Falken (bulletin board system)

Originally created by Herb Rose, Falken BBS was one of the few BBS products that allowed up to 128 users to dial into a single system (running DOS) using multiport hardware, requiring no external multitasker. The product was far advanced from the large number of other BBS systems available at the time allowing users to interact in online teleconferences and multiplayer games.

Dates back to at least 1989.[1][2]

Herb's company Info*share struggled to market this product against the already well established Major BBS product developed by Galacticomm. The product enjoyed moderate success but eventually Herb relented and sold the product in 1996 to Chris Whitacre of California[3] who continued to develop the product on the Linux platform, finally discontinuing the original DOS based product.

Ironically, in 2002, Falken was again sold to Michael Polzin[4] of WilderLand Software, one of the companies which actively supported the competitive Major BBS product as an independent software vendor.

The name Falken was a cultural reference to the hacker movie WarGames.

References

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  1. ^ Morrow, Blaine Victor; Burak, Sara (1996). "4889 Falken". Dial Up!: Gale's Bulletin Board Locator. Gale Research. ISBN 978-0-7876-0364-9. BBS Software: Falken (...) Falken [BBS] began in March 1989.
    For more contents, search inside book for:
    • "DETAILS: Address: Republic, MO"
    • "Falken bbs"
  2. ^ Searching for 198 inside MAINBBS.EXE file (flkn661.zip) gives 1988 and even 1986 as starting copyright dates.
  3. ^ "Falken BBS Software for Linux - About Us". 1999-02-03. Archived from the original on 1999-02-03. Retrieved 2020-01-25.
  4. ^ "FalkenBBS dot COM :: Proudly running Falken Multi-User BBS for Linux". 2004-06-13. Archived from the original on 2004-06-13. Retrieved 2020-01-25.
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