"My 'nym was "Tempus" and I was the one of the folks involved with the (attempt at the) commercial development of the Stonehenge bbs software in the Seattle area. David Bonn was the primary author and architect. I helped with some of the architecture (mostly as a sounding board, and saying "what about if we..." to Dave a lot..); I coordinated all the alpha and beta testers, as well as software updates; and did a lot of work on the documentation. Somewhere around here I've got the disks we used to use to pass out each person's personalised version of the software. I've also got the original computer I used to run my 'henge on ("Sanctuary" was my henge node), and the message database and all that (assuming the ancient maxtor hard drive will power up yet one more time)."

"Seattle and environs had a very active and interesting BBS scene going on, with a lot of emphasis on "room" based systems all of which pretty much descend from CrT's original "Citadel" system. At the peak, between Citadel and Cit clones, Minibin, Stonehenge, etc. I'd wager we had somewhere around 40 or more 'room' based systems running out of the 206 area code."

"Of all the room based systems at the time, 'henge was unique in it's capability to network with other Stonehenge systems. The networking was very advanced for it's time, and modeled how much of current internet networking functions. Consider that at the time, the best known 'network' of BBS systems was FIDO, and their networking consisted of all their systems trying to frantically call each other, directly, during a hour or two window in the middle of the nite. Stonehenge by contrast had routing along with store and foward capability, and could call during idle time, at any time of the day. Systems did not have to call other systems directly, but could pass messages along from one system to the next. Our networking also understood about long distance, and rate plans, and allowed for systems to dial long distance numbers only during 'cheap' hours, while they dialed local numbers at any time of day."

"If you want to know more, let me know. likewise if you are going to do any interviews in the seattle area, I'm open to that also. Seattle had a very interesting scene at the time, including an active "Telecommunications Users Group "TUG", of which I served some time on the board of directors. Several of us 'old time' (mid 80's) seattle bbs users still communicate with one another, an interesting example of a bbs 'community' that continues to exist over 15 years since many of us called a bbs for social reasons." - Chuck "Tempus" van der Linden