From an old thread where we hit 1 million post.
In 1999 hayabusa.org was created by a man named Chase in Texas that worked for an ISP. His screen name on the board was bigdog and he had the skills and the know how to make the site prosper. In 1999 message boards were just up and coming and bigdog was on the cutting edge. Back then there was only one hayabusa web site and talk of the up and coming busa was exciting. As the hayabusa was released to market the true performance was unveiled and the site began to grow.
Original members of Hayabusa.Org included screen names like motorhead, Frank Adams, and Ducmaniac. You might know these names as now owners and administrators of great sites like LAbusa.org, Suzukihayabusa.org and Psychobike.com. As Hayabusa.org grew in popularity and size bigdog was faced with many of the same problems that we encounter today. Chase's vision for the site was exactly the same as the one to which I hold today, clean, PG rated full of information for the members. As with any other large group of people there were many opinions on the way the site was run and many felt the site was censored and they did not agree with the vision. A couple of other sites were spawned out of Hayabusa.org with their own visions and today we see those sites thriving on the Internet. There is nothing wrong with someone disagreeing and a few good men took action and opened their own websites, I support them whenever I can.
I ordered by busa in 99 and it was delivered to me in Feb of 2000. I searched the Internet high and low for information and the only results in those days on a search Engine (Alta Vista) was hayabusa.org and a review between a blackbird and busa. I was a member on the board then under a different screen name (withheld ) and I went to the site every day. One day there was a message on the site that Chase was shutting it down because of cost and financial woes in his personal life. The website stated that he was selling the domain and all content of the site. His only requirement was that whoever took the site over had to have the means to keep it running. At that time I worked at a world wide ISP and had plenty of resources. I spoke with Chase on the phone and we agreed that I could keep it going, because if licensing problems he sent me the data from the old board but could not provide me the message board to use. I started a new board with zero post and always had the plans to import the old data into the new board. I got that completed a few months ago, you can read those posts from the original members in the forum called "Original .Org Message Board"
It took 5 or 6 months for me to get the site fully functional with a message board. I remember the first new member that I met, his screen name was narcissus and I consider him a close friend to this day. Paul was one of the old timers and he joined the new board and helped me through the early days. You will still see him login from time to time as an admin. We would wait for days for new messages, when we started to grow a little Labusas and SH.org had jumped in the mix and they were absolutely ripping us apart with the traffic and member comparisons. Psychobusa.com appeared about this time and eventually transferred names to psychobike.com about a year into it. Frank and I go way back, I hosted his website and administered his website and board for about 2 years.. I still sneak over there as an admin and snoop around every once in awhile (no one tell Frank).
The site began to pick up speed and to be honest I'm not sure when exactly it happened but this place went from being a website hobby to a job¡K¡K I hosted the site in my house, I had two T1 circuits, seven servers ranging from mail to web servers pushing out pictures, videos. As the site grew the T1's couldn't keep up and I had to move hosting out of the house (very manageable) to a hosted service. It took about a month for the ISP to call and tell me no way was I going to be able to stay on a shared server, the site had too much traffic and we were bringing the server to its knees. We went to a dedicated server and have since upgraded a couple of times. There is a co location move in the near future because pricing is so crazy on dedicated servers to support the demand that we have.
