What is Hotline Connect (client & server & tracker)?

Hotline Connect was, for a short period of time in history, the most sought after BBS-like client/server software suite.  A client could connect to a server using its IP address (or a dynamic hostname if the server owner had one) over TCP/IP and servers were most often found using trackers, which listing capabilities were integrated to the client application.  With a single mouse click, a user could make his client app show hundreds of Hotline servers and with 2 clicks that client could connect to a server.

Hotline server would list a folder's contents in a window and allow for clients to upload and download files with drag and drop support, chat with any of the other users connect to the same server.  Hotline clients had to read an agreement text file that would pop up every time they would connect to the server.  They could also read server made news and messages on a simple bulletin board window.

The Hotline software suite was based on granular access rights.  Users with more priviledges could modify, rename, delete, create, move all sorts of objects on the server.  The priviledges list was finely tuneable and even up to a point where each user could have a totally different document root, effectively not seeing the same files as other users or not having access to some specific folder's contents for example.

A very few people were also running the Hotline tracker application, whose sole purppose is to act as a server that lists all other servers.  Thanks to the few trackers, thousands of home based Hotline servers were actively found and visited.

Unfortunately, the original company which made this software, Hotline Communications ltd, went out of business in 2001.  Hotsprings tried to maintain the project and ultimately stopped 2 years later, in 2003.  In the late 90's, there were literally thousands of servers running, but over the years and especially since the software is no longer maintained, almost all of the Hotline community disappeared and only a handful of servers are running 20 years later.

 

Download Hotline Connect (client & server & tracker) for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Architecture: PPC only (carbon version of the client and server are also included for OSX)

At least 10MB of free RAM for the client

At least 5MB of free RAM for the server

At least 1MB of free RAM for the tracker

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II