The Beginning

This will try and give you an insight into the history of the Big Bang Burger Bar and why this forum was created.

Big Bang Burger Bar started life as Bulletin Board System running on an Amiga computer in the days when the internet was still mostly an academic tool.

A BBS consisted of a computer, a modem and a phone line, or in some cases more than one phone line. Nearly all of these were run on someone's home computer as a hobby and this was the case for the Big Bang Burger Bar.

We started Big Bang on a software package called BBS-PC! This was a very basic package with little customisation options, although it was possible to ‘hack’ the prompts using a hex editor, there were also a few third party hacks that allowed extra functionality. There was a vibrant community of sysops using this software who helped each other get the best out of this software.

After BBS-PC! We changed to 4D-BBS which gave us more functionality and was a lot more flexible in what it could do, we even helped them out a little bit over here and when we started writing our own BBS Gargravaar helped them out with some coding.

Eventually we decided to write our own software as we never really found anything that did all of what we wanted in the way we wanted it. It also meant when we needed to change something we could do it to our own timescale. Gargravaar did the vast majority of all the hard coding, I helped with writing a few modules here and there and I also got to use this programming exercise as part of my project towards my HNC how cool was that. The software was called “Rapport BBS” and we eventually sold it as shareware and it proved fairly popular, this was also mentioned in an article in Amiga computing in June 1993.

Big Bang ran for quite a number of years and reached a worldwide audience, I reached a first name basis with a lot of people, spent several late nights chatting to people who visited the BBS. It proved popular with visitors which was good for me! There is nothing more rewarding then when people appreciate the hard work that has gone into something whether that is a simple thank you or a donation. We never got enough to make the BBS break even but that did not matter we did it for the fun and enjoyment. The fact people wanted to donate money was a real surprise and was always gratefully received.

Eventually we both had to take the decision to close the BBS, there were a lot of reasons behind this and I will post the closing statement we made back then which explains about this in more detail in another message.

I will expand on this history as and when I remember or Gargravaar prods me with his memories to add to these. I have also found some letters from users which I may place some quotes on here at a later date.

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