Boot Hill BBS

The year was 1991.
The software was Wildcat!.
We were 16 lines strong in our heyday.
"Boot Hill made more marriages than it ruined."  (We think)

My original handle was Tooloud, but then I changed it to Gunslinger.
You may know me as " Gunny "

Boot Hill BBS operated out of my college apartment in Fullerton California.  For $10 a month, members had unlimited access to "The Saloon" (our chat area), "The Arcade" (games), "The Pony Express" (email),  and more. (We drove by our old apartment in 2006 and the massive bundle of cables I ran from my room out to the phone box outside is still there!)

Boot Hill began it's first days of operation in early 1991.  I remember watching the Rodney King riots on TV and reading through my Wildcat! BBS manual that had just arrived in the mail.  We quickly grew from a single line message only BBS to a 16 line monster in 1993-1994.

In 1995, Pandora and I moved to Las Vegas to plant our roots and start a family.  We opened up Boot Hill out here, but it just wasn't the same.  We kept it open in Las Vegas for about 18 months.

I still keep in touch with Athena, F350, Pandora (my wife), and Slim Pickins, but some of my original favorites I would love to hear from are:  Proteus, Utah Jazz, Beastie, Boogie Man, etc.  If you're a Boot Hill user from the early 1990s, send me an email.  I'd love to hear from you! (Send a message to : russ "at" hotlinkdata.com  (Be prepared to tell me something unique about Boot Hill so I know you're legitimate)

I dumped a ton of money into Boot Hill.  At one point it was actually making about $50 a month, but I never recouped even a fraction of what it cost to set it all up and keep it running.  The phone lines alone were $300-$400 a month!  What I learned though, was invaluable.  My skills learned with Boot Hill rocketed me into a prosperous career in computers.  I've published computer articles, proof read for several computer magazines, had writeups in the newspaper, and worked for an Inc 500 featured company as lead programmer.

• I still keep in touch with Big Cheeze - SysOp of Brian's World BBS. (Anaheim)

• In 2006, I actually found the email address of Karin, the SysOp of Plastic Passion BBS of Santa Ana (which was the first BBS I had ever logged into)   I've emailed back and forth with her some reminiscing about old times.

• I'm now married to Pandora & living in Nevada.  2 kids, 4 fish, 1 cat, house, etc.

• We do a massive, fully automated "Haunt" at our home each Halloween.  (See below)

In 2001, I started Hot Link Data, a computer repair/consulting firm in the Las Vegas area, and have been growing steadily since.

I definitely miss the magic of coming home from work late at night and seeing the Boot Hill Saloon packed full of callers, and having to log off at 4am to let the "nightly maintenance" run it's course.  Everything was so high tech, yet so malleable - It was just incredible.

Remember how Boot Hill BBS was customized and detailed out like crazy??  Well, when I do things, I like to do them well.. and I *LOVE* to put the icing on the cake, so to speak, so you've got to check out our Halloween web site that shows what we do to our house each year.
Click HERE to check out www.abouthalloween.com.

NEWS

6/19/07 - Haven't heard from anyone new in quite some time now.  Maybe I need to spend a little energy adding some meta-tags and so forth to get this page picked up by search engines.

Here's an ad we had in the Las Vegas Computer Journal in 1995-1996

Here's our business license from Las Vegas from 1996.  Pretty cool huh?

Here's who we have contact with:
 

Gunslinger & Pandora (Us!) (Gunny owns a computer repair shop & Pandora owns a floral events company)	Slim Pickins (Married, 2 kids, now works for McAfee in Orange County)
Big Cheeze (SysOp of Brian's World BBS - Now living in Colorado)	Karin (SysOp of Plastic Passion of Santa Ana) (This was the 1st BBS I ever chunked on)
Azrael & Hellshawn  (Now married with a son!, Living in Orange County)	Athena (Now married with kids, living in North Carolina)
F350 (Spends most of his time at Lake Havasu, AZ)	Utah Jazz (Set up Boot Hill's Novell server - Long time Friend - Now lives with girlfriend & son in San Francisco area)
Zippy (Met up with him at my high school reunion in 2007)	Lunatic (He worked with me for years after Boot Hill Vegas - Now works for the water district in Vegas)
Kitiara (Contacted me in May 2008 Boss IT lady in So Cal)	Taz Boy / Dark Knight (Doing/working IT in SoCal)