As far as I can tell now, Ikonboard (the forum application we use) automatically prunes topics after a certain number of topics as opposed to date. That's why in the FYI forum, you can still see threads from 2002 (when the board got started), while in more active forums, you can only see 2006.
Even specifying "from the beginning" doesn't help when viewing topics, which is stupid, I know. I'll see what can be done, but it'll probably take a while. Ikonboard seems to think it's OK to just prune off topics that are old - or maybe there's some weird admin voodoo in the control panel I just am not accustomed to.
Searching for a specific thread breaks the boundary, meaning if you know exactly what you are searching for, it will show up even if it's dated 2002. That's not really very helpful, seeing as to how clumsy the search function in Ikonboard is, but at least it's something.
I'll keep you guys up to speed if there are any improvements on this.
Thanks for the heads up,
-JV