Multi-line chat system for Apple IIs, required multiple phone lines. Very popular chat system starting in 1985, continues with a hard core group of folks at the website listed below (ddial.com). Later ported to IBM Compatibles.

Daniel Bowers describes ddial this way: "DiversiDial (DDial) was software from 1984(?) by Bill Basham for the Apple ][ that allowed 7 modems to simultaneously connect to 1 computer to chat. It suppored 300 baud modems. One of the 7 'slots' could also be used to connect via POTS to other similar machines, yielding vast (for the time) networks of chat rooms that flourished in the US from 1985 - 1990 or so. It described itself as "CB for the computer". (In fact, you could jerry-rig the Apple's joystick port and get an 8th modem to work.) Many chat-related concepts we use today were found (but probably not invented) there -- emoticons, phreaking (to pay the horrendous phone bills), channel owners (called 'co's, actually short for co-sysop), etc."

Jim Meyer says: " DiversiDial (DDial for short), an early Apple II CB simulator that worked by filling an Apple II with modems. Later versions could run across two machines, bridged by hardware, allowing 12 people (14 including both consoles) to chat at a time, as well as the ability to have one system call another and pass traffic between them (called "Links"). Most others charged flat rates of $15 or $20 per month; some had a basic and advanced price, differentiated by how long you could chat before "timing out" and being logged off, or how long you had to wait after timing out before you were allowed to log in again. The author, Bill Whose-last-name-I-forget, ran one or two in Houston, Texas; one of them, PennyNet, was so-named for its penny-a-minute rate. DDial was very popular in Texas in the mid-80s; there were DDials in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi. There was definitely one in Detroit, Michigan; I seem to recall other states as well, but not clearly. Before the linking feature was introduced, some users would call long distance to chat with people in other cities. This often led to long distance visits, parties, and romances (for myself included)."