ThumpNugget

Excellent! Great to be a donor to the database I had not planned on adding the SoftSide CAS files to the PDF scans.. Since they were all in BASIC I was just getting them to load and then saving them to an ATR for each issue (for issues where I could not locate a monthly disk). I'll add a directory off of the Atari Programs directory for cassette images for anyone that is crazy enough to want them I was planning on doing a post next week on the SoftSide scans as far as progress and pleas for items that are missing.. Quick plea on the scans side: Every magazine from Vol 1-1 to Vol 7-2 (Feb 1984) is scanned. I know there is a Mar 1984 issue (I won the eBay auction for it then the guy flaked on me) and I know that the magazine ended sometime in 1984 so there can't be too many more.. If anyone has issues after Feb 1984 please get in touch! Anyway I plan on a more detailed post on it in the near future... As far as the adventures of the month club tapes.. I think I have a few at best (the box that had all the original SoftSide I bought had a bunch of cassettes I have not gone through yet, they are still in storage). It would be great if some of these turned up...

Not that the game is worth it I've been working on converting a pile of SoftSide magazine cassettes to get the programs off and saved to disk for the ATRs to go along with the SoftSide magazine PDFs... Anyway after having all sorts of problems with the cassettes I finally figured out that lower volume gets much better results.. I decided to take one of my worst cassettes (noise wise) and try to convert it.. This thing was a PAIN to convert.. I had tried 10-15 times earlier in the week. The tape has places where the recording was really muffled so I did not have high hopes.. I attempted it again after turning the volume down and... Viola! only three tries later one of the worlds crappiest games is brought back to life. Introducing Plasma: somehow even atarimania missed this Gem As you can see the game is in BASIC (both in design and the language) Many a minute was spent on the title screen: And then there is the gameplay: Move your guy, build a wall, the thing-a-ma-bob (some sort of asterisk plasma monster?) can eat through it, but it takes precious time. Don't let it touch you! The fire button makes a perfectly square bomb explosion. Your guy is at the exact center of the explosion so don't worry, he'll be OK! I'm not sure what the goal is or even if it is possible to "finish" a screen.. or where the plasma comes in.. and all too soon it is over: Here is a cassette image for the game so you can play too! Remember to have BASIC loaded and the OS-A ROM (XL/XE ROMS don't work). Have Fun! PLASMA.zip

I've noticed that systems have been getting some very low prices on eBay.. Like a 1200xl and a 600xl combined for just over 20 bucks: http://cgi.ebay.com/Atari-600XL-and-1200XL...93%3A1|294%3A50 On July 7th there were five auctions with 600xls: The first went for $2.25 (also included two 2600 Jr systems) The second went for $12.54 (it also included a 1050 drive, a 1027 printer, and a 410 cassette) The third went for $4.46 The fourth went for $4.25 The fifth went for $2.25 All of these systems (including the combined items) had total shipping of $15.00 (15.25 for the 1200XL and 600xl) so I would not be surprised if the guy dumping all these machines lost money after shipping. Boxed systems still get a decent price. This may be similar to what happened to modems.. Even if they work they become unusable in the future because it will be difficult to connect to current TVs and that will only get worse when they start taking out analog tuners from televisions... ..It could also be that most collectors have plenty of the systems.. How many do you really need? I notice that software and printed material (especially uncommon material) still sells well...

I certainly would not mind paying a subscription fee to keep the site up and as free from advertising as possible... Since we are all throwing out ideas out I have one as well: Last year I removed the labels off a couple hundred 2600 cartridges (I see most people use a hair dryer - I was in a hurry so I used engine degreaser on the whole batch at once which actually worked great). I ended up with about 150 of the labels pretty much perfectly intact and I thought a great Idea would be to put a light lamination on them and turn them into book marks... I also thought about drilling a hole through the cartridge board and turning it into a keychain (if cut just right it would still function if put into a 2600). These ideas were more along the lines of what to do with the wasted parts of the cart when converting them into a homebrew game - maybe include them with the new homebrew cart as a small add-in.. Most of the side labels were in tact as well.. Not sure what to do with those... small book mark for a paperback? eh...

I've had some luck on eBay in the last couple of weeks getting SoftSides (first time in months): SoftSide Auction #1 Including the March 1984 (Vol 7 No 3) issue (yeah!) SoftSide Auction #2 That guy selling the copies at 69.99 kills me.. I bought all my early Analogs from him (paid too much) just to have someone post almost the exact set I bought from him a few weeks later at 1/5 the cost..

I see what you are saying.. I pulled out my Winter 1984 and it is the only one that does not say the Volume/Number that I have. I must have matched it up with what was on the vintage-computer site for my spreadsheet... So.. The one labeled "Winter 1984 - Fine art of Computing" is actually Winter 1983 and is the missing Vol 3-4 not Vol 4-4 As there is no Vol 4-4 then there probably is not Vol 4-3 as nobody has it.. So Mr. Current was right all along... The list is then: Vol 1 No 1 Spring 1981 Vol 1 No 2 Summer 1981 Vol 1 No 3 Fall 1981 Vol 1 No 4 Winter 1981/1982 Vol 2 No 1 Spring 1982 Vol 2 No 2 Summer 19827 Vol 2 No 3 Fall 1982 Vol 2 No 4 Winter 1982/1983 Vol 3 No 1 Spring 1983 Vol 3 No 2 Summer 1983 Vol 3 No 3 Fall 1983 Vol 3 No 4 Winter 1984 ** Does not list the Volume information ** Vol 4 No 1 Spring 1984 Vol 4 No 2 Summer 1984 14 issue and with the small bonus red magazine 15. Thanks for clearing that up... Sorry everyone for the confusion.

Oh! You have to scan the red one and put it up! required by law....

According to vintage-computer there are 16 issues: (http://www.vintage-computer.com/atariconnection.shtml) Vol 1 No 1 Spring 1981 Vol 1 No 2 Summer 1981 Vol 1 No 3 Fall 1981 Vol 1 No 4 Winter 1981/1982 Vol 2 No 1 Spring 1982 Vol 2 No 2 Summer 1982 Vol 2 No 3 Fall 1982 Vol 2 No 4 Winter 1982/1983 Vol 3 No 1 Spring 1983 Vol 3 No 2 Summer 1983 Vol 3 No 3 Fall 1983 Vol 3 No 4 Winter 1983/1984 Vol 4 No 1 Spring 1984 Vol 4 No 2 Summer 1984 Vol 4 No 3 Fall 1984 Vol 4 No 4 Winter 1984 He only has 14 of the 16 - Missing vol 3-4 and 4-3. Micheal Current has 14 but says he has them all.... His list shows only to Vol 4-2 so he is missing vol 4-3 and vol 4-4... Between the two the only one that is unaccounted for would seem to be the Vol 4-3... (http://mcurrent.name/magslist.html). I also have Vol 4-4 so presumably there is a 4-3... I saw an eBay auction that had a pile of Atari Connections where one of them was dated before spring 1981 (red cover) and did not have any volume information so there may be a 17th but obviously that is not confirmed

About half of them have been scanned and are up for torrent: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4652134/En...ains_13_Issues)

Which issues are you missing?

Mine came in the mail today.. I see what you are saying about the size.. They appear to be 150dpi but for some reason they show as 600 DPI and as substantially smaller than they are supposed to be (1.6 inches by 2.24 inches or 4.1 cm by 5.69 cm for those less metrically challenged). The disc came with all the issues (each page IS a separate jpg file at ~500K). The disk also came with all the issues of Atari Computing (Which ran from 1996 to Jan 2000). These were all scanned on a flatbed scanner one page at a time so the paper folds can be seen... A lot of work! I created a PDF from the images from the first issue... Because of the size issue it would not OCR very well. I set my OCR to down sample to 600 DPI which for whatever reason really hurt the quality so I tried it again with no down sampling at all which gives a good idea of what can be created with the images provided.. The pdf of the first issue can be downloaded here: AtariUser Vol 1-1

I had a bid on these... My bid was canceled and the auction ended early.. Decide not to sell?

Thanks for sharing.. He did them all on a flatbed scanner.. painfull!! It is readable but some of the smaller print is hard on the eyes. Do you have any of the other DVDs? I'm curious if they are all the same quality...

I'll put up some examples when the DVD arrives....

Excellent! Thank you for posting the link... Has anyone ordered any of these DVDs yet? I've ordered the New Atari User DVD but I don't want to get any of the others until I see how the quality is...

Sorry, I mostly concentrate on Atari 8-bit and multi-platform computer magazines: Shawn Jefferson put up the torrents for complete runs of Antic and Analog magazines (may not be your thing): Antic Magazine: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4662235/Antic_Magazine_Scans Analog Magazine: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4728136/An..._Magazine_Scans

Hey there.. Not my fault! I have not been involved with the retromags.com site... Anything I've ever scanned is either up for torrent (thanks to the many members here) or "unreleased" as I try to get a complete magazine run before releasing them. I imagine they are restricting downloads because of bandwidth. Another site that does a lot of scans (http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/) took the magazines he did have online off. Hopefully as the people at retromags.com complete magazine runs / projects there will be a torrent or some other method for people to get the PDFs...

Hey there.. I do understand the work involved.. A little over 6 months ago I gave myself a goal of getting what I had scanned in a year... I had about 350 magazines at the time. I've finished roughly 250 of them but have had some really good collecting months and have bought more than I have scanned so I've made progress but still have more to do than when I started. I was thinking of doing a similar site to what you are doing, in fact I tried registering retromags.com but some bastards beat me to it! I took a quick peek at it but it seemed to be focused on more recent video game magazines so I didn't look further.. I ended up registering retrocomputermags.com (have not put up a site yet - still trying to decide on how I want to approach the problem). Anyway! I love that a group is organized and has taken this on and I would love to contribute..

Yeah my soapbox for the day: I agree that there are still some limitations for distribution of magazine PDF sets. I hope that people don't use it as a reason for not getting old computer and gaming magazines and newsletters scanned. Eventually the bandwidth issue will be solved and we can take that next step of actually creating a search-able archive with all these big PDFs and everyone will have all that great content at their fingertips. Until then we should be doing projects to make complete (or near complete) magazine sets that can be distributed using the methods available now (torrents, and heaven forbid mailing a DVD). Its a good first step that has to be done anyway. Speaking of which: I am currently working on scanning SoftSide Magazine. I have the first 54 issues scanned and am looking for any issues after the 1983-03 issue (the issue numbers on the cover are wrong they will say #40 and higher). I'm also working on AtariUser magazine (the American one) and have 19 of the 21 issues scanned. I'm looking for issue #14 (1992-06) and issue #20 (1992-12).

Well never say being cheap doesn't pay! Some Atari 8-bit news magazines-on-disks: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=130300794977 And assorted Atari magazines: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=300295014297

Sasha (Lab mix) and Porthos (Beagle) .. And in their natural state

Thank you for taking a look. I wish there was a way to know for sure the entire run of these lesser known mags...

Hey there, I have a question if you don't mind.... I've been working on getting SoftSide magazine scanned (I was able to make a trade for PDFs of the first 22 issues so I have everything through Vol 6 No 6). I'm trying to get an accurate list of the last 12-15 issues to know what mags still need to be acquired. The last issue was in August of 1984 and your list above is accurate until March of 1984.. The last two issues in your list repeat months (Jan and Feb) are these actually April and May?

.... Are Finally here! Looks like they put it up a couple of days ago. Torrents: Issues 1-40 - http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4771242 Issues 41-80 - http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4771250/ Issues 81-120 - http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4771260/

I do much more buying than selling.. I can't remember the last time I bought something on eBay and received it in less than a week. The normal case is about 10 days with 2 weeks not being uncommon. The last "big" item I bought took almost 55 days (granted it was overseas via slowboat). Being upset over an item taking a week from order to arrival is nuts.