Just a SOCKS puppet

I was looking for a free SOCKS server for testing, and discovered there aren't many around any more, at least not for Windows. Does anyone even use SOCKS any more? I downloaded Antinat, but never got around to running it. It uses XML-based config files and looks too formidable to set up.

Next I tried FreeProxy, but just couldn't get it to work. One thing I don't like about FreeProxy is, while it does have a nice GUI for settings, the actual proxy itself is just a command-line program.
This must be the second or third time I've downloaded FreeProxy; I keep forgetting that I've never gotten it to work. Nothing personal against the author; I'm probably just not smart enough to configure it correctly.

Then I remembered an old standby - AnalogX Proxy. It just happens to have a SOCKS server. I had previously used its web, NNTP and SMTP proxies, but never the SOCKS proxy. So this was a good time to test it. After some quick configuration - it only has "proxy binding" and "logging" sections - I got it running and it works as expected. So yes, AnalogX Proxy also works great as a SOCKS proxy.

update: turns out there is an actual product called Socks Puppet. It's described as "a multithreaded socks 5 server for Windows NT/2000/XP/98/ME." I haven't actually used it though.