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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...
In addition to this website, I hatch out Cheepware via my Fidonet CH-WARE filebone and in Micronet's MIN_BBS filebone. You can download Cheepware from my FTP site at bbs.outpostbbs.net in /pub/local/cheepware (and on my Sourceforge repo soon). I will release software via Cheepware for other authors from time to time as a favor to them.
The source code for my doors is available and is released using the 3-clause BSD License. I have successfully ported my doors to FreeBSD and am in the process of having them tested under DOS, OS/2, Win32, and Linux. I write these doors mainly for myself so I will always have a FreeBSD binary available. It is an effort to have to compile for other OSes and I rely on other sysops who volunteer to help me test. For DOS, OS/2, and Win32, I have an ArcaOS VM that I use to run Turbo Pascal 7 and Virtual Pascal. For Linux, I use a Devuan Linux VM. For the FreeBSD and Linux versions, I use Free Pascal. I use a modified version of the open-source Manndoor doorkit to compile my doors with along with my own door code unit.
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. After all, you do have the source code. If you create a derivative of my software, please give me a copy so I make it available for download!
Note that nearly all of the software below will be moved off of this website (eventually) and available for download off of my BBS or FTP site. I will make my old door code open source but you will need to download Tim Strike's FKFOSSIL DOS-based doorkit which is closed-source and unsupported. I will no longer support any of the below software after that time.
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. 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. |
| Augury 1.0 | A tarot card reader door I wrote for a former friend. Please note Augury is written in QuickBASIC and uses a different setup than the rest of my doors. |
| 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. |
| Dr. Seuss Purity Test 2.2 | A silly "purity" test for adults 18 and over. |
| 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. |
I've written various sysop utilities over the years for different BBS software I have used. There are a few utilities written by friends in this list also. Some utilties have native executables for different operating systems. The OS/2 and Windows executables are 32-bit. The DOS executables are all 16-bit though TinyTIC does have a 32-bit DOS DPMI executable.
NOTE: There is no support offered for any of these utilities that I wrote. For support for others' utilities, please contact that program's author directly or contact me and I will put you in touch with them. There is no support offered at all for TinyTIC.
| EzyMenuDump (DOS) | This utility will enable the sysop to dump Ezycom's binary MNU files to a text file for easier debugging. |
| EzyPEdit (DOS) | This archive contains instructions on how to set up the PEdit external editor with Ezycom and includes a patched version of PEDIT.EXE and a revised PEDIT.CTL for use with Ezycom. |
| SyncEzy (DOS) | SyncEzy explains how to set up the SyncEdit external editor with Ezycom. The archive contains SyncEdit 3.05 (patched for Y2K). |
| Open!EDIT v0.99K (DOS) by Shawn Highfield | A freeware full-screen editor for any BBS that uses the MSGTMP standard. Can also be used as an OLMR editor! Too many features to be listed here. |
| TinyTIC (DOS/Windows) by Michael Dillon and Sean Dennis DOS DPMI | Win32 | v 0.0.5.3 Source | v 0.0.5.3-r1 Source |
This is the original TinyTIC written in C developed this back in the early 2000s. TinyTIC doesn't have hatching capabilities but it would be easy to write a batch file to do so. There is a more recent version of TinyTIC available but it is not by the original authors and seems to be abandoned. There's no support for TinyTIC. |
| BDBulletin (DOS, OS/2, Win32) by Shawn Highfield | Creates MECCA and HTML bulletins for your Maximus BBS. Originally written by Stewart Honsberger with fix by Shawn Highfield to fix the broken links created in the bulletins. Archive includes Pascal source code for the link fix. |
| CDCFC (OS/2, Win32) | This program will assist the Maximus sysop by creating a FILEAREA.CTL for Night Owl shareware CDs. |
| DOOR32.SYS MECCA (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | A DOOR32.SYS MECCA script written for Maximus/2 but should work for all versions of Maximus BBS with minor modification. |
| DORINFO1.DEF MECCA (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | An improved version of Maximus's DORINFO1.DEF MECCA script for Maximus/2 but should work for all versions of Maximus BBS with modification. |
| PBLOGIT (DOS) | PBLOGIT will post a line of text to the end of a text-based log file using ProBoard's logging style (but can be used by other software easily). Great for putting in log entries about nightly batch files, offline events, and more. |
| PBWhoCalled (DOS) | PBWhoCalled will generate a HTML file of the last ten callers to your ProBoard BBS. Included are instructions on how to automatically update the HTML file and upload it to your remotely hosted website (for OS/2 and Win32; requires cURL). |
| DIZMake (DOS) | This utility for Shotgun Professional BBS will allow the sysop to create user mailboxes via remote if need be to allow remote file transfers to/from the BBS separate of the filebase. The source code to this program has been lost. |
| MAXPTG2 (OS/2) | A quick, easy and free way to enable the Telegard/2 sysop to drop to a shell (CMD.EXE) under Telegard/2. |
| Recent (OS/2) | This is a CGI written in Pascal and compiled for OS/2 (it should work in Win32) for Telegard to show the last ten callers to your Telegard BBS. |
| TGDisplay (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | Displays a text file with TG-style ("`") color codes in it at the command prompt. |
| TGReport | I wrote TGReport to allow me to generate mailing labels from Telegard's userbase file(s). This should work for all versions of Telegard BBS v3.09 and up. This archive contains source code (use either Turbo/Borland Pascal for DOS or Virtual Pascal for OS/2 or Win32). |
| TGShort (OS/2, Win32) | TGShort will allow you to generate a short message to put into SHORTMSG.DAT. For Telegard BBS v3.09 and up. |
These utilties can be used with or without a BBS. Some utilties have native executables for different operating systems. The OS/2 and Windows executables are 32-bit. The DOS executables are all 16-bit.
NOTE: There is no support offered for any of these utilities.
| CWait (OS/2, Win32) | CWait pauses the execution of a batch file for a specified number of seconds. |
| Day of Year (DOS) | This utility will tell you what day number of the year it is. Very handy for making nodelists. |
| NewsMaker (DOS, Win32, OS/2) | NewsMaker is a simple program to allow the sysop to make a "news" file (or any other kind of text file) using ANSI color codes or your BBS's color or control codes. Includes DOS, Win32 and OS/2 versions. |
| LORDP32 (OS/2) | This is an OS/2 INF file on how to set up LORD/2 4.07 under an OS/2-native BBS. |
| 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. For Linux/BSD systems, I recommend installing pwgen using your system's package manager. |
| QuikView (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | An ANSI file viewer that can be used standalone or with another program (such as timEd). |
| Sorter (DOS) | This is a compile of Pascal source code for a tagline sorter (doesn't detect dupes) that I found in the Fidonet TAGLINES echo that originally came from the SWAG Pascal collection. The Pascal source code is included in the archive. |
| SWait (OS/2, Win32) | SWait pauses the execution of a batch file until a pre-created, user-specified semaphore file is deleted and can optionally wait a user-specified number of seconds before allowing the batch file to continue execution. |
| TrimATag (DOS, OS/2, Win32) | This utility will read a text tagline file and extract all lines up or equal to a line length you specify then put them into a new file for use with offline mail readers that can use taglines up to n characters in length. |
| Twitkill/2 (OS/2) | Ported to OS/2 by Michael Dillon and Sean Dennis based on the original public domain TWITKILL C-based source code by John Gardeniers. Twitkill/2 is a global twit filter for Squish/2. Use this to get rid of messages from (or to) those people who annoy you in more than one message area. Various options allow you to filter different types of mail areas using different twit lists. Public domain and includes the source code for compiling under OS/2 using OpenWatcom. |
| 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. Linux/BSD systems have their own native versions of these utils. All versions and source code are included in this archive. |
| WCount (OS/2, Win32) | WCount is a little utility that will count the number of times a word appears in a text file. |