Top[ Index | Outpost BBS | Cheepware | Micronet | Maximus/Squish | Links | Virtual Pascal | SWAG Mirror ]
Cheepware is my line of freeware BBS doors and utilities written in Pascal. I began working on my first BBS door, "The Magic Oracle", in 1998. I originally wrote TMO for myself but distributed it to the public hoping other BBS sysops would find my door entertaining. I've been releasing my software to the public ever since. I am proud to say that I have been writing and supporting Cheepware for over 25 years!
The Cheepware name is a play on "cheap wares" since BBS sysops are notoriously cheap and don't like to pay for anything...
The doors are written using Turbo Pascal 7 and the FKFOSSIL 1.02 doorkit by Tim Strike. The utilities are written usaing Turbo Pascal (DOS), Virtual Pascal (OS/2, DOS32, and Win32), and Free Pascal (Win64 and 64-bit Linux).
My software is also available via:
The BBS Cheepware file area, the network file echoes, and FTP are always the latest versions. This website might lag a few days behind.
I will release software via Cheepware for other fellow BBS-related software authors from time to time as a favor to them.
I support my software via the Fidonet CHWARE and the Micronet MIN_BBS echoes (conferences). Please note that support for my programs is on an "as-is" basis and can end at any time with or without notice or reason.
My programs are slowly being made available on Sourceforge. I am in the process of releasing all of my programs under the MIT License. You can browse my Cheepware Sourceforge repo.
The software below is what I currently develop and support.
My BBS doors should run on any BBS that supports 16-bit DOS doors, a FOSSIL driver (I use X00), and produces either the DORINFO1.DEF or DOOR.SYS dropfile. For multinode use, SHARE.EXE must be loaded at runtime. ANSI.SYS is not needed since the door has its own ANSI driver but the user must have a terminal client that supports ANSI graphics.
These doors have been successfully run under DOS, OS/2 and its newer derivatives, 32-bit Windows, and Linux using DOSemu. I have been told they do run under 64-bit Windows using NTVDMx64, DOSbox, and DOSbox-X but I am unable to offer support for doors run by these methods.
| Attitude Assessment 2.8 | A fun, non-scientific "attitude assessment" test you can take to see how others might possibly view you and your personality. |
| Chinese Zodiac 4.7 | Shows the user their Chinese zodiac sign based on their birth year and famous people who they share the same sign with. |
| Freeliner 1.4 | An easy-to-use "oneliner" door for your BBS users. Supports pipe and Telegard color codes. |
| Quote Of The Day 1.6 | A simple "quote of the day" door. It has a few special features to be run as part of a BBS login setup. |
| The Magic Oracle 15.4 | "You've got questions; we've got stupid answers." A sarcastic "fortune teller" inspired by the Magic 8-Ball® toy. |
These utilties can be used with or without a BBS. Some utilties have native executables for different operating systems. The Linux executables are 64-bit. The OS/2 and Windows executables are 32-bit. The DOS executables are 16-bit (except UUUtils which features a DOS32 executable).
I do offer support for the utilities I've written but not for ones that I've simply compiled and released (i.e. UUUtils).
| CWait (OS/2, Win32) | CWait pauses the execution of a batch file for a specified number of seconds. |
| PassGen (DOS, OS/2, Win32, Win64) | PassGen is a simple command-line password generator that will create passwords using alphanumeric characters from 8 to 255 characters in length. |
| NODECONV (DOS, OS/2, Win32, 64-bit Linux) | NODECONV will convert a FTN net/node address from hexadecimal to decimal and from decimal to hexadecimal. |
| SWait (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | SWait pauses the execution of a batch file until a semaphore file is deleted. |
| UUUtils (DOS, OS/2, Win32, Win64) | UUUtils is a set of UUencode/UUdecode programs using source code from SWAG that I compiled for 16-bit DOS, 32-bit OS/2, 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows. All versions and source code are included in this archive. |