PM me any questions you have hefe - I have encyclopaedic knowledge of BSD, btw the ending with the admral an rosline that was heart breaking.
An yea the firt "cylons" that where capable of independent though arose some time around 20 years prior to the first war, the cylons have been around longer but they where more like dumb robots and could only carry out sets of pre programmed instructions they where mostly used for dangerous jobs like mining and fighting in the colonial wars.