BananaCom - DOS terminal software

[paul wheaton]

Found this stuff in an old bag I used to use for interviews. I figure if I just take the pictures and post it here, then I can toss the actual objects.

Around 1997 or 1998 or so I made it into a freeware version (4.0) and it was used for years after that. But I think it has probably been at least ten years since I've heard a peep about it.

I went to Cyber.Xpo.95 and won "Best DOS Product" and "Best of Show". I have plaques around here somewhere.

[paul wheaton]

Some articles about BananaCom in the same bag ...

Wow. I was looking around for a screenshot of Bananacom to explain to my friend what computers were like before the internet, and came across this post.

Are you the author? If so I have to say a huge, heartfelt thanks for writing what has to be the best program I ever used.

I must have spent thousands of hours connected to BBS's over the years with Bananacom, and it remained my terminal app of choice all the way up until the internet happened, and the boards slowly started to shut down...

Kudos, friend, kudos.

[paul wheaton]

Spotted this:



You can see it is bananacom - look at the bottom right.

(Yes, Tony, I am the author. Thanks for the kind words!)

[Ulf Dittmer]

Serving up German news, apparently :-) All the umlauts are broken - it probably dealt with ASCII only?

[paul wheaton]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:Serving up German news, apparently :-) All the umlauts are broken - it probably dealt with ASCII only?

It used all of the IBM character set.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Makes sense - the screenshot seems to be from 2010; i would guess not too many news feeds are published in that particular character set any more.

[Joe Ess]

copyright (c) 1995, 1999 Paul Wheaton
...
Note that some features of BananaCom are intentionally undocumented. This has mostly to do with VT100 stuff which is well documented in other places AND, I think, the use of which should be discouraged.

bansi.txt
Oh how I love the "benevolent dictator" attitude

[James Shaw.]

paul wheaton wrote:Found this stuff in an old bag I used to use for interviews. I figure if I just take the pictures and post it here, then I can toss the actual objects.

Around 1997 or 1998 or so I made it into a freeware version (4.0) and it was used for years after that. But I think it has probably been at least ten years since I've heard a peep about it.

I went to Cyber.Xpo.95 and won "Best DOS Product" and "Best of Show". I have plaques around here somewhere.

I finally meet the person behind BananaCom. I got to tell you, BBS's were hard to access.. even from a small town (Broadus, MT). Your software made it easy to get online and look up stuff from the handful of BBS's here in the state.

I just wanted to say.. Thank you. It's nice to know that a fellow Montanan built an awesome piece of software that was simple and just plain worked.

[paul wheaton]

It's good to hear from folks that used it! I had a couple of friends from eSoft (TBBS) come by a few weeks ago and we talked about the old BananaCom/TBBS days.

I once referred to it as a sort of "google for the bbs: the cleanest, simplest possible interface to get the job done" --- possibly a spec of truth to that?

[Ryan Dee]

paul wheaton wrote:It's good to hear from folks that used it! I had a couple of friends from eSoft (TBBS) come by a few weeks ago and we talked about the old BananaCom/TBBS days.

I once referred to it as a sort of "google for the bbs: the cleanest, simplest possible interface to get the job done" --- possibly a spec of truth to that?

Apologies for bumping an old thread but I too used BananaCom back around 1997 to connect to local boards. I agree it was the Google of BBS software, it was the easiest, cleanest one for me to figure out how to use. Thank you so much for releasing it for free. I remember it took all day but I used it to download the demo for Quake 1, and it absolutely blew my teenage mind and I'm sure was a big factor in getting me into computers and eventually a career in videogame development. I see you are into permaculture now, sounds cool, I subscribed to your youtube channel and hope to learn more.

[paul wheaton]

I'll try to get more stuff out to my youtube channel!

In the BananaCom days I was sure I was bringing the world together online.

Now I feel, through permaculture, I am solving things like world hunger, the energy problems, and the need of people to just feel comfortable and safe.

[Zeb McClure]

Sorry for the necro-post but I just had to chime in with a big thanks for this  software.   I loved bananacom back in the day, and now I've learned programming somewhat.  Any chance you still have the source for this jewel around?

[paul wheaton]

Maybe.  If I do, it would probably take me a good three hours just to find it.

[Paul Clapham]

I found this site on the web:

https://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/comm1.htm

It claims to have a downloadable version of BananaCom -- whether that includes source code, it doesn't say.

I didn't download it but only because it comes from an FTP site (in Slovakia by the way) and my browsers make a fuss about connecting to FTP links these days and I got rid of the FTP client I used to have because I was never using it.