TBBS (with TDBS). The original BBS was set up in a township east of Akron Ohio. Back then it cost money to call from the west side to there, so the owner paid for someone to have a phone line in their house that did nothing but forward off to his main number so people could call for free.

Many of us paid for "unlimited" memberships, however some people felt that allowed them to connect and just stay connected all day long so they didn't have to fight busy signals that usually happened in evenings. Well they got told no, got mad, and spent a ton of money to set up competing 32 line BBS... The war had begun! Well one of the shots fired by the owners of the new BBS was to be notify the phone company that the number which was residential was for business purpose, that did not allow free forwarding.

So then another BBS setup was started in the middle of Akron (the photo above), where we got go have fun with the "new thing" at the time of tieing chat boards between 2 TBBS systems together. (At times we even had a BBS from Oregon that would link their chat as well).

Well being local, it wasn't faceless people online, we all had our weekly parties, was a big family of core users, and like all families, bickering began, and led to fights, so the 16 line bbs separated, and now there was a 3-way bbs war in town.

The internet eventually killed it, why pay for BBS when you could pay $20/month for internet. My BBS (single line Maximus) even fell to the internet, becasue on '96 I ended up using the dedicated phone line for internet access till we finally got boradband a few months later.

I wasted many years playing on BBS's as well as programming for them. (and sometimes hacking them) If only I had been smart enough to do that kinda stuff for money instead of fun.