History of the N6IIU Packet BBS.

By Eric Tofsrud, N6OIM.


Timeline 1982 to 1995


1982. The BBS was started up under the roof of the American Red Cross, Palo Alto Chapter.
It was run under the call of N6IIU-1 (Ted Harris) , The sysop was Bill Danielson N6FQR. We
were one of only two Packet BBS's located in Northern California at the time. The BBS was
running on a CPM system, a TAPPER TNC-1 with only one port on 145.070 MHz. The system had a
5 MB HDD, and occupied a half rack, weighing in at around 200 pounds. The unit had a timer
attached to a home brew switch that kicked over to a different radio each night from 1:00am
to 2:00am and did it's mail exchange with a Southern California Packet BBS gateway. It was a
primitive but effective process.

1983. Ted Harris N6IIU, Oliver Barrett KB6BA and Rick Joslin WB5VUL installed
a remote base on Pagemill Road for 145.070 MHz with a 220 MHz downlink to the
Palo Alto Red Cross building.

1984. Bill, N6FQR and Eric Tofsrud, N6OIM upgraded the BBS from a CPM system
to a IBM PC / 4Mhz, 10MB HDD, and two ports. (The system now had a dedicated
mail gateway port).

1985. Bill, N6FQR handed the BBS over to Eric, N6OIM.

1986 - 1989. Eric, N6OIM made two more system upgrades over the four years period, from a
Turbo TX, to a 286 with 3 ports. (adding the 220 MHz user port)

1987. Eric, N6OIM installed a remote reset DTMF box to recover from system lockups.

1989. Eric, N6OIM handed the BBS over to Ed Mitchell, WA6AOD. (Now KF7VY)

1990. Eric N6OIM upgraded the remote base main VHF radio due to a lightning strike.

1990 - 1991. Ed, WA6AOD ran the system for two years. Ed developed several automated housekeeping
tools that were real timesavers.

1991. Ed, WA6AOD handed the BBS over to Chris Marley, N6RAL.

1992 - 1993. Chris, N6RAL ran the BBS for two years, and upgrading the CPU to a 386/40 MHz..

1992. Eric, N6OIM converted the downlink radio pair from 220 MHz to 440 MHz radios. (Due to the
loss of the lower part of 220)

1993. Chris, N6RAL handed the BBS back to Eric, N6OIM.

1994 -1995. Eric, N6OIM ran the system for two years with the help of Al Chan, W6DNT.

1995. Eric, N6OIM handed the BBS over to Steve Welch, KD6PLD.

The N6IIU BBS Closed it's doors in late 1995 due to membership dropoff and participation.
N6IIU is now known as: N6KP