It started in august 1999 with a mail from HaZZeL to me, Elwood. I had known him for some months - we were both running abandonware sites (or what was counted as that back then). He was asking me what I would think about opening up an alternative to the Abandonware Ring. Back then the AR was basically the only ring - with the exception of Abandonweb, which was a small webring (with a similar concept to today). The Ultimate OldwareZ Linkpage was founded.