IBM and Compatibles: DOS: PCBOARD Derived From: Rumors abounded for years during the 1980s that the initial versions of PC-Board were based on code from RBBS. RBBS' ubiquity and freely available source might have been useful for taking ideas, and there is currently no easy way to prove definitively one way or the other. This rumor has also dogged a number of other commercial BBSes, so it could easily just be the nature of BBS Culture. PC-Board certainly began its life as a compiled BASIC program, but later revisions (there were 15 major versions) were rewritten from scratch in C. Author: Fred Clark, David Terry, Clark Development Corporation Author Contacted?: Conversations have taken place with Steve Catmull, David W. Terry, and Scott Dale Robinson, all of the Clark Development Corporation. Interviewed! David W. Terry and Steve Catmull of Clark Development Corporation were interviewed on February 21, 2003. First Created: 1983 Additional Notes: Created by Clark Development Corporation (CDC) in Salt Lake City, Utah, PC-Board was one of the first major commercial BBS packages available on the DOS Platform. Reknown for stability, ease of configuration, and general quality, it helped set the standard for what BBS packages should offer. The BBS package was popular with both companies and pirates alike, projecting an image of quality that few could resist. While some balked at the price of the package (A 2-user version cost $150 in 1994), those who could afford it or used it as the foundation for a pay system were pleased with it. The Clark Development Corporation BBS was called the Salt Air BBS, and always ran the in-testing version of PC-Board, giving a peek at upcoming features. Among these features were multi-node capability, which immediately caught the attention of Sysops. Other features included PPL, which was a BASIC-like language for adding commands and programs that would become part of the PC-Board environment. Clark Development corporation pioneered the filename FILE_ID.DIZ to include description information in a file archive. Originally created to accompany their PCBDescribe Utility, the idea behind the standardized filename was to provide an expected place for the file's description, removing the need of uploaders to manually type it in each time they sent the file to a new BBS. In 1993, US Robotics changed from TBBS to PC-Board software for their BBS, which caused a small stir in the BBS community. The Clark Development corporation ultimately collapsed in an ugly fashion in the late 1990s, assigning a new president before going bankrupt. All indications are that the PC-Board code disappeared with the company.