Copyright © 2015-2026 Bill Kochman

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Similar to myself, in years past, I imagine that there were a number of old time Hermes II BBS SysOps who were probably thinking to themselves "Wouldn't it be great if some THINK Pascal coding genius, or perhaps a group of coding geniuses, who have the time, interest and patience, were to decide to overhaul the Hermes II BBS code base so that it can run natively on the latest version of macOS?"

As an old school BBSer and BBS SysOp myself, such thoughts definitely entered my mind. After all, I have been SysOping since 1993. And so, I sadly watched as interest in Hermes -- and in BBSing in general -- waned, visitors to our boards became less and less, and even longtime SysOps began taking down their BBSes completely. So the challenge I presented to some of my online friends was more or less the following: "Are you prepared to let Macintosh BBSing die? Are you prepared to let Hermes II wither away, die and go silently into the night without the least bit of a whimper?"

Well, as a few of my readers may know, a number of years ago, Michael Alyn Miller -- who at the time was the latest owner and developer of the Hermes II BBS software -- made the Hermes II source code open source. In fact, he even took the time to upload the source code to his GitHub repository. Sadly, there the code sat and languished, untouched, and unused. To my knowledge, even though I am NOT a programmer by any means, it seems that I was the only person who attempted -- and actually succeeded -- in compiling the Hermes II 3.5.11 source code, because there were two corrupted files in the repository of which Michael was apparently not aware until I informed him regarding the matter.

So again, as far as I know, aside from Michael himself, I was the only SysOp who was running a Hermes 3.5.11 BBS. While I ran the board for a few years, eventually, I became so disheartened by the Hermes II BBSing scene -- or the lack thereof -- that I finally took down my Hermes II 3.5.11 board for the fourth time in 2024, after working so hard to try to inspire others to compile Hermes, to write new externals in Jython for it, etc. But the response was silence.

As I said a moment ago, even some of the oldest Hermes II SysOps eventually chose to shut down their boards, because it was apparently no longer worth it to them to keep their boards running any longer. While I don't know it with absolute certainty, I strongly suspect that I may possibly have been the very last of the Hermes II SysOps, even outlasting Walter Bowen and his "The Mezzanine" BBS in Denton, Texas.

So, let me ask you something. Do you miss the good old days of Macintosh BBSing? Wouldn't you like to see Hermes II with a modern interface, and even running smoothly on the very latest Apple machines, and running the very latest version of macOS? Well, folks, in case you haven't heard the good news yet, it has ALREADY happened! In fact, I just found out about this development in early October of 2026.

Furthermore, the man who has taken back control of Hermes is no less than Will Price himself, who happens to be the original Hermes developer from back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hermes 4 is Will's baby, and let me tell you, he is doing some amazing things with the software. For example, gone are the frustrating days when user lists would repeatedly become corrupted, file directories and transfer data would get messed up, and a host of other things would occur which would drive a Hermes SysOp up the wall. I know, because I was one of them.

In a word, the new Hermes 4 is Will's work of art. It is a coding masterpiece which simply gets better with each passing day. The Hermes Server and Hermes Terminal apps are both as solid as a rock, and they run on Silicon Macs WITHOUT the need for emulation. In other words, you don't need to create a Mac Classic environment by using an emulator such as SheepShaver, Qemu or VirtualBox. Both Hermes apps run right out of the box, even under macOS Golden Gate.

Of course, I can tell you these things, because once I learned that Hermes was back under development, I didn't waste any time downloading it and installing it on one of my machines. In fact, I have been running a very stable, fully-stocked Hermes 4 BBS for the past several weeks which offers message forums, file transfer directories -- I have uploaded over 4,000 files -- chat, GFiles, externals, games and doors. In short, the difference between Hermes II and Hermes 4 is like night and day. There is simply no comparison. Hermes 4 is just that good.

And, of course, I have been creating piles of old school ANSI graphics to give my board that really old, retro BBS look. I love my ANSI codes! What can I say? I am also happy to report that for weeks now, I have been in close contact with Will Price, and we exchange emails on just about a daily basis as I submit bug reports, suggestions for improvements, etc. And Will is very receptive to all of this, to say the least. In fact, he has majorly impressed me with how fast he makes new releases after I have shared issues and suggestions with him.

So tell me. Have I primed the pump yet? In other words, has what I've written here resulted in you becoming interested in giving Hermes 4 a test drive? I certainly hope so! And so, without further ado, below are two links for the very latest versions of both the Hermes Server and the Hermes Terminal app. They will be downloaded directly from my web server. Of course, you can also obtain the very latest versions of Hermes 4 directly from Will Price's official Hermes BBS website by clicking here.

Hermes 4 Server 0.1.0 b110:	Latest version of the Hermes 4 server software as of Oct. 13, 2026. It runs on macOS up to Golden Gate. No compilation required.
Hermes 4 Terminal 0.1.0 b110:	Latest version of the Hermes 4 terminal software as of Oct. 13, 2026. It runs on macOS up to Golden Gate. No compilation required.