I ran TriBBS for years as a kid in the Maryland/DC metro area (301).

My OS of choice was OS/2 Warp. It could handle a full-time, two-node BBS and still allow me to do other tasks without skipping a beat -- all on a 486 with 8 MB of RAM!

I also remember being rather envious of how cool Renegade, WWIV and company looked. Not to mention the more exotic software powering the, er, rather more questionable boards: software with ominous names like ViSiON-X or Oblivion/2... But after trying them all, I eventually switched from TriBBS to PCBoard.

It was the right choice: I loved the flexibility of PCBoard's scripting language and C SDK. Adding functionality to my BBS is what prompted me to pony up for Borland's Turbo C++ and get serious about programming.

C-Net in the C64 days, then WWIV when I switched to PC clones in 1990. Both platforms had full source code available. It's where I cut my teeth.

Mostly wwiv in California as I remember.

Telegard and Renegade for me in Chicago (wwiv descendants)

I used SuperBBS and Remote Access.