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ACiD View is an ANSI, BIN, GIF, JPEG, RIPscrip and XBIN graphics viewer. It utilizes its own internal ANSI routines, making it capable of viewing ANSI without a separate device driver.

Based on Ian Davis's TheDraw, ACiDDraw is a utility for manipulating ANSI and ASCII text released by ACiD Productions in 1994.

The Conference Mail System (CMS), introduced in 1986 by Bob Hartman as an evolution of earlier FastEcho utilities, was a high-performance Echomail processor designed to scale FidoNet’s rapidly growing distributed discussion network. Building on the original Echomail concept created in 1985 by Jeff Rush, CMS automated and optimized the scanning, packing, routing, duplicate detection, and tossing of shared message conferences across FidoNet-compatible systems. As Echomail expanded from small regional sysop groups to hundreds of interconnected nodes carrying dozens of conferences, the limitations of earlier tools became apparent; CMS addressed these scaling challenges with improved speed, reliability, and management features. By making large-scale conference distribution practical and efficient, Conference Mail played a significant role in FidoNet’s late-1980s growth, helping transform Echomail from a clever regional experiment into a robust, global store-and-forward discussion network comparable in structure to Usenet.

cREATIVE rG eNHANCERS aND mODIFIERS!

Ezycom was a feature-rich Bulletin Board System for MS-DOS created by Australian developer Peter Davies, first released in the early 1990s. It featured an advanced database-driven file system with fast search performance even on CD-ROMs, a built-in FidoNet-compatible echomail tosser and scanner, support for up to 250 simultaneous lines, and a powerful security model with up to 65,000 security levels. Distributed as shareware from support nodes in Melbourne, Ezycom included its own protocol engine and a full suite of maintenance utilities, building a dedicated following particularly within the Australian and international FidoNet communities.

IDCCOM was a shareware telecommunications package developed by Gary Conway and Shawn Merrick of Infinity Design Concepts, Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky. Written entirely in assembly language using Microsoft MASM 5.1, the program was notable for its small footprint — roughly 80K — at a time when competing communications packages often exceeded 200K. It supported COM ports 1 through 4, BPS rates up to 19,200, and included built-in XMODEM, YMODEM, YMODEM-G, ZMODEM, MEGALINK, and ASCII file transfer protocols, along with support for two user-defined external protocols. IDCCOM ran on IBM PC compatibles and supported MGA, CGA, EGA, VGA, MCGA, and Hercules video adapters. Beyond its use as a terminal program for calling bulletin boards, IDCCOM included a fully featured host (BBS) mode with password-protected logon, up to 26 access levels, multiple file directories, a message database system, a bulletin system, up to 10 doors, and a built-in ANSI driver that automatically filtered ANSI sequences for non-ANSI callers — eliminating the need for the sysop to maintain separate ANSI and plain-text menu files. Registration was $50 and unlocked the COMCFG configuration utility, the IDCSYS sysop management program, and script language support. The software was distributed through the IDC BBS at (502) 635-5471, operated by sysop Chuck Crumpton.

PcConnect was a shareware bulletin board system created by Gary Smith of Columbia, Maryland, with version 3.00 released in August 1989. It was a full-featured BBS package for IBM PC compatibles that supported multiple nodes, a wide range of file transfer protocols (Zmodem, Ymodem, Xmodem, Kermit, and others via external modules), large message and user capacities, and compatibility with popular multitaskers and local area networks. Key features included organized file and message areas, a file point system for managing upload/download ratios, voting booths, questionnaires, a trivia game, support for multiple archive formats (ARC, ZIP, LHARC, PAK), and 9600 baud/MNP modem support. Registration cost $75 for the software alone or $100 with a printed manual, and Smith ran a support BBS called The Programmer's Corner out of the Baltimore/Columbia, MD area.