History of the Lambda Switchboard BBSes? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- madsci · 2016-05-29 01:51 There were at least a handful of chat BBSes in the 80s running the Lambda Switchboard BBS software. TREX I and TREX II were big in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was on LOIS on the central coast, and I remember the names LOLA and LANE, or possibly Lover's Lane. I think they might have been in San Diego and somewhere in Texas? TREX and LOIS at least switched to Unix-based Mu software in later years, and LOIS was accessible via Telnet until several years ago. I've never been able to find an authoritative list of BBSes running the software or much information about where it came from and who wrote it. The TREX systems were well known to LOIS users and there was some overlap between the user bases, but the other systems were almost mythical. The software was nothing remarkable - a single message board, no door support, just chat and a matchmaker feature - but what *was* remarkable was that in a fairly backwards town we had a free chat BBS that peaked at something like 18 phone lines. It had a huge influence on the local scene. Did anyone else use one of these systems? Is there a history of them somewhere? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denzuko · 2016-06-11 23:49 While not the best lead it still is a lead. Check out the link for phreaking numbers at http://tucops.info/tucops3/phreak/numbers/live/aoh_phonespa.htm. There's references to boards, thier numbers and some blurps about it for the SF bay area boards that join the Lambda switchboard network. Also try tweeting @textfiles, JS is really good on knowing this stuff or at lease point one in the right direction. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- madsci · 2016-06-13 03:35 I saw that list, but there's no date on it. Any idea when that was published? It's my understanding that the software started life as a voice chat switchboard, but I really don't know how it made the transition to BBS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denzuko · 2016-06-14 04:26 Post '85: http://www.textfiles.com/phreak/phones.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElHombreSinNombre · 2016-06-20 20:57 I called LOLA and LISA in the San Diego area in the mid 80's. I don't know much about the history unfortunately, but a friend might. Let me do some digging for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElHombreSinNombre · 2016-06-20 21:02 Per the BBS Software Directory (http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/expanded.html) Gary of hekal.org claims Jim Dixon wrote this software for the Apple II. Eric T. Senior writes "LOLA stood for Lambda-On-Line-Again. It was created by Jim Dixon (aka Lambda-Boy). It was run by Mike "Barney" Fishell out of his apartment in La Mesa, CA. The system was run on a PC that used a Menlo Park Phone Book to prevent the motherboard from shorting out on the bottom of the case. LOLA went on-line around 1983-1984 (if memory serves correct). A couple of years later, after LOLA, LISA came on-line (Lambda-Is-Still-Around)."