network54's Tornado discussion forum nostalgia (1999-2000 posts) & still active!

[Frankie]

Last week I discovered this time-capsule gem of a thing: network54.com's Tornado Discussion Forum, dating back to 1999 to 2000. It contains many threads of gamers discussing Tornado. The amazing thing is that your can still make a post or reply to a post and Notwork54's forum system will date-stamp your post or reply! Like a living fossil of time. Or a living archive. This is very rare. The interface (GUI) is minimalistic - boring - but the topics discussed are anything but boring.

In year 2000, gamers were trying to find a way to revive Tornado. To interest a developer to enhance the game. It's 2016 now and, well, and we're still trying to get the game to be enhanced (at least some of us). So nothing's really changed. Except that the same people who discussed Tornado passionately are now 16 years older. One more difference - the 16-bit assembly language Tornado code is now available, but it might be a too little, too late to do any changes to the venerable Tornado.

[Frankie]

Just for fun, I did a search for SteelBeasts and...whoa!!!!!

http://www.network54.com/Forum/78969

[Frankie]

The link http://www.network54.com/Forum/3887 has gone blank. I should have saved the 16-year old Tornado forum discussion threads before it was too late. Now it looks like it's too late! Another piece of Tornado history ... gone.

[Frankie]

Well at least there's still the good 'ole Tornado discussions on Google's Group's PC Flight Sim Usenet site.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim/subject$3Atornado

[Asid]

It is a shame when great resources are lost 

[Tom N]

Isn't there a chance that google did a cache saving? So by trying to search for it in some archive it might be stored somewhere still?

[Frankie]

network54.com is acquired by Tapatalk. Today according to https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tapatalksupport/network-status-update-t40506.html Tapatalk is "encountering some problems that are out of our control, but will temporarily affect several aspects of the Tapatalk Network and services."

[Frankie]

I will write in to Tapatalk support and see if something can be done to restore the pages. Wish me luck.

[Frankie]

Apparently, according to this, the Tornado discussion forum on Network45.com missed the migration due to inactivity. I've sent admin@tapatalk.com an email. Hopefully, the whole of network45.com gets migrated smoothly.

[Frankie]

Tapatalk Tech Support replied.

Hope springs eternal!

[Speedwagon]

Hi Frankie, any updates on the migration to Tapatalk?

[Frankie]

They need to contact the admin of the long lost Tornado group. Without his passworder the migration is stalled. Everything is now lost in the eter.

[Speedwagon]