DarkLord

Well, thats good news that they are, at least, being built. Also explains why Henrik didn't return your e-mails. Lets hope they get them out soon. Like everyone else I pre-paid and am really looking forward to having USB and real ethernet support for my Falcon! Thanks for the heads-up, Dan.

Yes, Rodolphe is pretty good about getting back in touch with you. I always love! his! replies! as! well! Well, as far as Henrik goes, I just found this on their website: "Yesterday I received 130 EtherNat boards in a big box! You can see a very lousy picture of a few of the boards here (I had only my webcam available for taking the picture). You probably notice that the boards lack the connectors for connecting to the CT60. That's correct. We'll solder those connectors to the boards as we program and test them before sending them off to you. I inspected a few of the boards yesterday and noticed that a few had pins soldered together on the USB chip. This is something that the mounting company will pay for... Unfortunately this will delay those boards that suffer from this problem. But not by very much I think. I tried one of the boards too. Surfing the net worked fine and also flood-pinging. I didn't have time to test the USB too, since I'm moving to a new apartment tomorrow, but that shouldn't be a problem either. Since I'm moving this weekend, the process of soldering/programming/testing/sending the boards to you won't begin until next week." This was posted March 2nd, 2006. The picture does show multiple boards. There's hope.

Well, you could open up a sysop shell and do the copies from there, while the BBS is running. But that still stops users from logging on while you're doing it. Kinda defeats the purpose.

Argh. I know just how frustrating that is! I'm still waiting for Natures' SuperNAT to be released. Don't know what the holdup is there either. Last notice I seen said it would be done in a few weeks.Thats been some time ago. Oh well, good things come to those who wait and all that, eh?

Whoo hoo! What's the name of the BBS? Hey Doc! I believe he calls it, "ST Guild"...

Hi Dan. I don't, but I do remember reading a post in comp.sys.atari.st from him just a couple of days ago. I can't remember the exact wording but it was to the effect that he had the needed parts in, was assembling, and would be shipping out right after that. HTHs.

Oh yeah, we still be here. I think there is more individual support now, rather than direct commercial releases.

Both those games seriously rule. To be totally honest though, they are STe and up... They even work on my Falcon!

No folder that I know of, normally the *.SYS file will sit in the root level of your C drive...(I'm assuming that C is your boot drive). Glad you got it working though!

Hi. As far as I know, you always have to have some kind of driver software. You can boot from a floppy disk, but then the driver has to be on it. You don't know if you were using AHDI (Atari corp driver), ICD, Supra, or HDDriver? If you can't open the drive itself, check all the connections, and get back into the drive, then you'll probably have to get a copy of one of those. AHDI is free, Supra and ICD are no longer made/supported, HDDriver is still commercially available and is the best of the lot (my recommendation as well). HTHs.

Thank goodness it missed us directly. Communities around us, like South Williamson, got nailed hard. Locally, we had many trees toppled or uprooted outright. Power outages were the order of the day. (I've got UPS on my main comp and the BBS system, but thats only good for about 30 mins - we're talking about multiple outages of 5-6 hours each for the last day or so). About 1/2 a mile up the road from us, they had a funnel cloud top the hill, clearing a 30-40 foot path through the trees. It never came closer than that though. Still scary. Sphincter check time and all that! I appreciate your concern, thanks for asking.

Folks, we've had really severe weather here in the last 24 hours. (tornadoes, high wind, intense rain, cats and dogs-living together...<cough>, er wrong movie...) Anyways, we were without power for much of the last 24 hours. Which far exceeds the UPS I've got on the BBS. Our normally stable dynamic IP address changed, one of only 2 times its changed in over a year. Its now: 24,177.23.112 Until my server gets this updated, you'll be unable to telnet to "bbs.darkforce.org" although the actual IP address will work. Thanks for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience.

Folks, we've had really severe weather here in the last 24 hours. (tornadoes, high wind, intense rain, cats and dogs-living together...<cough>, er wrong movie...) Anyways, we were without power for much of the last 24 hours. Which far exceeds the UPS I've got on the BBS. Our normally stable dynamic IP address changed, one of only 2 times its changed in over a year. Its now: 24,177.23.112 Until my server gets this updated, you'll be unable to telnet to "bbs.darkforce.org" although the actual IP address will work. Thanks for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience.

No problem! It really is a great game. I know I'm addicted to it... Its like many online games though, the more people that play it, the more fun it is.

Actually, that was TOS 1.4 (or 1.04)...

Final Frontier 2 is an online, BBS multiplayer game. It supports individual play, team play, and even has a computer AI opponent. (The Sartharians). Because its a BBS game, it does not matter what computer you are using. It does involve strategy aspects. No, its not a pure "shooter", although there is combat. It reminds me a lot of Elite or Frontier, just not the graphics. No, its not a card game or an RPG. I'll post the Documentation as well, perhaps that will help some: Final Frontier II ©1995 Marc Ferrari Quantum Thump BBS - 14.4 baud (512)795-9175 This File has not been updated yet. None of the latest features are listed in this document. Please see the Updates file for all the latest info Contents ------------------------ I. Introduction II. Basic Concepts III. Combat IV. Computer V. Stock market VI. Team play VII. Latest Developments ------------------------ I. Introduction In Final Frontier, your goal is to control 60% of a region of the galaxy known as the Outer Rim. You can do this through colonization, war, and diplomacy. You may also be part of a team of up to five fleets (players). The only way you'll be able to do this is by raising money for yourself so that you can survive, and at the same time, keep your planet well defended. This documentation is also available as a seperate file. Since Final Frontier is a complex game, you may wish to download it from the BBS. If it is not available, you should request it from your Sysop so that you may look this over closely. II. Basic Concepts When you start the game, you'll have only 250,000 credits, which is not much. You should use this starting amount of money to improve your weapons, shields, and engines, and buy a few ships for your fleet as well. Shields are useful in battle because they keep your ship from being destroyed. The better engine you buy, the faster you'll be able to travel through space (conserving time is important in Final Frontier, if you want to be able to do more per day). The more powerful your weapon, the more damage you can do to enemy shields. For every level of weapon, you will be able to do a maximum of ten times that in damage. Freighters are for carrying raw matterials (things such as building metal, electrical equiptement, etc.; the stuff you need to build colonies) and ore (which you can sell to the Ore markets on imperial planets for money). Each freighter has a capacity of 100 tons total of eighter raw matterials or ore. Transports are for transferring colonists from planet to planet. Cruisers are the most basic tools of battle and invasion; before you can attack and enemies ship directly, you need to fight through his defensive cruisers with your own cruisers. To invade a planet, you need to destroy their defending cruisers. There are four types of planets: A,B,C and D. Type A planets are the easiest to colonize, because they already have conditions suitable for life (the Earth would be a type A planet). Type B planets cost slightly more, because their environment is slightly more hostile (such as Mars). Type C planets are more barren and desolate, often with no atmosphere. Type D planets are unlivable, rocky balls in space. They can be colonized, but they are the hardest to do it to. However, the ease of mining ore from these planets is inverse to how hard it is to colonize. A chart would look like this: Type Mining Raw Matterials Needed Colonists Needed Frequency ---- ------ --------------------- ---------------- --------- A 3 100 100 vry rare B 5 250 100 rare C 7 1000 100 common D 11 2500 100 common One final word about money: Save it. Occasionally, you may meet up with a space merchant who will sell you some very exotic weapons or equiptment for your ship. These items will cost a lot of money, though (250,000 Credits and up). III. Combat In the end, war may be a necessity in Final Frontier. You may wage war by attacking other fleets, or invading planets. When you attack, make sure you outnumber your enemy, because the defender always has a slight advantage over the attacker. Invading planets is the hardest; in addition to the enemy cruisers, there may be defense installations on the planet which your cruisers can't reach. When attacking an enemy fleet, there are two waves: the cruiser phase, and the ship vs. ship phase. After you have broken through the defensive barrier of cruisers, the real dangerous part of combat takes place. Using your weapons or cruisers, you must attack the enemy. They will fire back, and you could be destroyed. Freighters and Transports may occasionally be lost in the crossfire of combat. If you win a ship vs. ship battle, you'll get all of your enemy's fleet that remains. A destroyed enemies planets will then become "lost colonies." Invasion of a planet takes one phase only, and that is to break through their barrier of cruisers. Once you win, the planet will be yours. IV. Computer ------------ You have a shipboard computer at your disposal which allows you to connect to Outer-$erve. Once you get over the initial line noise of subspace telecommunications, you'll find it quite useful. With it, you can do several things: o Send Electronic Mail (up to 20 lines) to another player. o Play online gambling games for real credits. o Call up the history of a planet. o Call up the current profile of a planet. o Access the stock market. The electronic mail is a full command line e-mail system. The commands you have are: /Gxx [Go to xx line number] /Dxx [Delete next xx lines] /Lxx /A [Abort] /S [save E-Mail] Players are notified at the beginning of the game if they have E-Mail waiting. The online game is based on an old 20th century game known as "poker-dice." This is a game much like five card draw poker, without things such as straights and flushes. You just have to get as many dice of the same number as you can; on a tie, the dealer wins. If you win, you double the credits you bet. If you lose, you don't get anything back. A "log" is kept for all planets which you may see for a charge of 2500 credits. This will show you who has ever colonized it, who has invaded it in the past, etc. You may also gain current information on a specific planet, including it's type (A through D), current owner (if any), and location. V. Stock Market The stock market is complex, and fluctuates like it does in the real world. You may want to watch how a stock rises and falls before buying, because they follow realistic up and down slopes. Watch out if the stocks get two high, because they could crash. If everyone sells and doesn't buy, you should also expect it to go down and not up. Stocks will split if they get too expensive. The stock market, like in the real world, is a good way to gain money if you know what you are doing. It is also a good way to lose a lot of money if you don't. VI. Team Play You'll find that winning the game is almost impossible without a team. Teams allow all ther planets of the people in the team to be pooled, and if this adds up to 60, all the members of that team will win the game. A team is started by having a player access the team menu and starting a team. Then, anyone may request to join the team; the team leader will be given a chance to accept. No more than five people may be on one team. If a team leader is killed, the team will disperse. If a member of the team who is not the leader is killed, all his planets will be transferred to the team leader. VII. This just in from the outer rim... A renegade Titan from the system of Sol has just announced his candidacy for dominance of the Outer Rim and, ultimately, the universe as we know it. After months of speculation as to whether things would ever heat up in Final Frontier II again, a protracted war is now imminent. "Screw that crap about just grabbing 50 planets and winning the universe," said one FROSTY just before he jumped in the cockpit of his command ship. "We're developing planets here first, then we're gonna have a hell of a war." Various owners of intergalactic ships are now vying for the reign of supreme commander of all, but now with a new twist, said one man who was frothing at the mouth. "There will be a strategic game plan here," said a hiccuping STARCHASER. "We won't be dealing with 100s of cruisers and destroyers here, we'll be shoving 1000s of each into orifices where the sun never reaches, and we're not gonna stop." Currently, everyone is waiting for the other to make the first move, sources say. Several planets have been peacably colonized while others have been burned, nuked, and then taken over by crazed lizards and other less than vile commanders. "It'ssssss just a thing," slobbered one reptilian Satharian. "You haveth to undersssstand thath we are just presssserving the massster rassse. Our Armada hasss been frenthdly sssso farrr. We'll ssstart getting nasssty unlessss the ssseries 'Cop Rock' isss brought back on theee airwavessss. That'sss when the Guano hitss the rotating blade air-blower." The Titan that started it all after glueing the Satharian Ambassador's swamp chamber door shut just when a rumored ladyfriend was eggblown, was quoted as saying, "All who oppose THANOS OF TITAN will die. All who serve him will live. It's that simple; I don't know how to make it simpler, you cretin!" Thanos has vowed to make all that dare to seek the supreme throne drown in their own blood. "From their entrains, of course," said the Titan with a glimmer in his eye. All wait to see the outcome of the upcoming war in FINAL FRONTIER II. Patrons of QUANTUM THUMP are encouraged to read the docs and join in the affair. It's still early, so it's a great time to get in. Build your colonies and planets into massive empires. Team up (or not) with friendly and/or treacherous foes. Make friends with bug-eyed, mealy-mouthed, fishheadded humans. Or die trying; it's all relative, when one gets into FINAL FRONTIER II. Experienced players will find this go around interesting. New players will have time to learn. So go for it. The more crusaders we have trying to take over the universe, the more spoils there will be. Play now! More news forthcoming as things develop...

Folks, we're gearing up for another round of Final Frontier 2 here at the DarkForce! BBS. We're looking to recruit more players. If you've never played FF2 before, you're in for a real treat. I'm posting the Intro here, so you can get a "feel" about what the game is like. Please be sure and read the Documentation when you play! (I don't want to post identical messages so please check the FF2 thread in the ST/TT forums for the FF2 Intro). Thanks!

Folks, we're gearing up for another round of Final Frontier 2 here at the DarkForce! BBS. We're looking to recruit more players. If you've never played FF2 before, you're in for a real treat. I'm posting the Intro here, so you can get a "feel" about what the game is like. Please be sure and read the Documentation when you play! Final Frontier II Introduction: As I looked up from my comm display at the alien with discolored black and green splotches all over his face, I felt a wave of pity run deep within my bowels. The tears ran down his cheeks as he sat, shaking, in the plaid Naugahyde seat beside me, slowly telling me his story. "It was HORRIBLE," sobbed the broken humanoid." I knew I had the intestinal fortitude to handle it, being descended from Terran kings, but the atrocities committed in the FINAL FRONTIER war were just too hard to bear; especially those in THE DEAD GODS sector...that rebel DARKCHYLD's home turf!!" 'Kings? What?' I thought. I put the comm on auto and leaned back into my chair, fixing my full attention on his story. "It all started in the general assembly right before the war," he said. "The Satharians were miffed because of Ted Turner XXXIV and his holographic imaging colorization of something called 'I Love Lucy.' I think it had something to do with a red-haired puritan axe-murder. Anyways, distribution in the outer-rim was poor, and the Saths were literally shedding skin over it." He leaned back in the chair with a gracefulness I had not seen in ages, picking up his tea spoon and twirling it with exaggerated movements. Anything to break "It all seemed like a small interplanetary riot, you know, the kind that never gets any press anymore. Then that goody-goody MORDEN stepped in," He quick snorted and wiggled his nose contemptuously. "He promised the lizards he would acquire the rights to the shows and air them nationally. But instead he packed up the Saths' national treasury, stole the prime ministers wife, knocked off two holoburger stands, and, dear God, slandered the good name of the acquitted sports hero Orangutan Jumper Sampson..." I shook my head, remembering it well. "And that's when the proverbial guano hit the gliding rotisserie blades..." I said. "You guessed it," he continued. "Everyone went berserk, buying ships, weapons and other stuff. Interplanetary systems dissolved, governments collapsed, and all-out chaos ensued. And that was just from the media coverage alone!" "People started colonizing planets everywhere, trying to get a foothold of power. Dr. Scholl became a billionaire! But the thing about it was nothing was sacred," he said. "People were invading people, taking planets, and wasting each other just for kicks. It got so you had to hide in a sun's corona just to get some sleep." "But that's when all the new developed technology started coming about," I interjected. "You know, booby-trapping derelict ships, laying mines, massive production of defense installations, trade routes and other stuff." "Not to mention the illicit beaming of 'Sweatin' to the Oldies' onto command bridges playback consoles," he said. I shuddered. Truly a fate worse than death... "And that wasn't even the worst of it," the curly-haired alien said. "What about those distinguished few, ROGUE, SYSOP, MORPH and others; the real nuts! They sneaked around with weird aliases and thought no one would notice...." "Yeah, some real unholy alliances came about because of this war," I said as I read my tactical display, looking for SPACE PIRATES. " And with the new increased galactic size, there's going to be a LOT more space to hide in. Suddenly, the ship rocked with an explosion! Red alerts resounded across my bridge. "And shut that blasted noise off!" came a command. From the back of my mind twas some weird English-accented old man's voice. My alien copilot looked at me as if he had read my mind. "JEAN-LUC!" we said in unison. The alien started to reach under the dash for the General Foods International Coffees, when another burst knocked him from his chair. "Darn!" I screamed, grabbing the joystick like it was the last Pina Colada in Tahiti. I targeted the pirates with my newly-installed Photon Cannons, and blew them 10 levels past Hades. I started to let myself relax, but I noticed something peculiar. The graceful alien had been knocked out of his seat and was being jostled about the cabin . But he was moving now, on his feet, and it looked like he was supposed to be walking forward, but instead he was moving backward. "Just Beat me, just Beat me...." he murmured. I started reaching for my hand-phaser, slowly and cautiously. He spun around and stopped so abruptly I thought the gravity simulators were off line. "You wouldn't happen to have any peanut butter and bananas lying around here, would you?" he queried. I screamed and hit the floor, grabbing my weapon. But the Prince (God help us) slid over to me like a greased proton beam and wrenched it from my hand. "So, you figured it out, huh?" said the Prince. I stared at him, aghast. He just smiled that weird-smile of his; it was like something out of an old beach flick. "Yeh, it's me. One of my daddy's old fans set me free from the suspended animation chamber. And wouldn't you know it, after my daddy, Michael, and my momma, Lisa-Marie, hid all the Terran currency some years ago after collecting it from owning rights to just about everything (gasp); I'm quite rich! But I thought it would be nice to put some Thriller into your life by stealing your ship." He started to laugh; it was a ghostly, haunting laugh, and made him throw back his head. I took the initiative and pushed his skinny 80-pound body across the floor, slamming him into the bulkhead. But he quickly recovered, and raised the phaser. Click. "Shoot!" he exclaimed, wrenching off the battery cover, the SupraVolts falling to the ground. I sprang forward, slamming my fist on to the escape pod eject button. The small section of the ship he was in closed off and spewed forth into space, taking the demon-spawned love-child with it. I made a silent prayer to a certain bass drum-toting pink bunny. Collapsing on to the console, I heaved a sigh of relief. I sat up, entered some random coordinates, and warped into space. The war was getting bigger. It was much more intense. I was going to get my fair share of the... FINAL FRONTIER II (Final Frontier I was just a teaser...) * * * Think you're bad enough to survive this NEW, VASTLY IMPROVED version of Final Frontier? No longer do you have to wait for the wusses on your board to show up and play. No longer do you have to depend upon your teammates like in S.E.E. (Shameless Plug). Want to see if you are TRULY bad enough to hang with all the pros? It's a whole new game, networked and armed to the teeth... You know the old story... "This is where you come in to play. You have been given a ship and some vessels; the most that your government could give you in this deep space area. You must, either by yourself, or with the help of others, control at least 400 of the planets in the Outer Rim to win this war. By colonizing and fortifying planets, you'll be able to manufacture more goods and ships for yourself. You should expect aggression from other ships and planets, and should not hesitate to attack others to reach your goal of 400 of the planets. Good luck. You'll need it. Now live it! An expanded, networked galaxy awaits you, along with many players from all around the universe. So get ready, read the docs and new features, then let's get down to some serious arse-kicking! See you out there in CyberSpace, friend...

Folks, I just wanted to say that it only takes 1 single call each month to qualify for the ST Magazine subscription prize. Of course, the more you call, the more chances you have of winning. If you've never read ST Magazine, its a great little source for Atari ST users.

This month at DarkForce: Magic Phrazes - $25 prize for the player with the highest score at the end of the month! ST Magazine - one lucky Atari caller will win a free subscription! Good luck to all!

The monthly prize winners for March at DarkForce are: DGS 8bit CDROM - Stephen! Assassin - Arghtastic wins $25! ST Magazine - Arch Mage wins a free subscription! Congratulations to all!

The monthly prize winners for March at DarkForce are: DGS 8bit CDROM - Stephen! Assassin - Arghtastic wins $25! ST Magazine - Arch Mage wins a free subscription! Congratulations to all!

May be it is compatible for you, but it is not for the rest of us. I researched the issue, and it definitely has a (minor if you want) incompatibility with any TOS higher than 1.2. The program has a bug when it attempts an illegal/undocumented operating system call variation. This has no effect on older TOS versions, but in newer ones it has the ill effect that the program won’t be able to read from the pictures file. If you check carefully what happens when you get the error message, you’ll note that the disk is not accessed no matter how many times you click on retry. This is because the error is not produced as a consequence of a physical disk error, but it is an OS logical error. The program still works and run as soon as you click on Ignore. You just get some corrupted pictures. Okay, I went back again, played Bards Tale for over 30 mins here. Twice, in over 30 mins of play, I got the error that I had mentioned before. This is the same error as you are reporting. (its seems that we are close to saying the same thing, just in slightly different ways). However, it is in no way a disabling problem. I mean, click on ignore, it goes right on with -1- corrupted picture. Immediately after you move, or turn, or access another part of the game, a new picture (not corrupted) is loaded. As I said, I only had it happen twice in over 30 mins of play and countless disk/picture accesses. It doesn't affect game play at all really. This is with a Mega ST2, upgraded to 4 megs, TOS 1.4 and an Adspeed accelerator. I'll have to go back and try it with the Adspeed turned off and see if that makes a difference. I didn't have time today. I'll post results if it does make any difference, but it doesn't seem like its going to. PS Do you think we might be getting different results because of things like PAL vs NTSC or Euro vs American version? Could that make a difference as well? Thanks.

TOS 1.4 doesn't have that many incompatibilities...certainly not with Bards Tale here...

So you had errors recently, but not now anymore? Did you change something? All TOS versions higher than 1.02 produce the same behavior under Steem. I don’t know exactly why this happens, I would need to trace and reverse engineering to be sure. What I can tell you is that the error has nothing to do with the disk being damaged. Sorry for the confusion - years ago, about 1999, before I stored a bunch of my Atari hardware/software away, I could play Bards Tale as I described to you. Last year, I finally found the time and room to get my Atari collection back out. Now when I play this game, it gives an error like you described *occasionally*. I just keep trying a couple of times, and it finally loads. Which led me to believe that the disk was wearing out. Please keep in mind that I'm not running it under any emulator like STeem or Hatari... I'm running it on real Atari hardware.