Summary
Qmodem was an MS-DOS shareware telecommunications program and terminal emulator. Qmodem was widely used to access bulletin boards in the 1980s and was well respected in the Bulletin Board System (BBS) community. Qmodem was also known as Qmodem SST and Qmodem Pro.
| Original author(s) | John Friel III[1] |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Mustang Software |
| Initial release | 1984 |
| Operating system | MS-DOS |
| Type | telecommunications program, terminal emulator |
| License | shareware |
History edit
Qmodem was developed by John Friel III in 1984 and sold as shareware through a company called The Forbin Project. Qmodem gained in popularity very quickly because it was much faster and had many new features compared to PC-Talk, the dominant shareware IBM PC communications program of that time.[1]
Originally developed in Borland Turbo Pascal, the application originally supported the XMODEM protocol, gradually added support for other protocols such as the popular ZMODEM protocol and CompuServe-specific protocols such as CIS-B and CIS-B+. Qmodem evolved to include features such as the ability to host a simple Bulletin Board System. The application was sold to Mustang Software in 1991 and in 1992 version 5 of the program was released.[2][3]
Qmodem Pro edit
It is a successor of Qmodem, by Mustang Software, Inc. Several versions had been released for MS-DOS and for Microsoft Windows with the final version being QmodemPro 2.1 for Windows 95 and Windows NT which was released July 7, 1997.[4]
QmodemPro continued to be sold by Mustang Software through 2000 when the rights to it were purchased by Quintus Corporation.[5]
Awards edit
- 1992 John Friel received the Dvorak Award for his development of Qmodem.[6]
- 1994 Mustang Software Incorporated received the Dvorak Award for QmodemPro for Windows.[7]
Software edit
Qmodem edit
Qmodem was available as shareware software for MS-DOS operating systems.
Qmodem supported the following file transfer protocols:[8]
- ASCII (plain text transfer)
- XMODEM-Checksum (128 byte block with 8-bit checksum)
- XMODEM-Relaxed (XMODEM-Checksum with relaxed error timing)
- XMODEM-CRC (128 byte block with 16-bit CRC)
- XMODEM-1K (1024 byte block with 16-bit CRC)
- YMODEM-Batch
- ZMODEM-Batch
- XMODEM-1K/G (requires a MNP compatible error-correcting modem)
- YMODEM/G-Batch (requires a MNP compatible error-correcting modem)
- Kermit (via external program)
- Puma (via external program)
Qmodem Pro edit
Qmodem Pro was available as paid commercial software for MS-DOS operating systems, then later for Windows operating systems.
Qodem edit
An independent free software re-implementation of Qmodem for Unix-like systems called Qodem[9] started development in 2003. Qodem is in active development and has features common to modern communications programs, such as Unicode display, and support for the telnet and ssh network protocols.[10] It has also been ported to Microsoft Windows, and compatible with Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.[11] It can be compiled with Borland C++ 5.02 or Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0.
See also edit
References edit
- ^ a b Glossbrenner, Alfred (1985). The Complete Handbook of Personal Computer Communications. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-312-15760-6.
- ^ "New for telecom: Qmodem 5 debuts from Mustang - Mustang Software Inc.'s communications software - Product Announcement". Washington Post Newsweek Interactive. 1992-01-13. Retrieved 2007-08-20. [dead link]
- ^ MSI product announcement
- ^ SLBBS Support Files
- ^ "Qmodem Pro Definition". Archived from the original on 2012-03-02. Retrieved 2017-09-10.
- ^ Dvorak Awards Archived August 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Dvorak Awards Archived September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Qmodem 4.6 Test-Drive User Manual; 1994; Mustang Software.
- ^ Qodem Terminal Emulator
- ^ Qodem README
- ^ Softpedia download page
External links edit
- Mustang Software, Inc. page: QmodemPro
- "Qmodem files at SimTel". Archived from the original on 2012-05-03. Retrieved 2011-12-19.
- Qmodem release archive