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<h1>History</h1>
<p>We take the name from <b>dimension.spodnet.uk.com</b>, which was a collection of mixed Unix hosts ran at a UK
college from 1997 to 2004. Here is a quick collection of notes describing the history of the original system.</p>
<h2>dimension.spodnet.uk.com - 1997-2000</h2>
<p>We've been able to scavenge some old pages from the original dimension's website, so rather than explaining the
history we'll present the text from the original site.</p>
<p><b>dimension</b>'s original "About" page, wrote by <b>argh</b></p>
<img src="/img/old-dimension/index_dimname.gif" alt="Dimension Mark 1's logo" />
<p>dimension was born on 10th October 1997. An old computer was resurrected from the ashes and reborn. From its
slavery under Windows 95, dimension was given a new lease of life under linux. The box in question was a Dell
Dimension series with a Pentium 75MHz processor and 16MB RAM.</p>
<p>RedHat 4.0 was installed and I opened up the system in a 'secure' firewalled environment. A few users were
granted access. News of the box spread in the local community until I was asked to put dimension on the net.</p>
<p><img src="/img/old-dimension/dimold.gif" style="border: solid 1px; float: left; margin: 20px;"
alt="The physical Dimension Mark 1 PC" /></p>
<p>dimension (mark I) had been liberated in fall of '97, however the new year brought a lack of machines at work,
its fate was deemed to be that of workstation once more. To keep dimension alive the server is now running on
one of my home PC's which I brought into work. It used to have Slackware on it and it was my main development
machine for the past 3 years. After many processor updates from 486SX to DX2 to AMD DX4 (aw man that was bad),
many hard disk updates, two new monitors, three new keyboards and three new cases, it now runs an Intel Pentium
[233MHz] processor with 128MB RAM. Disk access is through an Adaptec 2940 controller card which run a 4GB
Western Digital Caviar as well as a 9GB Seagate Barracuda....of course I could go on about it's supralight speed
3x CDROM...but we don't talk about that part.</p>
<p><img src="/img/old-dimension/dim1.gif" style="border: solid 1px; float: right; margin: 20px;"
alt="The physical Dimension Mark 2 PC" /></p>
<p>dimension still runs on Redhat 4.2 (after an upgrade), under kernel 2.0.36. We nearly went Redhat 5.x but I
found that a lot of older software was incompatable so we've stayed here till I fix the bugs...and to see</p>
<p>dimension now supports more than 30 users with ranges of interest from houses to horseracing, linux to loo
rolls (okay no loo rolls). We hold the official Stagefright (still under construction...come on Tracey!) and
Idlewild band homepages. We run a Linux user group (thanks to qwaszx et al. for that one), IRC server, MUD and
loads of other services to keep our members happy, as well as drag the Internet community to us.</p>
<p>From the "Servers" page:</p>
<p>dimension is part of a much wider family of linux servers</p>
<p>the domain name [spodnet.uk.com] itself is registered to a friend who has given me some DNS space. It's not that
I couldn't go out and get my own name, it's because of the family, and kin is kin.</p>
<p>dimension itself is now, finally, after some months of relative obscurity receiving some attention [19501 hits
Feb 1999]</p>
<p>servers in our family include:</p>
<p><b>max</b> is the latest brainchild of tek, who was a founding member on dimension. Although the URL belongs to
this server, max is actually held in another protected area.</p>
<p><b>time</b> is an old friend of dimension. time runs on an Macintosh 8500 Power PC and runs Linux PPC.</p>
<p><b>federation</b> is a Silicon Graphics Indy R5000 which helps us out with a little webcam problem.</p>
<p><b>revolution</b> is a Dell Dimension P75T overclocked to 90MHz. it's owned by scrump who's been a user of
dimension for many a year...well almost from the start.</p>
<h2>dimension.h3o.org - 2000-2002</h2>
<p>Its difficult to identify what changed, but we suspect that during 2000 there was a change in circumstances for
"<i>argh</i>", the operator of dimension. For a long period the systems have been hosted under 'spodnet.uk.com'
but they were switched to 'h3o.org'. From the archives we can see that his aim was to offer dimension out to a
wider audience. Unfortunately, a large section of the userbase slipped away from dimension as the cross section of
college attendees that used the system started to move on university.</p>
<p>The original dimension popped offline some time in 2002. Some of the original users still frequented a IRC
channel called
#dimensionx, a small spin-off from the IRC server hosted on dimension itself, but even this morphed into another
entity.</p>
<h2>dimension.sh - 2020-</h2>
<p>Around June 2020, <a href="/~nikdoof">nikdoof</a> discovered the <a href="https://tildeverse.org/">tildeverse</a>
and had
a throwback to his experience with <b>dimension</b> during his college years. Instead of joining one of the
existing servers
he decided to create a new home for the 'dimensionites', if they would ever discover it again.</p>
<p><b>dimension.sh</b> came online 26th June 2020, running CentOS 8, and was open to new members on the 3rd July
2020.</p>
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