Welcome back, Loki. Sax and violins are a somewhat unusual combi. What sort of music do you play?
Importing a backup is propably simpler. I've done that a few times. The only prob you might encounter is that the old database backup won't work properly with a new board. You need to install the same phpBB version the backup was taken from and then upgrade to the current version (3.0.14 or 3.1.x). Mind that 3.0 is not easily convertible into 3.1, so that you will have to backup the upgraded database again for the switch to 3.1. Please feel free to contact me any time if I can be of assistance. I also have rather a lot of old phpBB versions (alas, not all of them) on my backups so that I might very likely be able to help you out with the original software.
btw and slightly off-Topic: does anyone recall which poster it was who used to sign every post with "cheers!" ? I remember it was a male and a member of TrekBBS, EFCL and TK but for the life of me I can't recall the name.
Wasn't it RobertLoggia?