So, a number of different BBS servers supported multiple incoming lines (effectively multitasking inside of the BBS server application itself, not by running multiple copies of the software on the same machine), typically up to 8 in one machine either using a special communications card that connected to a number of external modems or by stuffing internal modems into as many ISA slots as you can (typically up to 6 so you still had IO and video, 7 if you ran 'headless'.)

Some BBS servers also supported multiple instances by connecting to a master server, which supplied dynamic content such as chat, forum messages and e-mails or door game data to all of the other machines. In large markets a BBS having dozens of lines was not uncommon.