FastEcho is a message processing package for FTN ( FidoNet Technology Network) mail systems. It was written and released 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 ...

by Tobias Burchhardt in 1991. The final version was 1.46.1 which was released in 1997. FastEcho was one of the fastest FTN mail processing packages available for FTN style messages. Running on

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few o ...

, DPMI and native

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

32bit, it offered numerous features that were desirable for leafnode systems as well as highend FTN mail distribution hubs.

System requirements

FastEcho's minimum system requirements were very easy to meet. It ran on IBM PCs, XTs, ATs or compatibles with optimized routines for 386, 486, and Pentium based and compatible machines.

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

v3.xx or IBM's OS/2 v2.x or v3.0 were the minimum required operating system platforms. An archiver package was also needed to be able to open and seal the mail bundles. The list of supported archiver packages was

PKZIP PKZIP is a file archiving computer program, notable for introducing the popular ZIP file format. PKZIP was first introduced for MS-DOS on the IBM-PC compatible platform in 1989. Since then versions have been released for a number of other ...

/PKUNZIP 1.10/2.04g,

ARJ ARJ (Archived by Robert Jung) is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.86 for MS-DOS and 3.20 for Microsoft Windows and supports 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit ...

2.30/2.41a, LHARC 1.13c/LHa 2.13, PKPAK/PKUNPAK 3.61, ARC 6.02,

ZOO A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to z ...

2.10, PAK 2.51, SQZ 1.08,

RAR RAR or Rar may refer to: * Radio acoustic ranging, a non-visual technique for determining a ship's position at sea * "rar", the ISO 639-2 code for the Cook Islands Māori language * RAR (file format), a proprietary compressed archive file format i ...

1.5x, and UC2 2.00. Optionally, an extractor program that automatically coped with the different decompression programs could be used. The two supported ones were General Unpack Shell (GUS) 1.90 or later and PolyXarc 2.1a or later.

Supported software

Numerous FTN mailers lik
FrontDoorD'Bridge
and BinkleyTerm were supported. Also supported were various

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 ...

packages like RemoteAccess,

Maximus Maximus (Hellenised as Maximos) is the Latin term for "greatest" or "largest". In this connection it may refer to: * Circus Maximus (disambiguation) * Pontifex maximus, the highest priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome People Roman h ...

, QuickBBS, ProBoard, and T.A.G. Almost any BBS package could be used as long as it supported one of the three supported message base formats. They were the FTN MSG format, the HMB designed by Adam Hudson, and the JAM format. BBS users handling mail offline could also use FastEcho, as QWK and Blue Wave users did. This method was a bit more complicated but allowed the BBS user to operate much like any other FTN mail system and reap its benefits.

Features

FastEcho had numerous features that were desirable on many systems. Mail distribution hubs looked for the ability to handle many downlinks as well as large numbers of message areas. FastEcho could handle up to 1024 downlinks and up to 3072 message areas. Other features: * Support for multitasking environments such as

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 ...

Quarterdeck The quarterdeck is a raised deck behind the main mast of a sailing ship. Traditionally it was where the captain commanded his vessel and where the ship's colours were kept. This led to its use as the main ceremonial and reception area on bo ...

DESQview DESQview (DV) is a text mode multitasking operating environment developed by Quarterdeck Office Systems which enjoyed modest popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Running on top of DOS, it allows users to run multiple programs concurren ...

and

* Support for networking environments like Novell and LANtastic. * Updating AREAS.BBS (BBS' message base configuration) with new message areas when they are created automatically. * Transliteration of German non-ASCII characters in incoming messages when the option “Convert Umlauts” for the message area is enabled, using a certain popular character encoding as the source, although that causes messages in other encodings to get corrupted, which is a problem when the option is enabled inadvertently. The DOS version (including DPMI) has a limit of 64

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

per message, cutting any larger message down to that size. Worse, the default setting is 32 KiB. In OS/2 version, the maximum size is 512 KiB. Since the release, many free alternatives emerged, but FastEcho was considered by some one of the most versatile tossers.

Availability

The latest version of FastEcho, although proprietary and not improvable, is still downloadable from an official site today. * The author'
support site
* The NAFE
FastEcho
file area Online support for FastEcho is also available at the North American FastEcho Support
NAFES
) forum. - No longer active. Dead link. Registration keys are available without charge on request from the author.

Notes

{{reflist FidoNet software DOS software OS/2 software 1991 software