Bee Line
========

"Madison's first chat line. For the first five years, The Bee Line
ran on an Apple II+ using custom 'Honeycomb' software written in
6502 assembly. It grew from five 300 baud modems to eleven 2400
baud modems (thanks to 4-port serial cards handmade by Raist,
founder of Sonic Foundry). The last five years, the Bee Line ran
on a DOS PC with a 17 ports, message boards, etc. It still used
custom software (a mix of C and assembly), including several
multiplayer ANSI action games. It was a real challenge convincing
the phone company that a 17-line hunt group deserved residential
rates. Bee Line was a subscription service. Non-paying users could
chat for a bit, but were generally at the mercy of the paying
users. It was a very social system and the user population was
mixed and varied over the years. There was no emphasis on tech,
and many users only learned enough skills to be able to type
"ATDT2334828" on the surplus dumbterms from the local university.
One unique aspect was that chat attracted women. At one point I
calculated that even though women were only 15% of the user
population, they represented about 30% of the minutes online.
Memorabilia and reunion info at http://beeline.org" - Bee

Phone   : 608-233-4828
Place   : Madison, WI
Years   : 1986 - 1996
Sysop   : Bee
Software: Honeycomb

Listed by telephone number, as they all were. A few of
these boards did reach the web: see recoveries-002.txt.
Source  : bbslist.textfiles.com, compiled by Jason Scott

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gopher://hp84.com/    |    https://ge97.com/
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