Hugo's parents had a house, Burcott Manor (I think), just outside Wells and his bedroom was like most companies' server rooms of the time.

Complete with his PDP whirring away and various Acorn Archimedes boxes and things serving BBS software.

We wrote a BBC-micro based BBS package called "Datahost+" together some years earlier, when he still lived in Street. It was a Viewdata bulletin board solution - Hugo's own BBS was called "The World of Cryton" (I believe that was something to do with Red Dwarf the TV series?) but at one stage we had many sysops using it.

Hugo moved from viewdata to text-based boards, and at the same time wrote a really great suite of software for accessing bulletin boards and the like for the Archimedes... erm, I forget what it was called (Arcterm, perhaps?) but he was clever in that he created a free version to get folks onboard and then released the paid one, a model that happens far more now than it did then. He also had a shop in Wells called "The Serial Port" for a while, with a stylised version of himself as its logo.

As I said, a very clever man and a definite inspiration for me.

Sean