SPITFIRE is a DOS-based

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

written by Mike Woltz (1945-2022), published by his company Buffalo Creek Software of West Des Moines, Iowa.

History

SPITFIRE was written in Turbo Pascal with

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

routines. It was released in 1987 as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

, and had a moderate sized fanbase, only outnumbered by products such as RemoteAccess,

TriBBS TriBBS is a computer bulletin board system (BBS) designed for MS-DOS-based computers. History TriBBS was written by Mark Goodwin (programmer), Mark Goodwin and marketed through his company, TriSoft. TriBBS was written in C++ and assembly langua ...

, PCBoard, Major BBS, and Wildcat! BBS. It was possible to run multiple "nodes" of SPITFIRE under

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and OS/2; although, most

SysOp A sysop (; an abbreviation of system operator) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community.Jansen, E. & James,V. (2002). NetLingo: the Internet dictionary. Netl ...

s preferred to use Quarterdeck's DESQview for this purpose. SPITFIRE interfaced with message relaying systems such as FidoNet through third party utilities such as SHILOH, a QWK networking interfacing program, and BCSUTI, a Postlink-style networking interface. SPITFIRE's most successful release (Version 3.2) came in 1992. By December 1992, there were 1523 registered copies of Spitfire still running, out of 2111 total registered to date. But by 1994, the World Wide Web had exploded on scene, and many SysOps began converting from running BBSes to becoming Internet service providers. Due to advances in technology, SPITFIRE can be run as a telnet BBS using a virtual FOSSIL driver and Telnet engine (SIO/VMODEM under OS/2, NetFoss, NetSerial or NetModem under Windows). SPITFIRE (version 3.6) was updated in 1999 for Y2K compliance, and its most recent release is SPITFIRE 3.7 (Released in January 2010)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spitfire (Bbs) Bulletin board system software DOS software