For many years, the Coconut Telegraph BBS was the online science fiction, fantasy, and 68000 computer source for the New River Valley.
In the days before most people had internet access, local BBSes did most of the functions of modern email, mailing lists, and usenet. And Dinosaurs walked the Earth.
Lloyd ran the CocoTel out of his Apartment One room on a 10 MHz 8088 with 640K of RAM and 180 Meg of hard drive space on a 2400 baud modem, using the amazing NovaBoard BBS program. On the board were dedicated groups and topics for VTSFFC, Technicon, Mondred Live Action Gaming, Star Fleet, and much much more.
Due to the danger of roaming dinosaurs, cyberspace was largely a domain for the male of the species. The CocoTel broke this tradition by inviting actual women to participate in an area where men could interact and ask questions. The women of VSTFFC did an admirable job in this difficult task.
Another major feature of the CocoTel was the cooperative fiction topics. Several very elaborate stories, including The Technicon 10 Story, The Fred Mythos, and various stories about the local Star Fleet groups, were written online. These stories in turn spawned a wide variety of things including the Mondred LARPGs JacuzziCon 10 and Cosm, and the famous Whoman.
Alas, with the fall of the Dinosaurs, and the start of Lloyd's Ph.D., the CocoTel was doomed. Long periods spent on the school mainframes by Lloyd led to a slow death of the BBS. It has been missed.