You're joking, right? BBS = Bulleten Board System Before the Internet was publically accessable, most people that were online were either using a commercial service such as Compuserve, or BBS's. Some BBS's were free, others charged for access. There were even "Networks" of BBS's such as Fidonet that shared email and message boards. Everything was done via dialup, often with very slow modems. Zane