Tillek

Actually it's not against all odds... The "local guys" have tons of backstock they are desperate to off load. I had a computer business in the mid 90's to mid 00's and you wouldn't believe the pile of junk we had. Got rid of a lot of it when the business closed and my business partner and I (who had moved in together to save money back when we still had the stupid idea we could save the business) went our separate ways.... but there is a local store around here I still go to and buy stuff out of their junk pile (things I didn't have in my junk pile)... Lots of old school SCSI stuff, connectors, convertors, drives, etc. etc. etc. If you're looking for a BBS to call.... bbs.sfhqbbs.org port 5983.... The last Atari ST BBS on Fidonet. (... and it runs on an actual Atari Mega 4 STE). Just post here if you have any issues.

It's a shame you couldn't get the full fledged CosmosEx... I hope he does another run again, as I'd love to get a couple more.

I'm just messing around. Got my first Commodore a few weeks ago (just waiting for a part to get it fully working, it's got everything but the 80 col right now).... so for me I have to say the war is finally over.

Now you're just talking crazy dude..........

Well, I think the point was... the old link is long dead... is there any place we can get them now, in 2017? Especially for those of us with those TT's and Falcons......

Yeah, if ideas were really worth anything by themselves, I'd be a millionaire and able to afford to make my ideas reality. But still, this was great information, thank you!

For what it's worth.... My brother lives around Providence... My sister and I visit him once a year in the summer (she's a teacher).... We haven't decided when we're going to go this year (it will be June, July or August) but I'd be up for hooking up with some A68k users in the area (And even some A8s).

Yeah, I did the safe zone thing myself. The best part is, when you disband your party and start a new one (and in essence a new game) all that stuff sticks around. so once we got the serpent thing figured out, we just left the boat back there as a "bridge" between the moongate and the land so we'd never have to do the sector editor thing again.

Well, I meant to say "we couldn't find the MARK" of the Serpent. Basically, there were 4 Marks that did different things. You found them in dungeons and when you touched the flaming whatnot, it gave you the appropriate mark (I know you know this, this is for those who may not remember or played it). In my version, for whatever reason, when you went to the dungeon on the quest to get the Mark of the Serpent, when you touched the thingie.... you got a duplicate of another Mark (I want to say Kings). Now this might have been because we once stumbled on one accidently and got it before the quest, or ... well... who knows. I'm a software engineer... I don't question how bugs happen just like I don't question the mechanics of breathing. So without the Mark of the Serpent, you can shout Evocare all day long and nothing happens. So after we went and got hint guides (not as easy back in those days... no "google" or web) and confirmed that we were indeed in the right place and getting the wrong thing, we just went to the nose of the serpent, saved, edited our x/y position by a few squares and continued on. I still have those original disks, and I'm tempted to see if the problem crops up again... (But I also have the Atarimax cartridge version of III and IV so I'll probably be playing those just to compare the experience and to prevent any urge to "cheat by copying the save disk"). If only Atarimax had done Autoduel and the rest of the Ultima series.

I finished Ultima I recently as part of my "Ultimate Quest" to finish all those games from my childhood. I'll be starting U2 as soon as I find my original disks (that I got instead of a Happy 1050 for my birthday) I was going to try it on the C128 (since I misplaced the Atari 8-bit disks) I recently got, but I don't know what people were thinking when they said the Commodore version had better graphics. I did win U3 back in the day... kinda (we couldn't find the life of the Serpent, no matter how much we tried, at that location we just got one of the Marks we already had, so we sector editored our way past the serpent). Ultima IV we got far on, but then either my little brother or dad won it and that kinda took the wind out of it. It will be fun playing III and IV on the AtariMax cartridges.

Jookie's site has a good document about partitions and all that... I don't have a link handy but you seem to be good at finding that.... let me know if you have trouble. If you're going 32gb, look into BigDos if you're running stuff in TOS (2gb partitions)... If you're going MiNT or one of the others.... may not be so necessary. I found I had a sealed copy of MINIX (not the newest release though) when I was cleaning out my old place and I'm looking forward to playing with that, but I don't think it will end up being anything more than a "hey, this was cool to play with for a day" environment. I don't forsee myself using it on a regular basis as I am looking to create a MiNT and TOS environment for software development.

No, I have that on my TT, but it would work on the MSTE.

And for the record,if you think we're being harsh by bashing a fellow hobbiest and calling him out on his flaws, take a step back, look carefully at what we're upset about and why, and rethink if you're about to criticize us for the doing the same thing you're about to do by criticizing us for criticizing another who was criticizing another. Bonus points if you followed that line of thought. Double bonus if it made you think.

My problem started on the lantronix BBS threads. We had just finished discussing the UDS vs. the MSS 100 AT LENGTH with a lot of opinions on the differences and why people think one is better and he asks (in the very next reply) if he can use an MSS 100 (which was well established that it was possible since the discussion was about the pros and cons of one over the other). Mind you the discussion involved a lot of people relaying a lot of experience with carefully thought out and researched posts.... one of my replies took nearly an hour of thinking it out, looking things up so I was relaying information of value and not just talking out my butt or relying on my bad memory. But why read that. I'll just ask the question again and of course everyone will drop what they are doing and cater to me. I started to lose interest after that. Partly because I didn't see the point of taking the care to answer questions when people didn't care to read them....and... I didn't want him to get his stuff running and be calling my BBS and have to deal with him where I enjoy my hobbies.

(Which is something I'd love to give you more insight in, but I am only starting to dive into that pool myself....)

For the record, my MegaSTE's external HD is ICD Link based so that might have been part of it... I just remember it was a disaster and I actually thought the whole drive (and my whole BBS from the 90's) was destroyed only to find thankfully when the CosmosEx was no longer part of the chain, all was good). If it worked for you (and still works for you with the Falcon), then all the more reason to just stick with it (or buy another for use with the Falcon). AES and desktops and such are really personal preference items. Thing, Teradesk, Jinnee... ask a dozen people get a dozen answers (Jinnee seems to be a favorite but I haven't been able to install it so that it runs more than a few seconds without crashing under a multitude of environments). But for functionality sake.... Look into Mint. Unless all you want to do is play games or such, then TOS may be fine. But if you want to do anything serious, look into MiNT. NVDI isn't a desktop (just making sure that's clear, not saying you didn't understand that from the outset)..... You can find it here. http://www.s212939144.websitehome.co.uk/awarez/ There are other places and other resources if you're interested. I have seen some recent (as recently as 2015) that suggest Warp 9 may be better. I only found them like... well the 2015 one was tonight... the other was prior to NVDI's last release so I kinda ignored it. It might be worth revisiting since you already have Warp 9 on the Falcon you're getting. (I am going to revisit it with my TT030 since it also had Warp 9 and I'm finding NVDI, as much as I love it, conflicts with my VME video card sometimes).

Jookie is Slovak. (Well, technically I'm Slovak, but my great grandparents came from "the old country" so that's probably not what you mean). But I can say my CosmosEx spent a lot of time sight seeing in Bratislava before taking the slow boat to America (and it WAS a LONG boat ride). I never once questioned Jookie or his commitment or his value to the community. People here are confusing businesses with hobbyists who charge for their time and materials because while they want to help the Atari community, don't have the financial resources to foot he bill for it and their families want to see some benefit for the time their loved one can't spend with them (like maybe a trip to the zoo with the kids and dinner out for the family). I don't know about Lotharek and whether this is a primary source of income, a "second job" that provides meaningful income, or "a hobby he enjoys but can't afford to give it all away for free". I know a few things.... 1) I do want to get into doing Atari related projects for the community (probably software development more than hardware but someone is convincing me to look into driver development and how that can be more valuable. 2) I will not foot he bill for your hobbies. My time is valuable and I will expect something for my efforts for the enjoyment I provide. 3) I ran a business once. I no longer do. I have a job... A full time job. While I do not have a family to speak of, I still have things that have to be done in the few hours from when I get home from work to when I go to bed. I will not run what I do as a business. I will run it as a hobby, which I will do for fun and enjoyment. 3a) (Unless my income from the hobby exceeds the IRS limits for such activities, at which point, I will make a decision to stop the hobby, or quit my job and pursue this as a business....) 4) I currently make the equivalent of $25/hr. That's what my time is worth. If you buy something from me, minus the material cost, the remainder is how much time you get. Once that is exceeded, I help at my discretion, when the time is free, motivated only by the values my parents instilled in my to do a good job and do right by others.... but if I have a week like I did this week, where I had to put in a few extra hours each night, which meant I had to go to bed almost right after I got home so I could catch the early bus the next morning from Akron to Cleveland.... well... I'm not going to sweat not getting back to your email right away because I don't think you're using your Atari for mission critical business stuff or that your children are starving because you won't go to the grocery store until you beat level 38 of the game I wrote. 5) If you block w1k and gargoyle and read this thread again, it becomes REALLY funny (and you don't have to deal with negativity like that again).

So..... I like the idea. When I was a new Falcon owner I was curious about a lot of this too. You can do a lot of searching but in many cases, some of that stuff isn't produced, or has been replaced by newer versions, etc. etc. etc. Since I'm guessing you don't want to just talk to the crickets.... Currently my Falcons are both out of commission and I miss them (but my TT can keep me happy for now). But here is my $0.02 so far. Mind you, I'm really old school Consider upgrading to 14mb a top priority. If you want to get the most out of the Falcon (or even just run Mint without issues).... You won't find it hard to install. I haven't used an SSD drive (really haven't used one on any of my machines, vintage or PC). I like old hard drives. That said, my first Falcon did come with an IDE/CF card adapter. Fairly quick. It also had the benefit that I could pull the card and read the first partition on my PC. (Of course, there are ways to improve on that which brings me to....) Uwe Seimet's HDDDriver http://hddriver.seimet.de/ I consider this the best piece of software for my vintage system. If his driver doesn't handle your storage device, send him an email and it will soon (and then question your life and whether you really need that particular device). I believe in supporting people who still support Atari by writing software. That said, it's still the best thing out there. There are those who will tell you all about the free stuff, (but my philosophy is that if you're a cheapskate, you have no business owning a Falcon or driving a Ferrari). Seriously though, I think you'll find a lot of your problems go away if you invest in that. You'll hear a lot about UltraSatan. Frankly, I prefer CosmosEx. Not only does it not invoke images of the prince of darkness, but it provides a lot of functionality that UltraSatan doesn't. (Like file sharing with your PC directly over the network in TOS, floppy emulation, SD cards as partitions, the ability to use USB keyboards and mice and thumb drives, the ability to set the clock from a time server and more). Plus it's controlled by a Raspberry Pi, so you could probably use it for anything you'd want to use a Pi and your Falcon for. (It also has experimental STing stack so you can use the internet on your Atari. The ability to set your system clock from a time server? Yeah...... Unless that Falcon was owned by someone who replaced the NVRAM battery in the past decade or so, it's probably dead. Uwe (I think I mentioned him above) has some utilities which will help with that. Check his free utilities section. The only thing about the CosmosEx I would caution against, is that in my experience it didn't play well when I mixed it in with real external drives on my Mega STE (My BBS machine as I was going to use it to make backups). It seemed to work just fine on it's own, and generally ok with the TT's internal drive. But when I'd put it on the TT (on the ASCI), with the internal drive (internal SCSI) and the BBS "external" drive (connected directly to the SCSI) it would often miss the internal drive (50% of the time). In short, it doesn't always play nice with others. NVDI is a must in my opinion. It will increase the screen update routines in a massive way. (Not that you're probably into BBSing, but just running BinkleyTerm (an all text Fidonet mailer) with and without VDI is a huge night and day difference, you'll wonder how Atari thought it was acceptable to release the machines with the VDI routines so broken. Replacement desktops, AES's, etc... a lot of that is going to be specific based on personal taste and what you're actually going to do with it. Of course, we may be getting ahead of ourselves.... do you have a monitor you plan to use with it yet? Not all monitors out there will give you a good picture. Maybe you should start there.

Just FYI I would be very interested in the MUX system and I'm happy to hear you're still around working on it.

Yeah, all I can get at Goodwill around me is square LCD monitors cheap... Some have been great though with the ST's. I actually got my first Commodore this week... a C128. Got the power supply arriving Monday and it has a problem with the VDC (a replacement is coming from a fellow Sysop of a Commodore BBS I helped with Atari stuff and who I contribute to his BBS with messages and such). But at any rate.... Glad you enjoyed your stay.... I noticed where you were from... Interesting... I have some acquaintences there from the Star Fleet Battles days.... Don't suppose you're into SFB? Alas...... Looking forward to seeing you back someday.

Glad you enjoyed it... and thanks for actually sending the new user email (after the ars technica article I got like 30 new users and only a handful of hello messages). I mean really, who comes into someone's "home" and doesn't even say "hello". Just a quick tip for those coming to STar Fleet HQ... Two very important commands. % will let you turn on/off message boards for quickscan. The "Memory Alpha" and "Memory Beta" areas are archives (Atari and "everything else" respectively). Also, the J command jumps to the end. Yes, my general base has a few hundred messages... J to the last 5-10-20.... whatever you like. Please don't be intimidated when you see thousands of messages. It's an old system. Actually, that screen looks better than mine on ICE-T with my 1200xl...... Thanks for that.

Good luck... Happy BBSing... Hope to see you around this way soon.

Thank you again for all the help. I ordered one from Ray. Seemed like a no-brainer. Thanks again!

I don't think ICE-T was around when we were kids. At least not that I recall (by the time I moved to the ST in my 20's at least). I don't know if this will help, but this is the config on my UDS-10 which is connected to my 800xl. I have successfully used IceT do call BBS's with this configuration as well as run a Carina BBS (again, same config). I use an ICD MIO instead of an 850 and my 800xl is an original Rambo instead of a U1MB, but that is probably the only thing that should be different (which is why the baud rate is 19.2k) This is the config from my MSS-100 that runs STar Fleet HQ (the Mega STE BBS) I don't know if that will help. If it does.... I have some good ANSI screens over at STar Fleet HQ (bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983) I noticed a couple of my new VT-52 screens are a little glitchy but I'll try to fix them soon.

Well I know my BBS has had a lot more activity lately as far as callers. I'm just hoping more will post or play the games (and come back). I got one who I think will become a regular this week. But thanks to the Ars Technica article, the word is spreading.