Many of the people here on Beta Archive today come from a forum that was closed down in august 2006 known as OSBA, or OS Beta Archive. If you have not been around for very long (like myself) or you are a complete newbie, then the most you would know of OSBA is from Andy's blurb about this site on the frontpage.
This is what OSBA looked like. If you want to explore the few archived pages and get a feel for it yourself, http://web.archive.org/web/200608131127 ... chive.com/]
As you can see, OSBA was an ipb based forum, and so it looks rather much like most other forums.
As of August 13 2006, OSBA had 3094 members, as opposed to BetaArchive, which at the time of my writing this, has a mere 704.
If you are interested in a more in-deph look at the posts, http://www.betaarchive.co.uk/forum/view ... 42ac0ed0c8
As You can read in that archive, their was alot of tension between members, and flame wars the likes of which you would never see here broke out.
It is also interesting to note some of the names that appear in the archives above.
KenOath, FiFi, XDude and Luckie, just to name a few, are well known names here, and may well be reading this now.
OSBA closed at 10pm GMT on the 17th August 2006.
Before it's closing the administrator, sHARD>>, had this to say:
So that was OSBA for those who weren't around for it. I hope i have not annoyed any of the ex OSBA by posting this as I know OSBA meant alot to alot of people. If you have anything to add (like info on the people behind OSBA and its server) please say something as i think this post is far from finished.sHARD>>- wrote:Betas are just about being 1337, but that didn't used to be the case. When I came to OSBA, we were all interested in the evolution of the operating system, of seeing what was possible, and seeing what had failed. In a way we were technological history officianados. But now we've lost that. The beta scene is all about hording betas; it's dominated by 13 year olds who spend their time starting petty fights and creaming over elitism.
