The Seed
A young Will Price discovers CompuServe — one of the earliest consumer online services, launched in 1979 out of Columbus, Ohio. Using a modem and a phone line, he dials in and experiences something that will shape everything that comes after: forums, chat, file libraries, and the feeling of connecting to a larger world through a screen.
CompuServe is expensive — hourly rates, long-distance charges — and it's centralized. You connect to their mainframes. But the idea takes root: what if anyone with a personal computer could run their own online community?
CompuServe launched its consumer service in September 1979 — among the first to offer email, chat, and file sharing to home computer users. Access cost $6/hour at 300 baud. The experience of connecting to a remote system through a telephone line would directly inspire what came next.
Inspiration: WWIV
By the mid-1980s, the BBS scene is thriving on IBM PCs. One system stands out: WWIV, written by Wayne Bell starting in late 1984. Originally a high school project in BASIC, WWIV evolves through Turbo Pascal and eventually C, becoming one of the most popular BBS packages on MS-DOS — known for its clean text interface, its "chain" system for external programs, and its own networking protocol, WWIVnet.
Will is running a Mac, not a PC. WWIV is DOS-only. But he admires what Wayne Bell has built — the text-based command interface, the external program architecture, the sense of community. He wants to bring that experience to the Macintosh, with the Mac's graphical interface for the sysop side. He writes an actual letter to Wayne Bell asking permission to use the same basic text commands in his own system. Bell says yes. That's the beginning of Hermes.
Created by Wayne Bell in late 1984 as an IBM PC/MS-DOS BBS. Distributed with source code, which encouraged a massive modding community. Its "chain" system for external programs — games, doors, utilities — was a direct influence on the Hermes external program API. WWIV remains active today as open-source software.
Origins
Will Price is a teenager with a Macintosh and an idea. He writes Hermes BBS in THINK Pascal — a multi-line bulletin board system that lets Mac users dial in via modem, chat, share files, and play games. He develops it under the name AOC Software. The text interface for callers draws directly from WWIV's command style — with Wayne Bell's blessing — while the sysop gets a full graphical Mac interface to manage the board.
It's 1988, and bulletin board systems are how people connect. Before the World Wide Web, before email is mainstream, BBSes are the online communities. You pick up the phone, dial a number, and enter another world — all at 2400 baud.
From the very beginning, Hermes was designed for multi-node operation — supporting up to 10 simultaneous connections. Most BBS software of the era handled only one caller at a time. Hermes turned a single Macintosh into a small online community server.
First Public Release
Hermes BBS is released publicly and begins to spread across the Mac community. Sysops set up their own boards, connected by phone lines and modem banks. Word spreads — Hermes is fast, stable, and remarkably full-featured for software written by a high school student.
Will keeps writing Hermes from boarding school, where telephones are not allowed. Using a Telebit CellBlazer modem connected to an early cellular phone the size of four bricks — with a large antenna sticking out the window, often during snow — he dials into the Olympus Support BBS from school to support users and push updates. Dedication is not the problem.
Hermes was distributed as shareware — you could try it free, then register by dialing into the AOC Software BBS and purchasing a serial number directly through the terminal. This was e-commerce before the web existed.
The Rise
Hermes becomes the most popular BBS software on the Macintosh. It's known for its stability, its deep integration with the Mac OS, and above all, its external program API — a plugin system that allows third-party developers to write games, utilities, and interactive programs that run within the BBS.
Dozens of externals are created: Blackjack, Slots, Checkers, trivia games, voting booths, BBS door games, and more. A thriving ecosystem of sysops and developers forms around Hermes. It's a community within a community.
- ▸ Multi-node operation (up to 10 simultaneous callers)
- ▸ ANSI terminal with full color support
- ▸ Fast ZModem file transfers (plus XMODEM, YMODEM)
- ▸ Message forums with threading
- ▸ Real-time multi-user chat
- ▸ External program API (games and utilities)
- ▸ Modem and AppleTalk (ADSP) networking
- ▸ TabbyNet and FidoNet mail network support
Remarkably sophisticated for 1988 — and for software written by a teenager. The Hermes copy protection system used genuine RSA-style public-key cryptography with 256-bit keys, built on a hand-rolled arbitrary-precision integer library with performance-critical inner loops written in inline Motorola 68000 assembly.
Because classic Mac OS used cooperative multitasking, the RSA computation couldn't block the event loop. So the validation ran incrementally in the background — a few iterations of square-and-multiply each time the BBS processed I/O — completing the full cryptographic proof over hundreds of event loop cycles while users stayed connected.
Anti-tamper mechanisms included code resource checksumming, a custom setjmp/longjmp stack capture mechanism in raw 68000 machine code (with its own runtime checksum), and subtle degradation rather than obvious failure — a pirated copy would appear to work but behave unreliably, making it hard for crackers to confirm they'd defeated the protection.
This RSA implementation predates PGP's popularization of public-key cryptography by several years. Colin Plumb's BigNum library for arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic at the heart of PGP later became the foundation for SSL/TLS — the same cryptographic infrastructure that secures the web today. A teenager's copy protection system in 1988 used the same mathematical principles.
The complete system — all cryptographic source code, the BigInt library with 68K assembly, anti-tamper mechanisms, and pre-computed serial databases for every version — was open-sourced in February 2026.
The Sale
Will is now in college and feels he needs to focus on school and other ventures. He starts looking for trustworthy people who could carry Hermes forward — someone from among the users who understands the software and its community. Lloyd Woodall, a prominent sysop at the time, is the right fit.
Will sells Hermes BBS to Woodall's Computer Classifieds in Bellevue, Washington. Version 2.2 represents the culmination of the original vision — a complete, polished multi-node BBS system. The BBS era is at its peak, but change is in the air. The World Wide Web is being born at CERN. Mosaic will ship later this year. The world of online communities is about to transform in ways nobody fully grasps yet.
The final release by Will Price
Mercury Systems
Even as Hermes changes hands, Will isn't done with telecommunications software. He teams up with Mark Weaver, the author of NovaLink — another Mac BBS system — to form a company called Mercury Systems. Together they release MacIntercomm, a terminal program for the Macintosh.
MacIntercomm is notable for, among other things, keeping in-progress file transfers running even during interrupt time — solving the age-old problem of holding down a menu cancelling your downloads. The ambition is bigger: MacIntercomm is intended to evolve into a next-generation BBS. But both Will and Mark are in college, and the full vision doesn't materialize before the web changes everything. MacIntercomm is sold to New World Computing in 1994.
Hermes II
Lloyd Woodall renames the product "Hermes II" to mark the beginning of a new era. He employs developers Robert Rebbun (1993–?) and later David Woodall (?–1997) to continue the line. New features are added, the community continues to operate, and Hermes II boards stay online across the country.
But the landscape is shifting. Netscape Navigator ships in 1994. AOL explodes. The web begins to eclipse dial-up BBSes as the way people connect online.
Lloyd Woodall
Computer Classifieds · Bellevue, WA
Arachnoware
Bill Dolinar of Arachnoware in American Fork, Utah takes ownership and continues development. A brief but respectful stewardship in the twilight of the BBS era.
Bill Dolinar
Arachnoware · American Fork, UT
The Long Stewardship
Michael Alyn Miller acquires Hermes in 1998. What follows is the longest single period of ownership — over 25 years. He maintains hermesbbs.com, continues development through version 3.5.10b3, runs the "Olympus" support BBS from Mountain View, California, and integrates FidoNet support using Massimo Senna's Formula1 mailer.
The BBS era gives way entirely to the web. Most boards go dark. But Michael keeps the lights on. The website stays up. The software remains available. It's a quiet act of preservation that bridges the decades.
Michael Alyn Miller
strangeGizmo.com · Redlands, CA
Continued development through v3.5.10b3. Ran the "Olympus" support BBS. Maintained hermesbbs.com for over two decades.
The Return
Thirty-one years after selling it, Will Price reacquires Hermes BBS from Michael Alyn Miller. All source code, trademarks, the hermesbbs.com domain, and all related materials return to their original creator.
The Hermes v2.2 source code — the original THINK Pascal and THINK C — is cleaned up, documented, and open-sourced on GitHub under the MIT license. After nearly 40 years, anyone can read, study, and build on the code.
Hermes 4
A genuine technical revival begins. Hermes 4 is a native application for macOS and iOS, built with Apple's latest frameworks and designed for modern hardware. Real-time chat, forums, file sharing — and 68K emulation to run the original external programs on Apple Silicon.
Not a retro novelty. Not a museum piece. A living application that carries the spirit and functionality of the original BBS into a new generation, while preserving the ability to run 30-year-old Mac external programs on modern hardware.
Currently in early development. Free beta available from this site.
