ThumpNugget

As I mentioned, some of the Atari specific files in the torrent report as incomplete. Did you manage to find/fix those? Hey there.. What I think happened is this: I started the first torrent and realized that I had some work files in there so I moved the files around how I wanted them and moved the work files out of the way and created the second torrent. I (thought) I had deleted the first torrent but it turned out there were people downloading the first torrent.. I think that is why some people were getting 300K downloads while others were taking days.. The ones on the first torrent that I didn't properly remove the torrent were taking days. I've been working on the SoftSides the past few days.. If you can tell me which files specifically I will double check to make sure its not on my side...

Thanks for the concern.. I was the unfortunate recipient to a baseball bat across the nose and a golf club into the lower jaw (separate incidents - I just decided to get them both fixed at the same time) . The worst part has been the compression bandages combined with my inability to shave - like velco on my face. Anyway the worst of it is over and I now get to pretend I am handsome for a while.

Yeah I brain farted that.. I was thinking he was posting about the auction posting for other sites as opposed to what forum they were posting them.

Hey there, if someone wants to put up a torrent more power to them As far as making more sets... and thanks for the opportunity to get on my soapbox I have not done them for the other magazines mainly because it just takes too much time. My goal (motivation) for doing this is to help preserve this stuff forever. I could make larger batches but that also takes time and the last 50% of each batch would be going out over several months time which means much less efficient use of the time devoted to this project... As it is I still have more to scan than when I started. Having said that.. the current format is much easier (labor wise) as one double sided printout is all I need.. I even paid a guy a few bucks to cut them for me so it was a pretty pain free experience. If the feedback is positive for this format (I see no reason why it would not be - the cases are virtually indestructible and do not get scratches and no exposed paper) then I will make larger batches (and go back and redo previous mags in this format) and hopefully sluff off the actual distribution to someone else so it can be done over time. ...And for today's useless trivia, here is the process of scanning in STart (Antic/Analog did not use this process which is too bad because they would have looked much better, I plan on reprocessing the raw scans to fix them) : 1. Deep clean the scanner (once per magazine, includes using Q-tips and isoprop on all the moving wheels) 2. Scan the magazine into an uncompressed PDF 3. Do a quick clean of the scanner (just go over the scanning part with a cloth and cleaner) 4. Rescan bad scanned pages (on average about 10% of the pages are rescanned) 5. Extract the PDF into individual TIFF files (each page runs 20-30 megs) 6. Divide the TIFF files into two directories - one for color pages, one for non-color (this has to be done by hand right now) 7. Run a photoshop script on each directory, one script for fixing color, one for fixing and converting to greyscale 8. Combine the files into one directory 9. Recreate a PDF from the TIFF files 10. Run the OCR to Descew and OCR the PDF To give you an idea of what the reprocessing does, here is one page (there are other much more dramatic examples) from one the Antics in the first set (the current torrent). Compare this to the next picture of the same page after processing. The pictures look very similar (depending on your monitor settings) but if you look closely (put your face at the bottom of the monitor at look up at the top of the page) you will notice that in the first picture you can see some bleed from the reverse page. This is mostly gone in the second page which results in a much nicer picture, a better OCR, and reduces the size by around 30%... and unfortunately it means reprocessing everything done before the Softside magazines Before: After:

I was not able to get to the post office on Tuesday... These were mailed Wednesday morning: Atarian1 Foster mirage Stephen telengard twiliteZoner zodiacprime

Understandable argument though I would say that you have to look at the difference between a site where the entire purpose is to make a profit (eBay) and one that is a community (AtariAge). When posts are placed here the question should be "is this good for the community?". For me personally I very much appreciate seeing people list theirs (and others) items for sale in whatever format (direct sale, auction site, etc). I've made several purchases from the "heads up" given and there is also the occasional conversation that sparks with good information (i.e.: What makes this so valuable? Can Anyone tell me how to know if that is a real xxx?)

These were mailed out today to the following: Albert 8bitguy1 boog DarkLord Jet-x Marc Oberhäuser Remowilliams tjb (2) There are a few I did not get to today because I had to get these mailed before closing time due to there being a couple of non-USA addresses that can't be done after hours. There was also one that did not have a mailing address (I've PM'd you). These will go out tomorrow.

I've sent everyone a message that was on the list. If you did not receive a message let me know. Thanks. The (now spelling corrected) list: 1. Remowilliams 2. 8bitguy1 3. telengard 4. tjb (2 copies) 5. twiliteZoner 6. Stephen 7. poobah 8. DarkLord 9. boog 10. Marc Oberhäuser 11. Albert 12. zodiacprime 13. mirage 14. tjlazer 15. Jet-x 16. Atarian1 17. Foster

That should cover them all then! I'll get a message sent out today. Thanks everyone! Remo Williams 8bitguy1 telenguard tjb (2 sets) twiliteZoner Stephen poobah Darklord boog Marc Oberhäuser Albert zodiacprime mirage tjlkazer Jet-x atarian1 foster

Na, you haven't missed any.. There should be another one in a week or two though

Currently at 15: Remo Williams 8bitguy1 telenguard tjb twiliteZoner Stephen poobah Darklord boog Marc Oberhäuser Albert zodiacprime mirage tjlkazer Jet-x

Since this has moved to a "selling" type thing I've created a topic on the for-sale section to do an "official" name gathering/mass emailing/mail out goodies topic: Start DVD Sale Topic I've already added everyone here to the list that stated they wanted one..

Currently I have on the list: 1. Remo Williams 2. 8bitguy1 3. telenguard 4. tjb 5. twiliteZoner 6. Stephen 7. poobah

This is the official list for gathering names for those that want one of the STart magazines PDF sets. This set includes all the Magazines and the catalog inserts from STart magazine as well as all the included discs in MSA format. I'm going to this in a similar fashion as the other sets: take names for a few days (or until I run out of the 17 that I am selling), then send out a mass email for money and details for shipping, then ship them out... Here is what the set looks like: Front: Back: Inside: DVD: More pics/information can be found in this topic: STart Magazine on PDF An example of one of the completed magazines can be found here: Start 20 Vol 3-09 1989-04 MIDI Breakthrough This price is $8.50 in the U.S and $9.50 outside the U.S and this does include shipping... Add a reply to this topic or send me a PM and I will add you to the list.

Well I was looking to retire.... Heh I haven't added up my costs yet.. It will be cheap though.. under 10 bucks total (that is including shipping as well). How about $8.50 to the U.S. and $9.50 outside the U.S. You could always get the online store back up and I could ship the headache to you

Greetings good people.. Last week I was lucky enough to have facial reconstruction surgery (10 bonus points if you can correctly guess how many holes were drilled into my skull and lower jaw).. So I had some time to spend looking at different jewel boxes to find one that could be used on all DVD PDF sets (now and future). I found one I think works very well, in fact I'm going to go back and redo that Antics/Analogs as soon as the Comics and SoftSide magazine cases are done. The only downside is it is only a one disc case so multiple DVD sets will have multiple cases (no biggie). Anyway.. Nothing fancy. Here is the one for STart: The Front: The Back: The Inside: The DVD: The inside with the DVD: I know its a bit busy on the inside.. It is a bunch of the graphics I pulled from STart magazines when testing some of the other jewel box sets and since the case is see-through I thought I would print some of STarts graphics on the other side of the cover though it was supposed to be in black and white to make the DVD "pop" but the printer guy didn't understand what I wanted: Anyway I made up 20 of these buggers so hopefully there are some people out there that want them:

I am putting together a nice little pack for the comics and STart mags since there seems to be some demand for them (the sleeves for everything arrived today finally).. I was able to get a copy of the Star Raiders and Warlords graphic novels so along with the original five and the other pack in sets (assuming Albert has no problem with me adding the ones from this site) That should cover all the ATARI related comics: 5 Original Atari Force comic game Pack-ins Centipede comic game pack in 3 Swordquest comic game pack-ins Yars revenge comic game pack-in Warlords graphic novel Star Raiders Graphic Novel Atari Force Comics (20 issues) Atari Force comics special issue Have I missed any?

.... and I made the front page! Boooyaaah!

Sounds like you are making some good progress! Keep pushing and see what you can come up with.. WOrking with a flatbed scanner may be a little painful though. I was being a bit optimistic on the number of pages. I just finished cataloging the BYTES I have.. 41 issues (12172 pages). They run from Dec 76 through Dec 81.. The Dec-81 issue alone is 544 pages! I took a quick peek through a few of the 1981 issues.. There were several issues with articles from Chris Crawford going over display lists and other Atari specifics. I had no idea he had written those articles for BYTE.

Hi there Charles.. I appreciate the offer but it turned out that all the images were already on the web so no point in duplicating effort.

Upon closer inspection I have more of these than I thought (that and there a few that went really cheap on eBay last week). Not a ton of them but around 40 issues (mostly from 1979-1982 and a few earlier ones). If anyone is really serious about putting effort into this.. What magazines do you have that you are willing to part with? I think one possible way to do this is instead of doing the entire archive and releasing it at once (which would take forever) would be to work on getting complete one year sequences and putting out complete volumes.

How are the scans of these going? I have finally completed my run of the UK AtariUser and was going to start taking them apart and scanning them in the next couple of weeks. I dont want to duplicate effort so if you are still working on this project please let me know!

In honor of Boise State making another BCS game (against TCU - the BCS chickened out and didn't want two non BCS teams embarrassing them) I actually put forth some effort yesterday and finished processing all the STart scans so these are now complete... Yeah! There are a couple of options as far as getting these to people (I'm trying to decide on some sort of standard process to follow for future archives as well) so I wanted to solicit some opinions.. In the past I have put together a small DVD set and more recently just torrents.. I'm not sure what people prefer but here is what I was thinking: Option 1: Create a DVD set similar to the Analog/Antic magazines. The STart archive is just over 3 gigs so it will fit on one DVD... I don't overly enjoy making these things but if there are people that want this then I certainly would entertain it.. or maybe if someone out there that actually likes making these things wants to do it and only charge for materials/shipping plus a buck or two (hey it can pay for your membership Option 2: Make a disk only. I like this option since this is what I do now - I am putting all my scanned PDF DVDs into one 50 DVD folder which takes up much less space on the shelf. This way the cost would only be about $1.50 (the cost of the DVD, the ink to put some graphics on it, and a decent mailer) plus shipping which should be minimal for DVD only. Option 3: Make a torrent only and call it good.

Seeing as there are now 30 seeders I am dropping my end.. Looks like everything actually went very smooth

A torrent is good a long people are seeding it. I will seed it as well in a bit, just need to fire it up on my primary computer and let it sit. Regarding hard media distribution, some people like to have a physical disc, and for those on a very slow connection even 600MB can take long to download. But I don't really know how much interest there would be in that. I am a bit hesitant to stick a 600MB file on AA, as if the file got linked from outside of AtariAge that could wreak havoc. However, I could very easily make it available for Subscribers (and in fact, this might be a very good reason for me to purchase IP.Downloads). ..Al Good points.. I certainly don't have any issue with putting it up on the site or distributing it any which way I did actually design a CD label for it (and by design I mean cut out some of the graphics) though I didn't quite finish it..