Update from Jim and Walter
Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2002 2:34 pm
Welcome to our 498th member
Ure, Paul------------homestay@bigpond.net.au ----Sydney, Australia
1948 TC 6087 XPAG 6792
===and # 499
Schreuders, J.---------------treetops@wxs.nl--------Epe , The Netherlands
1949 TC 8711 XPAG 9342
===and # 500 !!!!!!!
Lunsmann, Paul---Paul.Lunsmann@jdsu.com---Birchgrove, Australia
1948 TC 4655 XPAG 5207
(I will now be opening that can of Old Speckled Hen that Ken Porter was so
kind as to send me - - Here's to #500 - THANKS KEN !)
===T-ABC member John Stedman (JohnHWSteedman@aol.com) recently wrote:
I have been on the list since the end of 2000, but have never heard the story
of how and when it all started. Perhaps you could enlighten us "newcomers"
around the time of the 500th member.
===OK John, Here's the story - as I remember it -
When I bought my car about five years ago, I realized that I would need some
help when the car needed repair. I surfed across the MG Cars Enthusiasts'
Club (http://www.mgcars.org.uk) bulletin board and began communicating with
other TC owners.
At that time the bulletin board combined all "T" cars together* and most of
the messages were TD oriented so I grouped together the email address of
several TC owners and we exchanged information by addressing our emails to
all other members of this little group. At the suggestion of someone (who was
it?) we included TA and TB owners in the group.
This continued for about six months as I recall, then one of this group;
Walter Prechsl created the "T-ABCs Forever" website and a little later he
established the "List". We could now address email to the List address
instead of to each individual member.
That's what I recall. Now, let's hear from the other original (pre T-ABC
website and pre-List) members. If you send your stories directly to me
(FDShade@aol.com), I will compile the stories and send them as one message to
the List. Maybe Walter will post it on the website for future members.
Jim Shade, West Covina CA
*Sometime later, the UK site separated the T-ABCs from the TD messages. That
was at the suggestion of one of our members (who was that?).
===and as Walter remembers it
My story from the beginning:
In beginning March 98 I browsed around in "www.mgcars.org.uk" and asked
someTC concerning questions. A bit disappointed because of that many TD and
TF subjects I got contact to Jim Shade and after some discussions what we are
looking for and what we were doing in real life he asked me what can we do to
fit better our TC needs and how could we make a more direct information flow
than with that overloaded T-typers bulletin board?
So we started "TABCs Forever" in the middle of March 98. I began to create
the first web pages, Jim gave me some suggestions, which pages and
information we or better "the TC driver" would need. That need were fastly
widend to fit also TAs and TBs.
It was pretty clear that beside the web site we would need a bulletin board
or something similar. Running my first business web server at a friend s
office in vienna, he suggested to take a "list server" and so we made our
first experiences with that kind of communication on my friends hardware.
After 2 or 3 months we had so much daily messages that my friend s web
server often was overloaded and we got some trouble about that.
In December 98 I set up the listserver at eGroups and from that point of time
the whole enterprise got a bit more professional. i remember, we had to pay
about $50 a yearto avoid commercial ads in our message pages. With the
current yahoogroups solution I am not very happy, maybe we find another more
reliable system some day, but it is costless. The "TABCs Forever" website
meanwhile has moved to a provider in Hamburg.
In the meantime we could get so many members that are MG TABC specialists,
that we probably can say our "club" is the best and the fastest source of
knowledge in the MG world.
Let s see what the future of our "club" brings. One very promising thing is
just under construction and to be released in about 1 or 2 months, a special
web accessible database with the contents of all our mails since the
beginning of TABC. And that really will be "the source" for everybody in the
TABC world, who looks for a technical hint or any other description we have
discussed in the past.
Best regards -- enjoy your membership during the next years
===and that's it from
Walter and Jim
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]