
    Re: Synchronet bbs questions on old hardware
    By: Booper to All on Tue Jan 27 2026 03:55 pm

    Looking to see if anyone here has a suggestion or can point me in the directon of a older version that will run on windows 2000.

    I have all the old Synchronet releases available for download here (why looking on Sourceforge?):
    https://synchro.net/Synchronet/
    https://synchro.net/Synchronet_Archive/

    You might to experiment a little, but I don't think you have to go *too* far back to find a version that runs on Win2K (maybe v3.16?).

    According to this, v3.14a should definitely support Win2K: https://www.synchro.net/docs/platforms.html
    --
    digital man (rob)

    This Is Spinal Tap quote #37:
    David St. Hubbins: We are Spinal Tap from the UK - you must be the USA!
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  • From Booper to Digital Man on Wed Jan 28 20:29:38 2026
    Re: Synchronet bbs questions on old hardware
    By: Digital Man to Booper on Tue Jan 27 2026 06:52 pm

    I was able to get the older version you suggested running, and it even looks like it will work as far back as windows NT 4, Nice! might try that out on the little 486 Single board computer next.

    I recently left a SCADA company that had a bunch of these tiny pentium based single board computers that were used to
    control pump stations. Didnt have the heart to throw them out when time came to upgrade, might make a cool little
    BBS box.

    Awesome software, thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.