Daves include the project leader "Doctor Dave" Lacey, who is now an M.D., and Dave "Screaming Fist" Nelson. Originally ISCABBS was run on the University of Iowa's Engineering Departments Iowa Computer Aided Engineering Network "ICAEN" and accessible only by engineering students. However, ISCABBS was soon made available to all University of Iowa students and then to anyone with an internet connection. In addition to the BBS, a file sharing system was made available for freeware and shareware, and at one point was one of the most popular repositories in the Simtel file distribution network. Peak of popularity At its peak just before the rise of the World Wide Web, it supported more than a thousand users online simultaneously and a virtual velvet-roped queue in which hundreds more waited to log in when the system was very busy. The popularity of ISCA as a meeting place, hangout, and occasionally a virtual dive bar gives a glimpse of what modern day chat rooms would become. Between serious discussion on topics ranging from social issues and politics to computer and home repair, lighthearted babble about almost any topic can be found. In addition, instant messaging (called eXpress Messages - or simply Xes - in the lingo of DOC BBSes and other citadel-derived systems) provides a venue for private discussion and conversation. Before the rise of the Web, ISCABBS was one of the largest free public bulletin board systems in the world. It continues on today as a likely candidate for the most active telnet-based BBS in the world. Moving to new software At one point the BBS was poised to cut over to a new platform called Gestalt. It was a project developed almost entirely by Lee Brintle (also known as "Tanj"), an ISCA member and former BBS Sysop. ISCA (the Iowa Student Computer Association) was offered free license to use this new BBS platform which offered not only integration with the old BBS platform but also enabled developers to construct instant messaging, email, and web-based interfaces to the BBS, much like many modern messageboards have today. The cutover was scheduled for "sometime in 1998" and would have enabled the BBS to very easily run on commodity hardware (Intel PCs) rather than expensive, proprietary, and increasingly hard-to-obtain HP workstations. Conflicts over licensing terms, ownership, and other interpersonal issues caused the cutover to Gestalt to never happen. As of September 23, 2014, ISCA was