PC-OHIO - THE BEST BBS IN AMERICA  216-381-3320

In September, 1985 Norm Henke started PC-OHIO with one telephone line on a
used TAVA XT clone in his bedroom.  He began with RBBS but switched to
PCBoard within a few months.  In 1986 he expanded to three nodes (three XTs,
two of them clones) and moved the operation into the dining room. Soon it
expanded to five nodes and six computers in the living room.  In 1987 he
purchased an AT clone for a file server, ("Who could afford a real AT").

In 1988 "it was time to have some tiny feet running around the house," and
he moved most of the computers to the basement.

In 1991 Norm decided that since the BBS had grown so large he needed to work
full-time at home on the BBS.  He is now a "professional" Sysop spending as
much as 12 hours a day working on the system.  The work load has grown large
enough that now his wife, Joyce, has quit her job as a Registered Nurse and
is helping Norm full-time as an employee of PC-OHIO.

Presently PC-OHIO operates on 50 computers at their new facilities in
Lyndhurst, Ohio.  The computers are all linked together thru an Ethernet
network.

Recently he upgraded to PCBoard 15.2 adding "a whole bunch of new features."
Almost one-half of the subscribers are from out of town, mostly out of
state. "They call because our selection of files is large and up-to-date.
We are now connected to 18 email networks including the Internet as
pcohio.com."

PC-OHIO has over 100,000 ZIP files.  It contains over 15 gigabytes of actual
files which could be unziped to over 30 gigabytes of real files.

PC-OHIO consists of two 486-33 Novell file servers and 60 486-33 Data
Microsystems (DMI) brand PCs for the workstations.  "We have 9 Gigabytes of
Micropolis hard drives in the file servers and 12 CDROM drives. We use US
Robotics HST Dual Standard V.32bis 16800 bps modems and Hayes V.FC 28800
modems."

PC-OHIO has about 5,000 subscribers plus 300 visiting Sysops and about 1000
visitors who have limited privileges.  It has contracts with two local user
groups to provide BBS services to their members.  It also has a monthly
$1200 phone bill, and $300 electric bill.

PC-OHIO recently made a big change in operation by incorporating as PC-OHIO,
Inc.  This will allow easier future expansion.

A resident of Lyndhurst, Ohio, Norm is 40 years old and has been married
to his wife Joyce for 18 years.  She has restarted the whole network a number
of times after power failures outlasted the battery backup.  She also handles
the voice phone calls and the credit card charges.  They have two sons, five
year old Colin, and three year old Ian. Norm's major non-computing interest is
science fiction which started in the seventh grade.  He has a collection of
3,000 paperback books.  He is a big fan of Doctor Who and Star Trek.  Science
fiction lead to the computer interest. He used to be interested in photography
and tropical fish but the computers have taken over.