The following story is from the Chicago Tribune's Tempo section of
March 16, 1989.

GOING ONLINE

Be it for gabbing or gobbling facts, computer bulletin board
systems have taken wing

   By Clarence Petersen

It is late evening. His children are asleep and his wife is
upstairs reading. In the basement the Nightly Nerd is hunched over
a computer keyboard, his face alight with greed as he strikes the
``Alt'' and ``D'' keys, his passport to riches.The Alt-D
combination calls up the dialing directory from the software he
uses to connect his computer with a distant computer by telephone
line.Finding the desired number, he strikes the ``Return'' key and
hears a quick succession of beeps representing touch-tone signals,
then a series of buzzes, signaling that the phone is ringing at the
other end of the line.He hears a click, and a message appears on
his computer screen:``Clearwater BBS established Nov. 12,
1987``This BBS is dedicated to Wastewater Treatment Plant Operators
who have served and are serving toward the protection of our
environment, especially those who have given their lives in the
performance of this work.''The Nightly Nerd mutters a profanity and
strikes the ``Alt'' and ``H'' keys to hang up. It is bad manners to
hang up so abruptly, but the Nightly Nerd is frustrated. He's
looking for games; he has not the slightest interest in waste-water
treatment. He strikes Alt-D again, removes the number from his
telephone book and dials another.What is this man doing?He's one of
heaven knows how many Americans who have discovered the world of
computer bulletin boards systems, or BBSes, a world that comes
alive in the evening and on weekends, when the long-distance
telephone rates go down.To some, this world is nerd heaven: a place
for introverts to meet electronically, to exchange ideas, to make
friends without showing their faces, without ever exchanging a
spoken word.To others it is a valuable, if loosely woven, network
of information resources relating not only to computers but to just
about any topic from Ato Zen.To many others it is a way to get
something for nothing. Any of hundreds of free and bargain-priced
computer programsDeverything from word-processing, data-base and
personal and business accounting software to computer games hacked
out by talented adolescentsDcan be ``downloaded'' (transferred from
the BBS to their own computers) for the price of a telephone
call.That's what the Nightly Nerd is looking for. He and his
children are tired of the 20-odd games he's already collected from
computer bulletin board systems in this, his first month on-
line.Inhabitants of this world call themselves ``BBSers.'' They
have three things in common: a personal computer, a telephone line
and a modem. The last is a device that converts computer language
to telephone signals and vice versa. The modem makes it possible to
transmit computer data by telephone.A computer bulletin board
system is, in part, the electronic equivalent of a cork-board
bulletin board. But instead of being found on a wall in the town
hall, college dormitory or supermarket, a BBS resides in a computer  f73 
equipped with a program that automatically answers telephone calls,
accepts, stores and delivers electronic messages and
software.Another thing the BBSers have in common is time; at least
the addicts do.``A few of us have been trying to break our three-
hour-a-day Bullroar habit,'' said Judy Getts, 29, of Milwaukee,
explaining why a message sent to her via BBS had remained
unanswered overnight.Bullroar, an electronic meeting place, is part
of the Exec-PC BBS in Shorewood, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb. Exec-PC
is the nation's largest computer bulletin board system. Exec-PC's
proprietor, Bob Mahoney, 36, describes Bullroar as an on-line
version of ``a gang of people who are.MDBR/ always.MDNM/ hanging
around the water cooler.''Many in the Bullroar group check in every
night, chatting back and forth as if by Citizens Band radio. But
instead of talking, they type what they have to say on their
computer keyboards and read what others have to say on their
computer screens.``In this group,'' said Getts, ``every type of
human drama has unfolded, from love affairs to political organizing
to tribalistic bloodletting. So it's a typical human hangoutDonly
in digital form.''Getts, a writer for the computer magazine PC
World, went on to describe herself as ``archetypically nerdishDnot
very social, not very talkative. So I feel a lot more at ease
socially here than at a party or a bar.''But the Bullroar party is
anything but private. Any Exec-PC subscriber can read months of
messages, in the course of which they will learn that Getts and
BBSer Christopher Otto had a brief romance that, as Otto says,
``became something of a spectator sport'' for their Bullroar
friends.Still, Getts and Otto don't have to worry that the
eavesdroppers would recognize them on the street. Most of the
Bullroar regulars wouldn't recognize them either.Mahoney, who has a
bachelor's degree in computer science as well as an MBA, was a
computer consultant to such corporate giants as Shell Oil and
General Dynamics when he founded Exec-PC in 1983. At the time,
Exec-PC was devoted entirely to business applications of personal
computers.As Exec-PC became well-knownDmore than 1.5 million
callers have logged on in six yearsDMahoney began charging fees to
subscribers to pay for upgrades: more computers, more modems, more
telephone lines. At one point the telephone company sent an
investigator to Mahoney's home, suspecting him of running a call-
girl operation or an off-track betting service. When subscription
fees (currently $60 a year) began coming in at the rate of $400 a
day, and Mahoney had time to sleep only three or four hours a
night, he quit his consulting job.``It's the dream come true, where
your hobby gets so big you can live off it,'' says Mahoney. Today
Exec-PC consists of a network of seven high- speed 80386 computers
with a total memory storage of more than 3.7 gigabytes (3.7 billion
bytes)D123,000 times the memory of a standard personal computer
with a 30-megabyte hard disk. Seventy-five callers can log onto
Exec-PC (414- 964-5160) at once. Subscribers from all over the
nation and from two dozen countries log on routinely to see what's
new among Exec-PC's collection of more than 25,000 archived files,
many of which contain 5 to 30 individual files.As Exec-PC got out
of hand, Mahoney persuaded his wife, Tracey, to give up her career
as an interior designer to help him run the system. ``We're still
in the basement,'' he says, ``my wife, me and the dog, Jesse, who
probably thinks we've gone to jail and she's gone with us. I'm the  f73 
proprietor. My wife is the organizer and record keeper. Jesse makes
the biggest decisions, like should the meter reader be allowed in
the house?''As the proprietor of Exec-PC, Mahoney is known as the
``sysop.'' Pronounced SIS-op, it is short for system operator.
Every BBS has one and the vast majority are men. But Mahoney is
widely believed to be the nation's only sysop to run a profitable
system. ``It's paying our bills,'' he says, ``but you have to
consider that I'm working the hours you'd work with two and a half
fulltime jobs.''Though it started as business-computing BBS, Exec-
PC now has ``conferences,'' as special-interest areas of a BBS are
known, devoted to automobiles, electronics, ham radio, investment,
medicine, psychology and writing. Its files have come to include
thousands of games, joke collections and graphic images.Bulletin
Boards come in all sizes and degrees of complexity. At the opposite
extreme from Mahoney is Bob Cutter's Flexi-Board BBS in Arlington,
Mass., which operates on a Timex/Sinclair mini-computer, with a
tape recorder for memory storage. There one learns that an
astonishing number of Americans remain dedicated to the long-
discontinued $99 Timexes, trading software, buying and selling
parts and celebrating their beloved machine.A Bulletin Board
Program directs the computer's modem, or modems, to answer
telephone calls even when the sysop is not in attendance. It asks
each caller for a name and password. It usually permits new callers
to browse through the BBS to see what it has to offer and what the
sysop expects of participants.If a caller decides to register, thus
to gain access to the BBS's conferences and libraries of software,
the program also asks for an address, on-line telephone number and
daytime ``voice phone'' number. Some sysops require registration by
mail. If there's a subscription fee, it often can be charged
through MasterCard or Visa.No less than the software libraries, the
conferences are what distinguish one BBS from another. These are
where the experts are, ready to help novices with computer
problems.In a ``chat,'' callers take turns typing and reading.
Reading a chat response can be an eerie experience. The words
appear on the computer screen letter by letter, as if typed by a
ghost. Here a novice asks an expert for help:``I can't get used to
reading the standard ibm text characters. Is there any software to
produce large, readable sans-serif screen fonts?''``It depends.
What kind of graphics are you running?''``A paradise 350 ega color
graphics card and a sony multisync monitor.''``Try downloading a
program called either egafont.zip or egafnt25.zip, which i believe
is on this bbs. if it's not still here, i will upload it for
you.''``Thanks. I'll let you know how it turns out.''An evening's
browsing among BBSes nationwide turned up conferences devoted to
astrophysics, agriculture, business, comedy, eating disorders,
games, geology, international economics, Japanese culture, job
opportunities, literature, magic, mathematics, music, motorcycles,
poetry, religion, science fiction, sex, skydiving and wines.A
Chicago BBS called COPH-2 (for ``Committee on Personal Computers
and the Handicapped'') attracts engineering and health
professionals as well as the handicapped to seminars on how
computers can help the afflicted to lead more productive lives.A
Washington BBS dedicated to the Second Amendment right to bear arms
is called the Bullet-n-Board.Henry Kisor, book editor of the
Chicago Sun-Times, doubles as sysop of the Word Processing BBS  f73 
(312-491-6995), an excellent source of assistance and programs for
writers.Those BBSes were accidental finds, much like the Nightly
Nerd's unhappy discovery of the Clearwater BBS. The name
Clearwater.MDBR/ might.MDNM/ have suggested its dedication to
waste-water treatment, but BBS names tend to be less than
revealing. The Underground Garage? Glenside Coco-Rama? The Lost
Cause? Diversidial? Ripco? Riptide? West Suburban Wildcat? the
Lunatic Phringe? These are real BBSes in the Chicago area.At least
they have been. BBSes are put up and taken down like tents on a
safari. Call an abandoned board and the phone may just ring and
ring. The same local BBS list on which those cryptic names appeared
listed a Chicago Public Library BBS. It was shut down months
ago.Nationwide, BBSes no doubt number in the thousands, but nobody
really knows how many there are. The venerable Darwin USBBS List,
which can be downloaded from dozens of BBSes, is conscientiously
updated every month and includes more than 1,000 boards. The
January edition listed only 23 BBSes in the 312 area code. ``That's
not a fourth of the real number,'' Chicago writer and BBSer Dan
Sheridan points out.One learns the business of most bulletin boards
by random calling, by word of mouth or by asking electronically.
Send an inquiry to one of the large, busy boards, asking if anyone
knows of a BBS devoted to a particular interest, and chances are
you'll get a helpful reply in a day or two.Boards come and go for
good reason. To someone who hasn't tried it, becoming a sysop looks
like fun, but the job can be time-consuming even if you don't want
to become a Bob Mahoney. What's more, BBSers can be annoying,
signing on and even registering under multiple phony names to
extend their daily access time (some smaller boards may restrict
time to an hour a day), taking files from the boards and giving
nothing back, not even a thank-you.Peter L. Olympia, a sysop who
shut down his free BBS when he entered the hospital for a heart
transplant, speaks of ``gimmes'' in describing callers who think a
BBS is ``a one way street that exists only for the enrichment of
their software collection. It is sad but true,'' he said, ``the
majority of callers fall under this category.''``The things that
take up your time are answering the mail, taking care of
registrations, taking care of the files, making sure they're up to
date,'' says Paul Kopit, a chemical company executive who operates
the Software Society BBS (201-729-7410) from the den of his home in
Lake Mohawk, N.J.``Why do I do it? It's a sickness,'' says Kopit.
``But it's my hobby. If it ever gets out of hand, I'll just pull
the plug.''Although Kopit shares Olympia's disdain for the
``gimmes,'' he points out that ``it is very hard for a lot of
people to upload anything I might want and don't already have. But
there are other ways to contribute. If you look in the conferences,
you might see a question you can answer. That would be a
contribution. Even a thank-you is a contribution. But you'd be
surprised how many don't even think of that.''On the subscription
boards, you are not expected to upload. The $30 to $60 annual fee
is your contribution.At least one BBSer, Bob Weinstein, almost
never runs out of software to upload. By day, Weinstein is a
little-known psychologist for the state of New York. By night, he's
known from coast to coast as perhaps the world-champion BBSer.On
his home board, the PC Rockland BBS (914-353-2157), he's listed as
co- sysop, but he says it's largely an honorary title. The sysop,  f73 
Charlie Innusa, owns the BBS, a big subscription system named for
the county in which both men live. PC Rockland's software library
contains 16,000 to 17,000 files. Many were collected by
Weinstein.``Charlie's had the board up since late '83, and I joined
him in '85,'' says Weinstein. ``But all I am is a user who got into
it heavy-duty. One day Charlie said, `You're such a good
contributor that I'm going to make you co- sysop.' ''Weinstein's
computer is rigged to mimic two computers, complete with two
screens. That way he can dial up two bulletin board systems at once
and quickly determine which files one board has that the other
board lacks. Then he trades.But downloading and uploading take
time, and on distant boards, even those that charge no fees, on-
line time costs money. Even Weinstein gives his pocketbook a
restD``when the phone bills get astronomical.''That was no problem
for the two men who in 1978 invented the computer bulletin board,
Randy Seuss of Chicago and Ward Christensen of south suburban
Dalton. Both were members of the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyist
Exchange, and it occurred to them that CACHE needed a place to
exchange messages. So one snowy weekend, Christensen hacked out a
bulletin board program, and Seuss put up the board in his basement.
They called it CBBS/Chicago (for Computer Bulletin Board
System/Chicago), and trademarked the name.``The trademark sounds
silly today because the name sounds so generic,'' says Christensen.
``But remember it was the first one, when `bulletin board' would
have meant cork and push pins. And CBBS/Chicago (545-8086) was set
up as a message board, not a download board. It still is. I'd
rather have people sharing ideas rather than programs. Otherwise
it's just tied up hour after hour with downloading.''Nevertheless,
it was Christensen who invented Xmodem, the first program to detect
and correct errors as programs were sent from one computer to
another. Without error checking, telephone line noise may add bogus
bits and bytes to software, rendering it useless. Without error
checking, BBSes would still be message boards.It was the late
Andrew Fluegelman of San Francisco who pioneered the concept that
would make computer bulletin boards the rich source of software
they are today.In 1982, Fluegelman, a book packager and editorial
director of PC World and MacWorld magazines, was working with an
author who owned a Northstar computer that spoke a different
language from that of Fluegelman's IBM PC. He could find no program
that would translate one language to the other. So in 1982 he wrote
one, PC-Talk. The question was how to put it on the market?He could
have taken the traditional software publishing route, involving
advertising, marketing and distribution, etc. ``But somehow I was
either very tired of that or very inspired by the computer vista,''
Fluegelman told Alfred Glossbrenner, author of ``The Master Guide
to Free Software'' (St. Martin's Press, 1989).``The local PBS
station was having one of its pledge drives, and suddenly, in one
of those flashes, the word `freeware' just popped into my mind,
along with the notion of sending programs out for free and
encouraging people to copy them and requesting them to make
donations if they liked the program.''``Freeware'' and its
offspring, ``shareware,'' account for most of the thousands of
programs in BBS libraries today. Some of it is truly Scot free,
usually small utility programs that make light work of tedious
computing tasks. The authors are content to show off their  f73 
programming skills. Shareware authors follow Fluegelman's example,
encouraging potential customers to copy their programs, try them
out, pass copies along to others and pay a modest fee for programs
they decide to keep.There is a downside, however, to downloading
programs from the BBSes. The free boards tend to have fewer
telephone lines than the pay boards; so lines are often busy. Two
months of almost nightly dialing in pursuit of this story met with
many more busy signals than connections, making it impossible even
to find out what many BBSes had to offer. The subscription boards
were easy to log onto, but added to the cost of subscriptions are
telephone charges, which add up fast when downloading a program can
take 30 to 90 minutes.Like many BBSers who have preceded him, the
Nightly Nerd will quickly learn that nothing is truly free. His
first month's phone bill is apt to exceed $200. And for
what?``Normal people,'' says Kopit, ``don't need most of the
software they download. Most of it, they'll eventually throw
away.``But that's not to say bulletin boards are not a valuable
resource. We have a Sussex county agricultural group here, where
people want to know about selling their crops and what kind of
herbicides they should use. They do this with a computer bulletin
board, and that's the kind of thing I think we'll to see more of in
the future.''