This page is a edited copy of the one that was originally on http://www.bat.org/intro/history.php, but eventually was lost. All content (C) Copyright BAT Ry.
BatMUD was first opened to the public as batman.hut.fi (the name
was later changed to batman.cs.hut.fi). The machine used was a Sony
NWS-1530 workstation running Sony NEWS-OS 3.3a (BSD 4.3) with 16
megs of memory. The machine was also the NFS-server for other Sony
workstations in the student laboratory.
The founder of BatMUD was Janne Frösen (Jaf).
The situation in batgirl was becoming worse and Herwood and BatMUD were merged to make a single and larger mud. The new mud was moved to lehtori.tut.fi.
There were problems with local "stuff" at Tampere University of Technology. A new place was found, Otto Mäkelä in Jyväskylä. The University gave permission to run BatMUD in palikka.jyu.fi which is a Sun SparcStation 2 with 56 megs of memory. The operating system was SunOS 4.1.3.
Balanced Alternative Techniques Ry (a non profit organization) was founded in Tampere. Its main purpose is to support BatMUD and make possible its continued existance.
Disk usage of BatMUD was too large. We had two choices: either we move to another site or buy a new disk. Players of BatMUD started to make donations. The money was spent on a 200M SCSI disk. As money was left after buying the disk, another 16 megs of memory was purchased. The disk and the memory were installed into palikka.
Balanced Alternative Techniques Ry bought a Tatung Sparc Classic clone. It had 96 megs of memory and one 1.2G disk. The operating system was Solaris 2.2.
BatMUD was moved from palikka to the new computer which was located again in the Helsinki University of Technology under the name, bat.cs.hut.fi.
The Classic was sold and a new faster machine, an SS10/51, was ordered. BatMUD borrowed a SparcStation 1 where the game could be run wizardlocked.
The new computer arrived. However, it was only an SS10/40, not an SS10/51 as ordered. A free upgrade to an SS10/51 was promised, The upgrade should be made during the summer. The machine had 80M of memory and one 1.5G disk. The operating system was Solaris 2.3.
The game was opened for playtesting. Guilds were missing and backgrounds had to be fixed.
The machine was upgraded to the SS10/51.
First a 16M SIMM module was added and later a 64M SIMM module was added. The machine now has 160M of memory.
The game is full during peaktimes, even with max limit of mortal players set to 150.
A second CPU (75 MHz Super SparcII) was installed; simultaneously, the max mortal limit was raised to 200 to test the capability of the new hardware configuration.
The old 50MHz Super Sparc CPU was toasted. The machine is now left with only one CPU. Max limit of players was set to 160.
The game is full during peak hours. The queue usually has 40 players (the max player limit is still 160). Max players record so far is over 240.
The game is wizlocked. Guild system is changed during the wizlock.
The game was finally opened for players.
A new UltraSPARC 2 compatible Tatung Ultra 2 was ordered. The new machine will have a 200MHz UltraSPARC CPU (and place for another one).
The new Tatung U2MP (Sun Ultra 2 Compatible) computer arrived. It will take some time to get BatMUD to run on it, as more memory must be bought as well as other missing equipment.
The new machine was taken into use. The player limit was raised to 300.
The machine was too unstable and the game was wizlocked.
The game was opened again with mortal limit 75. The machine is still unstable, though it had not crashed even once during the wizlock. (The machine crashed after 20 minutes uptime and were wizlocked again.)
4*16MB SIMMs were removed and the game was reopened. The machine has now 256MB of memory. Player limit was set again to 300.
The SIMMs were put back which meant that the machine had again 320MB of memory. The player limit is currently set to 250.
The BatMUD is now 8 years old! To celebrate the 8th anniversary, an old version (restored from backups done 14th September 1993) was opened temporarily on the old machine (lepakko.bat.org port 2000).
A new Sun Ultra 60 machine with two 360 MHz UltraSPARC CPUs and 768MB memory was bought. Later 512MB RAM was bought and added to the new machine. The machine is not yet in use.
Four 9GB IBM SCSI disk were ordered with a box for them.
The disks arrived and the new machine was moved to HUT.
BatMUD was moved into the new machine.