Note: Google have not yet started fully indexing this archive, but you could search for "indycar" to show at least one result I have manually submitted to show this works.
Archive contents
This archive has more than 70,000 posts in 2178 pages and spans time between December 8, 1993 - May 22, 2009. It's busiest period for posts was between 1996 - 2001. If any data appears to be missing, censored or has not transferred properly I suggest searching for the subject/title in the google version.
Why?
Although it's nice that google has the group archived it is impossible to alter the address bar to skip pages there... You literally have to click the arrow to go through every page 30 posts at a time (requiring more than 3100 clicks and page loads to get through to the older content)! With this archive you can simply alter the page number in the url, or you can go through the pages five at a time.
About R.A.S.
rec.autos.simulators is an unmoderated usenet newsgroup that was created on November 30, 1993 at the request of UUNET, an ISP based in Virginia. Until that point the sim racing community had bounced around other similar group topics, annoying users as it went. The topics begin with discussion of IndyCar Racing (1993), F1GP (1992) and end with users trying iRacing (2008) for the first time. The traffic and activity tapered off with the creation of self hosted forums in the mid-2000's and by the time this archive ends was really slowing down to the point where often the spam would overwhelm any real threads that were posted. The newsgroup does still exist as a part of Google's archive and is active, but it's not even a shadow of what it once was.
About R.A.S. (The dark side)
Unfortunately R.A.S. included a lot of arguments and a fair bit of spam (including some that was purposely targetted). So ferocious were the "flame wars" that it was regularly suggested the group be split so each group of users could be separated from each other. The lack of moderation likely led to the eventual downfall of the group as the political arguments and negativity ran wild, and wouldn't generally be allowed on moderated forums.
Original R.A.S. Charter (Last updated 1999)
Disclaimer
Race Sim Central in no way endorses or claims responsibility for the posts on this historical archive owing to the nature of discussion as an unmoderated public forum. Some links do point back to racesimcentral.net as we could not validate the original address, in some cases the url will be repeated and work properly in a reply (if it still exists). Please report any pages that you believe warrant deletion from this archive (include the link in your email).
