Late entry…
I started with BBSs back in late 80s or early 90s from my Amiga 500. First modem was a borrowed 300bps acoustic… When I moved out from my parents I got a A2000 and started a BBS myself. First software I used was the host script for Ncomm, that I expanded to fit me. Got a FidoNet Node and upgraded to a real BBS software. That was a very Swedish software named NiKom. I closed down the BBS in the end of the 90s, when internet started to be a thing in Sweden.
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An article has turned up, about how BBSes came to be:
via
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The article has summed it up quite well… it was a wild west. I have many stories of police raids for hacking - one specifically was a friend who got raided for ‘Using an unapproved Modem’. Police pitched up at 2am on a day he was doing a full system rebuild of his BBS. He was at the state of formatting the hard disks to restore the tape backups when the un-welcomed visitors arrived.
No hard drives had data and the tapes were encrypted - this was 1990; He got a fine for having a non certified US Robotics modem… well, that’s all they could pin on him 
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