The beginning
Cute ry was founded in the beginning of 1998. The people and the concept of having a place where to meet dates way back, though. The original place called 'intsu', a basement place in Helsinki, was founded around 1982 by a bunch of guys interested in computers. It was also the home for the legendary finnish group Pure-Byte. The place was later shut down by
the police because of the perhaps first and biggest hacking incident in Finland, as two members broke into various computer systems using a TI-99/4A.
Movin' around
The members moved into another basement location at Harjutori, Helsinki. The place was called either monttu, or hole. They stayed in there for less than a year. The next place was at Pengerkatu, Helsinki. That was somewhere around 1986. It was the golden age for Amiga. The members spent their time connecting to a back then famous BBS-board called M.I.T.S, also ran by the members who were working for Microdata corporation. The first MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) appeared. Playing them has since then had a big influence on the people, as many of the new members have joined the group through MUDs.
Split
In 1992 the people split into two, us moving into a basement at Albertinkatu, Helsinki while the rest stayed at Pengerkatu where they still reside and run an organization named Hole ry. At Albertinkatu, we bought a bunch of Unix machines (MicroVAX) and terminals ridiculously cheap from an auction. As a sidenote, someone got fired from the company who sold the hardware at that price. We founded Cute Communications oy and worked as an ISP, although not concentrating too seriously on marketing the business. The internet connection speed was 38.4kbit. The dialup consisted of only a couple of modem lines, which was later on expanded.
Korkeavuorenkatu
Around '94 we moved to Korkeavuorenkatu, Helsinki after getting thrown out from Albertinkatu. We continued running the ISP "business" for a while but decided to drop it because of lack of interest. Cute Communications oy still exists elsewhere, mostly hosting some web hotel customers. Because of no longer having a company, we decided to make
ourselves a bit more official and founded Cute ry, a registered non-profit organization.
Salomonkatu
At spring 2002 we moved to our current location at Salomonkatu. This place is located at the very center of Helsinki. We are still in a basement, but its quite a bit classier than the one we had at Korkeavuorenkatu, although you could argue that the Korkeavuorenkatu place had more 'feeling' in it. While being a bit smaller than Korkeavuorenkatu the space is now used much more efficiently as we pretty much planned and built the place up from scratch. Pictures of renovating can be found here.
