The Bread Board System (TBBS) is a multiline MS-DOS based commercial bulletin board system software package written in 1983 by Philip L. Becker. He originally created the software as the result of a poker game with friends that were praising the BBS software created by Ward Christensen. Becker said he could do better and founded eSoft, Inc. in 1984 based on the strength of TBBS sales. History TBBS is an abbreviation for The Bread Board System, although this explanation was buried in the documentation. This was different because "BBS" was most commonly used to stand for Bulletin Board System. The name was chosen because it drew parallels between an electronics "breadboard" (where the basis for any circuit can be built). TBBS started out in 1983 as a single line Bulletin Board System (BBS) originally written for RadioShack TRS-80 machines, and was later ported to IBM-PC computers. Its advantage was that it could be fully customized by the system operator, so that no two TBBS systems looked the same. Other BBS packages at the time had their menu structures hard coded. As time progressed, Phil completely re-wrote the TBBS program in assembler to operate on IBM PCs running under DOS. In 1988, he added a custom multitasking kernel that allowed multiple callers to access the TBBS system at the same time. Other BBS software packages could only achieve simultaneous user access by either running their software on LAN systems, dedicating one complete machine per modem, or under multitasking software such as Quarterdeck's DESQview. TBBS achieved multiple lines all on the one machine. For those wishing to run two lines, no additional hardware was needed - you only needed to use COM1 and COM2. For those wishing to run more lines, multiport serial boards from a company called Digiboard were used to allow up to 96 modems to be hooked into the one machine. At its height in 1996, TBBS could support more simultaneous users at full speed on less hardware than any competing BBS product. Many software companies, like Microsoft, and most computer hardware companies all around the world relied on TBBS for their online technical support and file download services until Internet web and FTP sites replaced the need for a direct dial BBS presence in the mid 1990s. Option Modules Add-On "Option Modules" were used to internally extend the TBBS feature set. TDBS (The Data Base System) was a