HISTORY OF THIS FORUM ????

[tomb]

We all enjoy looking up the history of our machines, there accessories, and attachments. The combined knowledge of the people here is tremendous.. It seems to be a popular web site world wide. A lot of information is given out every day to help fellow collectors, newbies, and experienced collectors combined. It is a valuable resource. How did this web site start ?? It looks to be started in 2009. Is there a string to explain this?? Tom

[HisMastersVoice]

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4

[EdisonWizard]

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4

That was an interesting read. Whatever happened to Neophome and Mordeth? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them on here the short time I’ve been a member.

[HisMastersVoice]

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4

That was an interesting read. Whatever happened to Neophome and Mordeth? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them on here the short time I’ve been a member.

Neither of them have actively posted since 2009.

[tomb]

Thanks Brandon for the string. That is very interesting and this forum has held together since founded thru highs and lows. Tom

[Swing Band Heaven]

The history of the forum does go back further than that thread says. It originated as the old time victrola music message board which was a very active place hosted by proboards. In 2008 there was an upset (which I will gloss over here) but that led to an almost overnight split where most of the members of that board quit and moved to the original tmf which was also on proboards at that time. The new board was the idea of neophone and set up for him by mordeth. The original tm f was extremely active with over a 1000 posts a week being posted. A lot of this carried on discussions which had been taking place on the old time victrola music message board. The original tm f was shut down by proboards without notice following a complaint. All information which had been posted was lost and as I recall Mordeth set up another board which was again shut down again without warning for reasons I won't go into here. But again mordeth set up a new board overnight on a safe host which could not be shutdown. I know that mordeth spent many hours working on the site to get everything just right and provide valuable tech support to help us all use it. Although mordeth has not posted for a while I know he still regularly logs on and I spoke to him just a few weeks ago on skype to comment that tmf had just reached its 9th birthday!

[EdisonWizard]

Well that’s good to know. I was gonna say hopefully everything is alright with them. I guess the forum still has its tech peeps!

[tomb]

I am sure glad some people have the can do attitude with if you do not succeed at first try try again. That is exceptional Tom

[OrthoFan]

The history of the forum does go back further than that thread says. It originated as the old time victrola music message board which was a very active place hosted by proboards. ...

It started even before Proboards. The original Old Time Victrola Music Message Board was hosted on a private server 21 years ago, by Mark Best, the board's founder. A few pages appear on the Internet Archive --

https://web.archive.org/web/19970501000 ... board.html

Click on a year, and then scroll down to whatever dates are highlighted in the calendar. For instance:

For the first several years, the forum did not require registration. That, I think, became mandatory when it was switched to Proboards.

OrthoFan

[Retrograde]

I see Orthofan posted before I got a chance to finish my post below...

The OTVMMB was started by Mark Best in 1997. It was very active and evolved into the proboards forum. There was significant kerfuffle after which most members moved to the proboards version of the TMF which restarted in 2009 as what we have here now after proboards pulled the plug. There was also the ATM, The Edison board, Phonolist and Phonoland.

Proboards who hosted the forums was zero tolerance on anything that violated their Terms of Service agreement. They shut down both the OTVMMB and the TMF when those versions were hosted on their servers. All gone in an instant. 183 Phono Spotlight posts (similar to the Featured Phono posts)

The very first post on the OTVMMB was April 23, 1997. That was the start of what would eventually lead to the TMF.