Way back in the early days of home computing two Commodore enthusiasts (William Murphy and Eddy Carroll) both founder members of CUGI (Commodore User Group Ireland) established Europe’s first Amiga based bulletin board as a free service to anyone who was interested.
Over the years the BBS operating under the name Infomatique! became very popular and developed a world wide audience.
For the total lifetime of the BBS We used a pre-production Amiga and it never gave us any problems until the day it died.
Right from the beginning dealing with Telecom Eireann (the local Telco monopoly) was very difficult. They insisted on us using approved modems which they supplied at very inflated prices. It could take up to two years to have an additional line installed which meant that it was impossible for me to move from my apartment where the system was installed. In general the experience was very stressful and exhausting.
Unlike many other Irish based bulletin board services we were committed to offering a free service but this policy proved to be very expensive and as the Internet gained in popularity the continued operation of a dial up BBS did not make sense so when the Amiga eventually failed we decided to discontinue the bulletin board. It is truly a pity that Commodore eventually failed as a commercial enterprise.
