PowerHouse Point ================ "You have 3 listings for Powerhouse Point in Vancouver BC... they are all one and the same. They all also happen to be mine... :) The life history... Powerhouse Point was started by Doug Shields of Chetwynd BC in 1986 as simply "Powerhouse". Its history parallels the history of BBSing in general and the technologies available in publicly accessible network technology of its time. It began as a jr. high school project on a 300 baud modem using Red Ryder for the Apple Macintosh and was allowed 1Mb of storage on the shared 10Mb network storage device. Originally it was little more than a messaging board with only a couple users on an irregular basis. It was maintained after the project ended and over the years it grew more and more useful with each new software release. Eventually it ran on the best Mac for its time, with a dedicated 10Mb external dedicated hard drive. Chetwynd is a small town however so the number of users remained limited. In late 1990 it moved with Doug to Coquitlam BC. It had grown to 2400 baud and was using Maximus for OS/2 on a state of the art 386 PC with 105Mb of disk, and 4Mb of RAM. It joined the FidoNET network as a point node, and became "Powerhouse Point". Expansion of the BBS world was hot, and so was that of Powerhouse Point. Maximus was much more than a simple messaging program and Powerhouse Point made good use of this with online games, file repository, and a wide range of messaging topics geared toward game enthusiasts, PC hardware, and OS/2. In 1992 it moved to Burnaby BC and expanded to 2 phone lines at 14400 baud. As network technology became more accesible Powerhouse Point became a full FidoNET node, and added ibmNET, and Internet network connections. In 1995 Powerhouse Point expanded beyond the BBS world and became a computer consulting company and retail PC hardware supplier. Later that year the technology used to power the existing BBS was duplicated and sold to a group of Richmond BC entrepreneurs for a new commercial BBS business venture. The new system was built, tested, and ready to go however financing and technical issues ended the venture prior to the new system being publicly available. It had become clear that the BBS world had reached its peak and that the Internet would soon dominate. The revenue potential was too risky to justify the business startup costs in capital for the new phone lines, modems, multiport serial hardware, and related infrastructure. The failure of this venture had no negative effect on the original Powerhouse Point BBS, but rather the new technolgies for the commercial system were largely developed on and already incorporated into the original. By late 1996, Powerhouse Point reached its peak at 2 28.8kbps lines in Burnaby, a third 33.6kbps line in Vancouver, and an almost unlimited number of Internet users over a 128kbps ISDN Internet link providing SIO and Telnet connectivity. Powerhouse Point was being powered by the latest versions of Maximus and OS/2. Surprisingly it ran on the same 386 PC it used in 1990 though it now ran with 32Mb of RAM, 13Gb of hard disk, 4 CDROM drives, and supported LAN network server code over a 10mbps Ethernet network. The BBS now supported dozens of games, over 1000 repeat user accounts, over 30 local message topics, 100 FidoNET topics, 200 Internet newsgroups, dozens of local file areas, over 100 FidoNET file areas, and the entire contents of the ibmNET network. Its main target remained the online gaming, PC hardware, and OS/2 communities. Behind the scenes it was also providing dial-up LAN and Internet access via SLIP and PPP, as well as faxing services for the growing list of Powerhouse Point business requirements. In early 1997 Powerhouse Point moved headquarters to Calgary AB. With almost no public users in the Calgary area, a growing requirement to focus on business needs, and the continued growth in the Internet, it was clear the BBS was in decline. In April 1997 the FidoNET network was dropped. By June the other networks had been dropped, and the public dial-up line was disconnected. In June the BBS software was officially shutdown for the last time. In mid 1999 the last known backup of the Powerhouse Point BBS was destroyed. Rumours persist that two other backups may still exist. One was almost certainly destroyed in 1997. The other cannot be found but is not believed to have been destroyed. The Powerhouse Point name continues to live on. The computer consulting company formed in 1995 is still owned and operated by Doug Shields in Calgary AB. It can be found on the Internet at http://www.powerhousepoint.com. The company also is known to occasionally run public servers for popular Internet games such as Half-Life, and Counter-Strike using the Powerhouse Point name. The company still services OS/2 and PC hardware, and has expanded into the Windows NT/2000/XP environment with custom application and web site development, network management, deployment, and related services. The original 386 computer that powered the BBS most of its mature life is still in production use at Powerhouse Point as an OS/2 file server. It sits right next to the much more powerful systems that succeeded it and now provide the backbone of web, e-mail, database, and other operations at Powerhouse Point's Calgary AB location." - Doug Shields Phone : 604-431-4569 Place : Various, BC Years : 1986 - 1998 Sysop : Doug Shields Software: Various Listed by telephone number, as they all were. A few of these boards did reach the web: see recoveries-002.txt. Source : bbslist.textfiles.com, compiled by Jason Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------ gopher://hp84.com/ | https://ge97.com/ .