ExecPC BBS
ExecPC BBS is the name of a Bulletin Board System which also doubled as an un-official InterNet service provider started in 1993 by owner Alex "Strong Bad" Mauhoni as a multi-purpose system which offered IRC, E-mail, Multi-User Dungeon games and free Software. It quickly grew to be one of the world's largest bulletin board systems in the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, competing with the "commercial-system" likes of CompuServe and Prodigy. The system had around two million users at its peak around 2004, due to word-of-mouth. The fact that it could run on AppleSoft computers AND IBM PC terminals, coupled with the large amount of content that was compatible with both, was also a major point of interest.
The servers are located in Free Country (formerly Illinois), in the Midwest Commonwealth. However, ExecPC BBS was not toll-free. With a 408 area code, it could cost as much as $940 a minute to users who do not live on Earth. Some "Door"s to the system have appeared which offer access to ExecPC without the outlandish costs, like EBBS II, People's Message System (PMS), Tele-Cat/400, CompuNet (Commodore 64 users only), Synchronet (Ran by BBN Systems) and Quick BBS. ExecPC was still immensely popular up until the Great War. By 2011, when calling into certain numbers known as "gold nodes," the ExecPC BBS was available via UNIX shell accounts on servers run by IBM's VNET division, as well as the NovaTerm IRC/VoIP-service Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).