The KDX Living Thread - BBS meets a GUI
From an archive of the official website: KDX is like a swiss army knife for internet and intranet communications. KDX is a powerful multi-OS "BBS"-style (Bulletin Board System) encrypted internet communications system that provides voice chat (Internet Telephone), text chat, messaging, news, file and folder transfer, remote access, trackers and more.Unfortunately, not very many people knew about KDX, and it didn't get the universal success that the text-only BBS and IRC combination received. The last version of KDX released was 1.600, in 2004; and in 2009, Haxial (the developer of KDX) closed its doors for good.
A few enthusiasts and journeymen, however, have kept KDX alive and well, preventing it from being buried in the sands of time. One of those journeymen was me, searching for something that I thought would be better than text-mode Bulletin Board Systems. I used to be a BBS operator, using Synchronet's BBS server to present my port of the Smash scene-loved John Generator to the small corner of the internet that people knew me in, but the allure of the windowed KDX brought me in and never let me go.
I'm getting sidetracked. Here's some highlights of what KDX can do.
KDX Headlining Features
- Text communication
- VOICE communication - that's right, KDX can do voice chat
- News posts - (like a BBS)
- File and folder sharing
- Encryption all around - though I don't actually know how or what the encryption is
- It runs on OS 9 and OS X - (except for OS X 10.7 or later, because KDX is a PowerPC executable on Mac*)
OT: I've been digging deeper and I found Intel versions for Lion and later built using Wineskin and the Windows version, which can be found here. I did test it with my M1 though and it's not Rosetta2-compatible. - It's also cross-platform - with Windows NT and Linux i386 executables available (KDX 1.110 will run on Windows 9x; 1.230 should also run)
- KDX Text channels can be bound to IRC channels - so we can still include those with even older machines
- The entire interface is fully skinnable using the Haxial Appearance Editor or with downloadable skins
Getting KDX
Since Haxial has closed their doors and their downloads are no longer accessible, you can find an Internet Archive page with the downloads. Alternately, Josh Anders (technowiki) hosts downloads on his KDX page (web 1.1 compliant!); though, you'll want to use the Internet Archive link to get AppearanceEdit, as the one on technowiki is broken on Mac.Connecting to KDX Servers
Now that you have KDX, it's time to connect to a server. With KDX open, you can see the Address Book, with one (or two, depending on where you got KDX) servers listed. You can try to connect to them, but in the case of the Official Haxial Server, it won't work. The Connect... box will bring up a dialog to enter in server information. A lot of KDX servers (such as RIPnet) don't require authentication, so a user + password may be optional. Below is a list of KDX servers that I know of that are alive and that you can connect to.There is a lot of functionality to KDX, so I implore you to read the documentation or poke around and see what you can find.
KDX Screenshots
KDX, with the Mach Lavender default theme applied.
List of KDX Servers
- kdx.lmao.rip - RIPnet KDX, operated by @Doq.
Has a dedicated chat section for the MR PowerPC community, and a dedicated news section for Web 1.1.
There is also a tracker server at this address, if you want to have an updated server list in your address book.
The PowerPC Hub is also IRC-linked to #mr-ppc on irc.stormbit.net for communication with users on older machines or users who don't use KDX. - tracker.preterhuman.net - higherintellect tracker, operated by higherintellect. Has a few servers on it.
- stickytack.com - stickytack, operated by technowiki (I think, citation needed on that one).
- Your server here, if you want to spin one up.
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