Galacticomm Products

Galacticomm had many products over the course of its history, from software development libraries, to The Major BBS and Worldgroup, to add-ons for the BBS products, and even hardware products. This section of the site will introduce you to all of the products introduced over the years.

The Galacticomm Software Breakthrough Library

The Galacticomm Software Breakthrough Library, or GSBL, was one of the very first products that Galacticomm released in the mid 1980s. It was an assembler library that allowed developers to create multiuser applications on a regular DOS machine. It was also the core underneath The Major BBS and Worldgroup.

The Major BBS

Initially conceived as a simple demonstration of the power of the GSBL, The Major BBS became the most important product in short order. People were impressed with the performance of the system, something unparalleled at the time. It soon became the flagship product of the company, leading to millions in sales and many profitable entertainment and support systems.

The FLASH Protocol

The FLASH protocol was a series of assembler and C routines embedded within The Major BBS and used by DOS telecommunications client to facilitate realtime multiplayer games and applications. The concept was vastly ahead of its time - multiplayer gaming networks like XBOX Live do essentially the same thing today.

Read on for more information about the FLASH protocol, including an archive of all known FLASH products.

Worldgroup

In 1995, the first version of Worldgroup was released. Essentially the same as The Major BBS, Worldgroup added a Windows client and eventually an Active HTML client to the original ANSI / ASCII terminal client. The goals were initially to compete in the Groupware market popular at the time, and then to react to the Internet.

Here's some more information about Worldgroup.

Add-ons and Editions

Galacticomm initially focused on the BBS software, leaving add-ons to a fast-growing and extremely innovative group of third party developers. Eventually, though, the company began releasing "editions" of The Major BBS, which were really BBS packages with a major add-on included. This began with version 5.0 of the BBS. Later, through acquisitions of a few third party vendors, the editions expanded, along with the introduction of single add-on products.

Here is more information about add-ons and editions by Galacticomm

Webcast

The Webcast product debuted at the very end of the Galacticomm timeline. It was a web video webcasting product based upon the GSBL and Worldgroup core. It predated products like WebEx and could have been a huge product for Galacticomm had it been able to survive.

Hardware Products

Galacticomm wasn't a major hardware company, but, as the BBS products grew in popularity, it was clear that there needed to be some easy to use and inexpensive solutions to allow System Operators add many modems to a basic PC. So, multi-serial port boards, multi-modem cards, and an ISA chassis were all developed.

Here's some more information about Galacticomm's hardware products.