CompuServ was used more for corporate software downloads in those days than a BBS. Companies generally don't want to rely on some random person with an extra phone line in the basement for product support; CompuServ was 'corporate BBS' and owned by H&R Block, so had biz cred. Driver downloads were pretty much the reason I had a CompuServ account, since we had a bunch of otherwise great local BBS for the other on-line things I cared about back then.

That said...files from Compuserv usually ended up on some BBS somewhere eventually, and FidoNet let you get them if they weren't on your local BBS. Maybe...if you could find them.

> ... some random person with an extra phone line ...

True. I was thinking of Ashton-Tate's IT operating an "official" BBS system.

OTOH, A-T might have gotten an extremely good deal from CompuServ, due to the cred they'd have brought it.

Oh sure...some companies had their own setup. I think one of the disk drive manufacturers had their own BBS (Western Digital?). But I think most companies looking into this kind of service saw the Compuserv infrastructure (in particular, all the ways to access it...dial, X.25, leased line, etc., with huge numbers of local PoPs) and said "I'll take that because building ourselves it would suck".

And...there was a time between this and "Internet for all the things", when for consumers, AOL was the place to get drivers and such. But that's an even farther digression from the BBS topic (other than to point out AOL started out with BBS software).

There might have been, but I don't think I ever needed to give it out or was asked for it.