October 1990 to January 2000
Powerhouse BBS used GT Power Software and was part of the world
wide GTNet
Powerhouse BBS was on line from 1990 until January 2000 when a combination
of waning interest, an aging, failing computer and Y2K problems finally persuaded me to
shut it down. It had been part of my life for nearly ten years and this page is a brief
record of its passing.
The BBS first went on line full time on the 7th October 1990 as a
single node GT Board 302/017 using a 386DX25 4 megs of RAM , a 32 meg hard disk and a 2400
Avtec modem. I originally started it when the Sysop of my favourite board at the time went
on holiday and took his computer with him. For some reason it was a success almost from
the word go, on the 31st July 1991 a second line was added to cope with the growing number
of users; both lines ran continuously 24hrs a day until August 1998 when the popularity of
the Internet reduced user numbers and I was able to shut one line down. Even with just one
line running I think that nearly 10 years service makes Powerhouse the longest
running BBS in the Illawarra. I believe the next in line is the old IBBS which
closed down several years ago after 7 years faithful service.
(I remember IBBS with great fondness, it introduced BBSs to the
Illawarra, starting life on a Commodore 64, a couple of 1 meg floppy disks as storage and
a 300 baud modem, at the time it seemed the most wonderful thing to be able to 'talk' to
other people via my computer.)
From Sept 1992 Powerhouse BBS acted as the local 'hub' for all the Illawarra GT
boards (there were five at the time). In May 1995 there was a slight reshuffle in the
networks in Australia and the Illawarra boards formed net 335, Powerhouse BBS becoming
335/000.
When Powerhouse BBS finally shut down it was running a 486DX33 with 8 Megs of RAM
and a USR Courier V Everything modem. The operating system was MSDOS
5.0 and Desqview 386 (the latter knocked Windows 3.1 for six in my opinion) .
As you can see the computer doesn't need to be on the cutting edge of technology to run
a BBS, it can be a lot of fun and you don't have to be a computer whiz to do it -
just look at me! My personal enthusiasm for running a BBS waned over the last year or so
and I probably only kept it going because people still used it however user numbers were
well down from those halcyon days when there was an average of over 70 callers a day.
I finally decided to call it a day at the end of January 2000 and shut the board down
on Australia Day nearly ten years after it first went on line. It's been fun...
