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GLINN Internet Services Bulletin Board System

You Can Never Tell What You Will Find Behind a Keyboard

GLINN Internet Services BBS was Milwaukee's Gay Owned and Operated Internet accessible computer bulletin board system from 1986 to 2000. A computer bulletin board system and a complete ISP in one. Dial in direct with a terminal program or use WIN95/98 networking and connect directly to the Internet. (GLINN offered low cost dialup access.) That is one of the things that make BBS'ing interesting. The GLINN system offered interactive chat for all callers. You could meet the boy next door, the leather bear, a porn star, a professional sort of guy, or even my gothic punk friend Shawn pictured here. I used this picture to get your attention. Did it work?

The GLINN BBS has been responsible for a number of firsts. Operating continuously since 1988, the GLINN BBS was the first Wisconsin BBS listed in the Ameritech Yellow Pages (1991). We are one of the few BBS's which at its height had a 24 hour voice mail system for user help, and a printed user guide. We have an office telephone, a fax line, and a real office How many Gay BBS's did you call that have all these things. We cared about our users and we cared about customer support.

GLINN was also one of the few BBS's that offers FREE access, including access to thousands of gay adult GIF and JPG files. Plus we had original short stories and original novels you can read online and download. We have over 10 GIGs of adult files and more every day. We had 32 adult CD-ROM disks online.

The History of the GLINN BBS

The GLINN BBS started in 1987 running on a Tandy 1000 computer with a 5.25 and a 3.5 720k disk drive. Shortly after that, the BBS was moved to a 15mhz XT Computer and then to a 12mhz AT computer which acted as the server. Each of the dialup nodes, which grew to 7, comprised its own computer, usually XT's which handled that lines modem and had a hard drive for menus and other local files. Message conferences and other main files were served from the AT server using full-height SCSI drives. A few additional computers served downloadable files and door programs to the BBS. One of our big upgrades was buying two 80 meg. SCSI drives which cost $500 each. Until switching to Wildcat Interactive Net Server in 1998 when it went live on the Internet, the BBS operated on the freeware RBBS system.

Original Tandy 1000 computer the BBS launched on. In the background is Dan Schramm's very first computer, a Coleco Adam.

BBS Main Desk
Sysop/CEO Dan Schramm sits at the main computer table where much of the work was done. The computer overhead with the external drive case was used in GLINN's typesetting business and used to drive Compugraphic phototypesetters. The main file servers for the BBS are immediately behind Dan, though not shown.

Node Computers
Under a table holding two main file servers sits three computers which served 3 dialup nodes of the BBS. These were XT class computers. Originally the system used arcnet for the network and that was switched in 1993 to ethernet. Also shown in this photo from 1992 is a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and on top of the computers three 2400 bps/baud modems.

GLINN BBS on the Internet

The GLINN BBS was available on the Internet with both Telnet at bbs.glinn.net and Web access at www.glinn.net. The GLINN BBS was connected with its own T1 high speed digital circuit to the Excite@Home cable network.

The GLINN BBS ceased operations in September 2000 when we moved to Key West, FL.