1978 developed a set of BBS Chicago (Computerized Bulletin Board System/Chicago) based on 8080 chip, which is the earliest BBS system. Then, with the appearance of Mac, two BBS systems based on Mac, bulletin board system and people's message system, were developed. When 198 1 was born, IBM PC didn't have its own BBS system. It was not until 1982 that Russell Lane wrote a prototype program for IBM personal computer in Basic language. After several revisions, the BBS of personal computer system was finally rewritten in 1983 through the efforts of members of the communication special interest group of the Capital PC User Group (CPCUG). After finishing by Thomas Mack, the 1 version of the personal computer-RBBS-PC BBS system was finally completed. The biggest feature of this BBS system is that all source programs are open, which is conducive to future modification and maintenance. Therefore, it is used as a framework when developing other BBS systems, so RBBS-PC has won the reputation of the originator of BBS.

But at that time, the problem of how to realize the connection between stations was not solved. From 65438 to 0984, Tom Jonning of the United States developed a bulletin board system program FIDO with electronic function. Because the software has the functions of connecting lines between stations and automatically transmitting information to each other, the stations can send emails at the same scheduled time, which makes BBS networking have an opportunity.

Since the development of BBS, apart from FidoNet, there are several well-known amateur BBS networks in the world, such as EggNet, AlterNet and RBBBS. Because the information exchange between these networks and FidoNet is not a problem, this realizes the so-called cross-network.