Before 1999 (ie before SOFT started), the main forum was the Singapore Music Forum (or was it Singapore Musicians Forum - can't remember!)hosted by Ovid (using Delphi Forums). It was one great forum with very high powered people giving great advices (Ovid being one of them - now I believe he is overseas). I believe the member count was pretty high. I learned a lot there. Then SOFT started. Ovid very nicely asked all the members of his forum to migrate over to SOFT. I believe he was also about to leave the country and did not have as much time to monitor a forum. I remembered I migrated over to SOFT at that time. Ovid also saw the potential of SOFT - perhaps the way James designed his website and forum, and got all of us to move - then he shut down his.
SOFT certainly came a very long way and grew tremendously.