[shagie]

From my days... this is what an old photo of a "proper" BBS looked like https://beeline.org/beeline/?view=a29ed68f4f4d53 (note the wire wrapped custom modem controller) - the description is "Original Apple IIe with 11 modems and two 4-port homemade serial cards"

And to keep better time, https://beeline.org/beeline/?view=c0a8000daa11ca

It was later upgraded to a 486 https://beeline.org/beeline/?view=188870d0bbc894

[officeplant]

Yeah this is a lot closer to the home BBS I grew up around. We had 20+ phone lines coming into our house all in a bundle going through the attic and dropping down into my dads "office" within the house. That led to a shelf full of modems, where I had to go find an inactive one and shut it off to free up a line. All so I could go turn on the modem in my room, because it was time to play a game with a friend across town.

Over time the BBS grew into us being a local dialup ISP as my Dad dug deeper into self employeement in the computer age.

[flopsamjetsam]

I fully appreciate the horizontal "stack" of modems underneath the desk in the second photo :)

[shagie]

Power strips next to them in that photo are fun too.

[flopsamjetsam]

An absolute mess of cords!

[timthorn]

And a Televideo 910. Keyboard with added reverb :)

[flopsamjetsam]

Ah, I was wondering what that was. My knowledge of terminals is not good (I just guess VT100 for everything :)