History of the Bee Hive
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  In November and December of 1984, the Bee Hive was first formulated in
discussions between The Bumblebee and La Bete (now known as Beast). Madison had
been composed of mainly message boards at the time, and they decided that a
hacker board needed to be created. The idea remained silent until February of
1985, when Bee ordered a Sider hard drive, which would be needed.
  Immediately, he began programming the software, using some I/O routines
programed for the Apple-cat by the infamous Charlie Brown. Within 2 weeks, the
program was ready, but the Sider had not yet arrived, so the board went up on
floppies, as a test period on February 25th. Many program bugs were discovered
in the first few weeks of on-line service, but by the time the hard drive
arrived on March 15th, the program was ready. The rest is history.

February 25, 1985 -
  The Hive goes up running on two floppies and a Novation Apple-cat modem
running at 300 baud. To this day, the Sysop maintains that "the Apple-Cat modem
is the best modem ever made!"

March 15, 1985 -
  The Hive gets a Sider 10mb hard drive, and expands greatly with a large file
library.

June sometime, 1985 -
  The Hive begins asking people for donations to help support it. Many people
generously help out.

July 5, 1985 -
  Happy 4th of July, the hard drive gets fried by a power surge, and all data
is lost. In addition, Craig is away slaving on a farm in Nebraska at the time,
and will not come back for two weeks. Thus, the dark ages begin.

August 10, 1985 -
  Bee puts in an order for a Courier 2400 bps modem, for the Hive which should
so go back up soon. The hard drive maker thoughtfully erases the hard drive
while fixing it, and when it arrives back, the Hive has to be almost entirely
rewritten.

August 26, 1985 -
  Just before school starts, the Hive goes back on-line, on a new remodeled
system. Including 10 sub boards, and plenty of files.

September 10, 1985 -
  A Timemaster II H.O clock card is purchased, now a time limit is enforced
making it easier for people to access the system.

December 4, 1985 -
  A new library is constructed and the Hive is looking good. 2400 is not yet a
reality, though.

December 23, 1985 -
  The Bee Hive subscribes to Newsoft, a weekly (and daily) electronic
publication designed to give users informative and entertaining articles onÔh)
ÔŒmany topics.
  Also, a new message editor is implemented. The new editor is easier to use,
and much more powerful.

January 27, 1986 -
  ACE was caller #10,000. He recieved 3 months free access. The Hive is now
getting roughly 40 calls/day during the week, and 60 calls/day on weekends.

March 10, 1986 -
  Finally, 2400 is up and running. But, due to a few problems it is only going
at 300/1200 for the time being.
  Also, many new features are added, and some code is removed, making the Bee
Hive much faster, and yet taking less space.

April 14, 1986 -
  Newsoft goes out of business, taking with it $180 in Hive money, which will
never bee seen again. The Sysop looks into other news services, but they are
all too expensive.

June 8, 1986 -
  Finally, 2400 is running. A small problem had plagued the Hive, and was
solved by simply changing a byte.

July 15, 1986 -
  Once again while the Sysop is slaving away in Nebraska the hard drive fails
causing the system to crash. Luckily, it was able to be put up remotely and was
only down a week.

September 1, 1986 -
  The Bee Line, the Hive's sister chatline first goes into operation running on
5 ports at 300 baud. It is Madison's first chatline!

December, 1986 -
  Because of the Hive's high usage, the Sysop begins looking for a way to add a
second line.

February, 1987 -
  A Corvus 45 megabyte hard drive is purchased for the Bee Hive, but because of
procrastination in rewriting the Hive, it will not be put up for about a year.
For nostalgia buffs, the hard drive is the same one as was used to run the
Safehouse up in Minneapolis before it went down.

June, 1987 -
  The Bee Line switches over to 300/1200 baud operation and is now running a
full 7 ports.

July, 1987 -
  As in the past two summers, the Bee Hive crashes. Nothing major, and it is
quickly fixed.

Fall, 1987 -
  The Sysop becomes a bum, does practically no work on the Bee Line or Bee Hive
at all, and gegenerates into a mindless programmer who spends his days working
on obscene Christmas Demos.Ôh)ÔŒ
January 25, 1988 -
  The Bee Line reaches caller #100,000 which happened to be Susie. This
incredible feat inspires the Sysop to get his butt in gear and rewrite the Bee
Hive (finally).

February 5, 1988 -
  The Bee Hive reaches caller #50,000. Unfortunately, that caller was not
identified and loses the $500 prize. :)

May 4, 1988 -
  A USR Courier HST 9600 modem is purchased probably making the Bee Hive the
world's only homebrew Apple 9600 board not running on an accelerator and not
having downloads. What good the modem does is anyone's guess, since no one with
9600 calls the Hive.

June 20th -
  Aieeee!  Corvus goes out with a bang, taking with it all the data, software,
source code, as well as $750 to fix it. The Hive is forced down to a simple
answering system for a month until the hard drive is returned and the software
reinstalled and reprogrammed. This also marks the 4th summer in a row that the
Hive has crashed!

July 21st -
  Hive goes back up after the crash. The software is old and buggy, and so it
needs lots of reworking to get going smoothly.

October 19th -
  The Corvus crashes again! The exact same parts that were replaced last time
have fried. Note that the wonderfully long 3 month Corvus waranty expired 1
month before. The drive is repaired in December, and billed at $610. A fight
began over not paying for the Corvus cuz $650 MORE dollars is a load shit.

January 24th -
  Corvus deal is finally settled. $55 is the repair tag, and the Hive gets the
hard drive back and goes back on-line.
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