James Coates was one of the people who ran their own boards. Originally, at Sixth Form College where the computing department's machines and modems were utilised, and ultimately at home, where his Acorn Archimedes and dedicated modem was used.

CCl4, one of the biggest and most popular Viewdata boards in its day (and still available via modem on 01482 798249) ran a system called VHost, a custom written host program which allowed multiple users, messaging, chat and more. This was written by a decidedly odd fellow known as Gareth Babb, or Lord Hickery online. It was in a continuous state of development until recently, when interest in the system had dwindled. But with a little tweaking, it was possible to convince the program that the incoming telnet connection was in fact a modem, so VHost on the net became a reality.

So, complete nutters include James Coates, Gareth Babb, James Lawson, Ron Morgan and James Cronin, who helped a lot in putting VHost onto a machine on the Internet.

We won't mention Richard Whitehand because his contribution to the Viewdata world was similar to the contribution boxing gloves make to piano playing.

Special thanks (their names are in double height on a red background!) really must go to (in no particular order of appearance);

• Gareth Babb, for writing VHost in the first place and putting up with my incessant desire not to read his documentation
• James Cronin, for putting up with me and allowing me to use his machine as a beta-test host, for hosting "www.heaven.affection.net" and providing web space
• Hugo Fiennes, for writing the widgets to allow people to telnet in to VHost, and for writing (or sorts) an Acorn Viewdata telnet client
• Oaktree Internet Solutions for providing us with a machine and internet connection
• James "jARMES" Lawson, for doing me a most fabulous "Viewdata revival" button, and finally
• Danny O'Brien for endless help with publicity.