I wrote the simple software myself in BASIC and 6502 assembler for the old Vic 20. Then I ported it to the Commodore 64 and ran it from a eprom cartridge. It used an old Cat modem and a relay controlled the phone line switching. I had a reed switch taped to the ringer coil in the phone to detect incoming calls.
The BBS had chat with the sysop which was very popular, an online text based game, rudimentary email and a raucous forum. That phone line was always in use. It cost me 4 dollars a month because I got the service that had free incoming calls but cost by the minute for outgoing...there were never any outgoing calls. When I connected two more lines and three people could connect at once and chat live it created a sensation
I also ran the only dial-a-joke service in town...built that equipment from scratch. It was called A1-Automated Time. (that name meant I was the first listing in the phone book- alphabetically) You got a voice with the correct time and then the day's joke.
I still remember the first joke. "What's old and wrinkled and smells like ginger?" ........ Fred Astair's face.
That joke caused a front-page story in the local paper ;-)
The only other dial-up lines were 8 of them that connected students to the old IBM mainframe at SEMO university. I had a small computer room with terminals and printers where fellow students would come to work on the SEMO system.
I used 4 old VHS handie talkies to put a terminal inside my old VW bus that connected back to my home phone line. I ran a mobile computer lab that became a popular hangout in the student parking lot... there was never an empty seat in the computer lab so they would line up to use the terminal in the VW. Power came from a deep-cycle marine battery and an invertor. I made a lot of good friends with that gear :-)
