> So then, when you see this picture (and remember, it might only be showing half of the whole setup), do you think "wow, cool, they got to wrangle all of that", or do you think "OMG they had to wrangle all of that"? It's an important distinction to make, and I think someone's gut reaction to this amount of hardware in one place might influence how they approach building new systems.

Definitely in the "wow, cool, they got to wrangle all of that" camp!

I remember dialing up to this BBS quite a bit, and I also remember downloading tons of demos from other BBSs that originally came from SCBBS!