SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

-bxs


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

Re: Phoenix/Spitfire/Wildcat
By: Boxoskulz to All on Mon Jul 08 2024 03:48 pm

SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

I've never ran a BBS with any of those (and I haven't heard of Phoenix), but I remember there being Wildcat and Spitfire BBSes in my area in the 90s. They seemed like decent BBS software. I think the owners of Wildcat still charge the same amount of money for it today, which makes me not want to use it now.. I don't know if Spitfire is still being developed.

I think I had briefly tried out Wildcat and Spitfire (among others) in the early 90s before I started running my own BBS in 1994, and I decided on RemoteAccess.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

I've never ran a BBS with any of those (and I haven't heard of Phoenix), but I remember there being Wildcat and Spitfire BBSes in my area in the 90s. They seemed like decent BBS software. I think the owners of
Wildcat still charge the same amount of money for it today, which makes
me not want to use it now.. I don't know if Spitfire is still being developed.

I think I had briefly tried out Wildcat and Spitfire (among others) in
the early 90s before I started running my own BBS in 1994, and I decided on RemoteAccess.

Nightfox

I've still got my single node Wildcat 4 software in the original box. I ran
it in the mid '90's and enjoyed it. However, when I started back up, I
refused to pay the upgrade fee that was required. I'm happy with Mystic (for the most part!)

ogg
Sysop, Altair IV BBS
altairiv.ddns.net:2323

... What do you mean, QWK? It took me over an hour to read!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Altair IV BBS (21:2/147)

On 08 Jul 2024 at 03:48p, Boxoskulz pondered and said...

SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

I ran Spitfire in the 90s, because I thought it was
kind of nifty, and not the "cookie cutter" BBS software
so many folks around that time ran.

Development on it ended years ago; I think Mike Woltz
did a small point release for Y2K compatibility, and sadly
he passed away a couple of years ago. As far as I know,
the source for spitfire was lost with him.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

I tried Spitfire once way back in the 90s. Mostly just to look at something different to the regular, RA, SBBS, and EzyCom systems around at the time,
but in essence it wasn't any different.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Good Luck and drive offensively! (21:3/101)

SysOps who have used Phoenix, Wildcat or Spitfire BBS software... why?

I haven't used those software packages myself, but I know there is a community of Wildcat (and WIN Server) sysops still active. Also, Santronics Software still licenses the software, though from stories I read they don't seem particularly interested in hobby BBSes so they may be focusing on a corporpate customer base.

There is a "Wildcat-Winserver SysOPs" Discord server, there's 2-3 dozen people on that server, a few people have been working on a project to run multinode Wildcat on Raspberry Pi (the-wc4-pi-project) using DOSBox-X and a shared network drive. (that's been particularly interesting to me since it's similar to my own network setup to run Maximus multinode)

I'm not sure what the specific draw to Wildcat is, but it's enough to keep a community around, which is great to see!


Chris/akacastor

--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

Re: Phoenix/Spitfire/Wildcat
By: AKAcastor to Boxoskulz on Tue Jul 09 2024 11:12 am

Santronics Software still licenses the software, though from stories I read they don't seem particularly interested in hobby BBSes so they may be focusing on a corporpate customer base.

Who is even running a corporate BBS these days? Maybe their software does something more than running a BBS?

I'm not sure what the specific draw to Wildcat is, but it's enough to keep a community around, which is great to see!

Although I never ran Wildcat, it always seemed to be like a very capable BBS package. Also, I remember a lot of Wildcat BBSes I used in the 90s looking basically the same, or very similar.. It seemed like one of those BBS packages where many of its sysops didn't customize the menus very much.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

On 08 Jul 2024, ogg said the following...

I've still got my single node Wildcat 4 software in the original box. I ran it in the mid '90's and enjoyed it. However, when I started back
up, I refused to pay the upgrade fee that was required. I'm happy with Mystic (for the most part!)

Count me in on what you just said! I ran WC5 2 line and bought the yearly upgrade for it back in the day along with spending another few hundred bucks on wcReports, and wcBasic (or whatever it was called) when I was putting back up my BBS in 2018, I looked online to see if I could upgrade and emailed the company, got back an email saying what I owned and since it was so old it would be $200 to upgrade to the latest version, then another I think $350 to give me another 16 lines or some crazy number. Do I need 16 lines? No, but I have brought in at one time 12 users on a Amiga BBS when I did a release party, so a 2 line BBS would not work. I ended up going with Mystic and have been extremely happy with it..


|11 Bucko |14- |06Wrong Number Family Of BBS' |07- |03www.wrgnbr.com

... Message encrypted: Press ALT-F4 to read encoded message

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)

Although I never ran Wildcat, it always seemed to be like a very capable BBS package.

I remember all [most] of the paid-BBSes running Mustand, Wildcat!, MajorBBS...

Who is even running a corporate BBS these days? Maybe their software
does something more than running a BBS?

... back in the 80s/90s I remember some CITIES and gov agencies were using Mustang for their public relations sites... not saying that any are now, but I think there must have been some corporate holdouts over the decades. I'm sure they all stopped being that holdout 20 years ago, but I could imagine SOMEONE was using BBS software far after the BBS times.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)