Crush...Yiff...Destroy!

Computolio · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 349

Some of you (okay probably none of you) remember Hotline, an internet protocol designed to allow anyone to set up a server on which users can chat and trade warez. Although still in use to some limited extent today, the company behind it went poof and it's successor (which does much the same thing but this time with encryption to keep THE MAN out) is called KDX.

Across the wide variety of servers present on the Hotline network, most were dedicated to the trading of (what else) warez and porn. Occasionally an unusual, neato server would pop up with massive album cover archives or something else more interesting. However, mostly it was some kid saving a Performa Mac from the dumpster, hooking it up to his home network and offering up ISOs of Unreal Tournament on a MASSIVE 15K/sec cable internet connection.

It rocked, except when it didn't, such as when most servers wouldn't let "guest" users download and when said servers would make people jump through massive hoops (usually involving PayPal) to get to the sweet sweet illicit goodies buried within Billy's souped-up hand-me-down Macintosh >
Several years ago, after a particularly aggravating battle for the final 5% of a Robotech episode I was downloading at a friend's house, I made the crack that "hey, woudn't it be great if furries ran a Hotline server? I mean, as long as you didn't poke fun at them in the chat window they'd be totally nice to you because they're so namby-pamby-hippy like. You could grab all the Nintendo ROMS you could ever want without the specter of some 15-year-old playing CounterStrike on his other machine screaming UPLOAD AS YOU DOWNLOAD at you between rounds!"

Well, as unlikely as it sounds, I actually found such a server when I looked around a KDX server tracker yesterday:

Foxy Furry Den | 24.167.100.250:10700 | Guest DL: On! Furry server! Anthromorphic Pics! Music! Stories! (XXX Contains some adult content! XXX)

Upon logging in, I discover that nobody else is ever there. There's no warez supply. Even the porn directories are sparsely populated. Suprising how none of the Sibe rips/Secret Sabrina Society stuff is there either.

Joking aside, this is an interesting discovery; KDX is one of those last places on the internet you'd expect furries to show up.

*KDX server admins follow this legacy today, although to a lesser extent.

Tailgunner · Coadjutor Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 161

mouse · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 662

Hotline I really dont remember..KDX sounds kind of familiar

what time frame is this mainly?

Computolio · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 349

Hotline I really dont remember..KDX sounds kind of familiar

what time frame is this mainly?

Hotline was a client/server (not peer-to-peer) filesharing program introduced around 1995/96. It was originally for Macintosh only but a Windows port was eventually released. Even so, it was mainly populated by Mac users for a long time. The company behind Hotline eventually went under in 2000. (This is around the time when I made that dumb joke with my friend.)

Shortly afterward, KDX came out around 2001 and is basically a newer, updated version of the original Hotline program and protocol. They're basically the same thing.

mouse · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 662

Ok, then I would have no idea what that is. I was thinking it was earlier than that. I kinda dropped out of computers in general for a few years right around 95-96 until basically 99. BBSes largely dropped off right around that time, right? Thats really the last thing i remember doing. I played uo for a few years maybe in 98 , but thats about it.

Prior to 95-96, I was using a very basic simple program I think called lynx for all my stuff. It handled telnet, dialup, you could load transfer protocals into it. There was a local one call IceZmodem one of the local sysops created and was marketing. But I remember that thing had host ability.
I was also fucking around on SprintNet and AOL.

I used to be all into this stuff, nowadays I dont know shit anymore.

If i ever get broadband i might check out that KDX though

Wayd Wolf · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 456

Yeah, it is actually kind of strange that furries aren't so blatant about their pic sharing as they've been in the past but then again, They've all got to march in lock-step against the evil Sibe.

FWIW, I've not managed to get a single episode of Robotech on any fileshare to download completely ever. I get a small bit and then never manage to get the same file on any other server to ever reconnect and when the initial downloads start, they're moleasses slow. But I hadn't thought of that Performa Mac angle now that you mention it.

creature · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Nov 2003 Posts: 132

Yeah, it is actually kind of strange that furries aren't so blatant about their pic sharing as they've been in the past but then again, They've all got to march in lock-step against the evil Sibe.

The only ones that are blatant about it are the folks who are trying to piss others off and those folks usually only use fservers on IRC. Pretty boring shit, but it works.

Rankin · Coadjutor Joined: 03 Jan 2004 Posts: 488

Oh my lord. I setup a KDX server on my old PowerMac 5300 to share some backups with friends over the intarweb. No-longer-available software (RamDoubler, Conflict Catcher), the stuff you can't buy anymore, and we all had legal license, and rights to. It was turned off after the files were downloaded, and I briefly thought, "Jeez, what good is this? Porn share?"

Then, of course, I forget about it for nearly a year, only to read this. ;)