Grrr...People can be so awkward :)

[Ely]

Out past Basingstoke....

 

You are Bedford, you didn't know a Neale AKA Big Mac did you?

Ah okay re: Basingstoke. Yeah I'm in Bedord, but only moved here in 1989 so never knew anyone in the area with an 8-Bit.

[Keatah]

either way, he may not want to risk letting it out of his sight - which IS understandable.

I'm that way too. I have a few disks I've not been able to bit-copy or crack yet. And I'm sure they don't have many reads left on them before they give up the ghost and expire for good.

[Keatah]

As for the guy, god knows what his real reasons are, I'd love to buy it off him if I had the cash but the guy simply does not want to sell, but its the notion that its safer up in his loft when he's got no plans to ever look at it again.

 

I've sent various messages back to try and grease the palms but its a shame, knowing that much of what I had will be in that collection was what spurred me on as I was a massive collector at the time.

 

Its so annoying that you have communities like the Apple one that would also rather see stuff gone forever rather than spread it to be archived, you see I'm a firm believer of not keeping software in a box untouched forever IF its a super rare item, I'd rather it was out there getting the love it deserves, disks rot and so do boxes..

 

My only not spread items are those that are still on sale or requested not to be spread, the rest should be out there...

 

As said already, a thankless task but hell, you have to keep trying

 

Paul.

 

It is important to fully realize and understand what the motivation is. And be completely honest with yourself why you want to get at these disks. For the betterment of the community? For rebuilding your collection? For both? Only then will chances of success improve.

 

Apple II disks are really long lived. They don't seem as prone to bit-rot as most other 8-bit formats like the C-64. The 1541 always lost data on me. And so did the 810. The Disk II, rarely if ever. Perhaps that was a motivation to save everything back in the day.

 

Whatever the reason.. I have a bunch of un-dumped material and would like nothing better than to be able to run it in my emulators and have it on a .DSK format.

[Keatah]

I agree with snicklin and would just do it if I were you. I think you don't really have much to lose and going the distance for a mini-trip and Atari in the end is definitely worth it. What did you do in LAN party networking days when you had to lug the computer around?

 

You don't want it to rot? Well then get to moving, we don't have all day!

 

Yes.

 

I recall back in the day I would travel great distances and go through extraordinary efforts to attend WaReZ conferences. I'd strap all my Apple stuff into my RadioFlyer wagon and hitch it to my BMX and set out across town, stopping at Jack In The Box along the way.

 

I never missed one. Hefty bags were a cheap form of waterproofing so that I could ride in the rain and protect my hardware.

 

We'd do anything and everything to acquire the latest to post on the BBS. And I even had to get a wildcard so that the bigger kids could use it to make more games available. Such is the price!

 

And it was FUN!

[Guest]

I'm that way too. I have a few disks I've not been able to bit-copy or crack yet. And I'm sure they don't have many reads left on them before they give up the ghost and expire for good.

I have about 200+ vinyl lps in our loft - some of these are very hard to come by. and no one is getting hold of these - not even to look at

[Mclaneinc]

 

It is important to fully realize and understand what the motivation is. And be completely honest with yourself why you want to get at these disks. For the betterment of the community? For rebuilding your collection? For both? Only then will chances of success improve.

 

 

With me its both, if there's a person looking for something I'm straight in there llooking to see if I have it and if I do to offer it of course the by product here is that I'd also increase my collection but its never been a closed collection, un-sorted, needing tending but never closed...

[Keatah]

I'm open to attacking my rare and one-off disks with the right bit-copier program or the right duplication equipment. Once it has been copied, just once, I'd be more than happy to lend it out for proper cracking by someone more knowledgeable than myself. Absolutely. I have little desire to lock them away forever and say I'm the only person in the world with so-and-so item.

Edited May 23, 2016 by Keatah

[Mclaneinc]

Keatah, I don't blame you, what sort of made me shrug with the guy was that its all copies bar a few bits which a. I don't have a Happy nor any specialised hardware copying device and b. its a LOOOOOONg time since I cracked even a bad sector routine let alone anything more complicated so it would be his unprotected stuff only and its rotting away as it stands with no wish for him to use it and as its copies he can't really sell them or expect a good price but they would have made a nice collection that may have turned up a crack or two that was missing.

 

It just all seemed so negative...

 

Maybe he will mellow over time...

[Clint Thompson]

 

Yes.

 

I recall back in the day I would travel great distances and go through extraordinary efforts to attend WaReZ conferences. I'd strap all my Apple stuff into my RadioFlyer wagon and hitch it to my BMX and set out across town, stopping at Jack In The Box along the way.

 

I never missed one. Hefty bags were a cheap form of waterproofing so that I could ride in the rain and protect my hardware.

 

We'd do anything and everything to acquire the latest to post on the BBS. And I even had to get a wildcard so that the bigger kids could use it to make more games available. Such is the price!

 

And it was FUN!

 

That sounds like such an amazing time for you!! =D

[snicklin]

I have about 200+ vinyl lps in our loft - some of these are very hard to come by. and no one is getting hold of these - not even to look at

Would anyone want 200 Black Lace albums?

 

Sent from my Ultra using Tapatalk

[Mclaneinc]

Lol....Or Creme Brulee.....(League of Gentlemen.....)

 

Perhaps its the Greatests Hits of Jimmy Osmond....

[advfan]

So, what was the address of this guy again...?

 

 

[Guest]

Would anyone want 200 Black Lace albums?

 

Sent from my Ultra using Tapatalk

i don't know ..but what are you going to Agadoo about it ?

[Mclaneinc]

One hears he's going to push the pineapple and then shake the tree....

[snicklin]

i don't know ..but what are you going to Agadoo about it ?

Don't do your conga!

 

Sent from my Ultra using Tapatalk

[jhd]

If he is elderly and in poor health, can you just not wait him out? Presumably, his estate may be more willing to sell (or otherwise part with) the collection than he is.

 

My Grandfather was much like that with his collectibles and "treasures", but once he died, no reasonable offer was refused as we had to get rid of that stuff. It is just a matter of being patient.

[guus.assmann]

Hello Mclaneinc,

 

Please find the attached collection that I've converted to ATR's.

It's all disks that I could read and have in my disk-box. Treasures of old....

Maybe it's usefull for someone.

 

BR/

Guus Assmann

ATR Disk Images.zip

[Mark Wright]

* WAFFLE ALERT *

 

Before I share an over-long, boring story documenting my own personal contribution to software preservation, some words of comfort for my friend Mclaneinc (who is clearly, like me, a nostalgic old fool with a "collector" mentality) on why he shouldn't be so irate (pun intended) with this doddery duffer friend-of-a-friend: he's simply not worth it, literally.

 

If I might borrow an out-dated expression from our American friends (hello, American friends!): "c'mon man, take a reality check, dude!" Now, I realise there are still huge numbers of presumed "lost forever" items that this community still, one day, hopes to unearth. I also realise that such things continue to crop up, unexpectedly, on an annual basis. But it's 2016. The vast, vast, vast majority of what was ever there to be found has been, well, found. Incidentally, I speak as someone who created various music disks, demos and intros for well-known Amiga scene names as Silents UK, Pussy and Magnetic Fields, who knows he'll never see some of his juvenilia ever again, as it wasn't spread far and wide enough. I can categorically say it's gone forever. How can I know this? Well, I trawled the world for it, as you'll find out if you read on. But anyway. Even if this miserable old geezer allowed you to search his Multiboot haystack of Preppie!, Pogo Joe, Thorn/EMI Darts, Chop Suey and Drelbs for your elusive needles, what good would it do if you found them? What joy would it bring? "Yes!", you might cry, "I *KNEW* there was a version with a slghtly different title screen!" Would you sleep sounder at night? If I might borrow an out-dated expression from our Australian friends (g'day Australian friends!): "Jeeez! What a drongo!"

 

Also, there's the fact that those who boast of having "old computer stuff" up in the attic, without any working knowledge of just how exhaustive the efforts of the online/emulator scene has been over the past 20+ years, might consider their collection of 200 (count 'em! 200!) disks to be "massive". I don't need to tell you that, in 1986, the awe reserved for anyone who had 200 double-sided Rob.C/Ian.K menu disks stuffed with 300+ games was akin to the respect commanded by a Mafia don. In my experience nowadays, it's depressingly common for those who stored their collections away many years ago to consider their two disk boxes full of mouldy old Maxells and Memorexes to be "massive" and probably valuable by now. How would they know you can download 50,000 Atari disks in under an hour and own the majority of everything ever circulated? Even the genuinely disk-porn listings you occasionally see on eBay: L@@K! - 20 Posso boxes of 5,000 "presumed blank" disks, with tantalising labels... what price the needle you might find within yet another giant haystack of Alleykat, Ballblaster, Jet Boot Jack, Music Master II and Blue Max?

 

At last, my point - that over-long, boring story I promised you...

 

When I started the Lazarus Amiga emulation site back in 1997, the goal was to source, archive and make available the top 500 (or so) most important/historic Amiga software titles of all time - but - crucially, in an emulator-friendly form, specifically aimed at the growing userbase of Amiga emulators. This was nearly twenty years ago. We doubted we'd ever reach our aim, presuming - with the Amiga now a distant memory for most - there'd be very little left, with what remained now held in the hands of a disinterested few. Weeks later, to say we were overwhelmed by the response is as massive an understatement that can ever be made: we'd unwittingly mobilised a global army of ex-Amigans, each of them raiding their many disk boxes; ruining their fragile floppy drives; bankrupting themselves in the name of bandwith... their frenzy for feeding the website with long-forgotten artefacts was matched only by the leecher hysteria their files created. This was long before it was possible to archive original copy-protected disks (so we relied on cracks). And this was still in an era when many viewed Lazarus as a "warez site", despite modelling ourselves on the likes of World of Spectrum (i.e. all software is long-dead and we're actively gaining permissions for the good of all...)

 

Very quickly, we'd amassed tens of thousands of files, all (in the dial-up era) uploaded at the expense of others. We were eternally grateful to the hundreds (later thousands) of users who had worked tirelessly to share the fruits of their labours. The harvest of presumed-extinct Amiga goodies we'd reaped was beyond our wildest dreams. But, as we sifted through the deluge of disk images, preparing to make them public, it quickly became obvious that the contents of everyone's disk boxes were very similar. With duplicates removed, our collection shrank from tens of thousands to hundreds of files - luckily for us, and probably obviously, we were left with the most popular items we set out to seek in the first place. That goal reached, and as our traffic increased due to word of mouth, we requested anything that wasn't already available on the site. Uploads continued apace, but for the next six months or so, we were constantly sifting through the files looking for the 5% (or so) of unique material among the same old things, e.g. sadly turning away well-meaning users who'd imaged and uploaded their copy of Xenon II, in favour of someone *finally* uploading Maupiti Island. Here's a bold statement: I'd estimate that, by the end of 1998, Lazarus had sourced and circulated somewhere in the region of 90% of the files that make up the current Amiga TOSEC collection, some eighteen years on. And my old music disks and demos still aren't in it!

 

If Mclaneinc's still reading, the moral of my story is... if you thought you'd get a fuzzy warm feeling inside from reading some old scrolltext from an obscure forgotten intro you never thought you'd see again, or from confirming that there *WAS* a pre-release version called "Dimension Y" that had different music... forget forking out a couple of hundred quid to spend time with some old miser, I spent thousands and a couple of man-years in order to do it... and yes, you will get a nostalgic hit of adrenaline as your brain scrambles to reconcile what you're seeing if you're successful, but trust me, it's a disappointingly short-lived experience and will leave you ultimately underwhelmed and depressed. A bit like the few hours I spent several years ago, which I'll never get back, searching for the version of Boulderdash cracked by "PAUL I RATE WITH THE MOLE" just to confirm to myself I hadn't mis-remembered or imagined it. "Oh well, that's that then..." If I might borrow an out-dated expression from our Latin friends (salve Latin friends!): "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."

 

Fin.

[Mclaneinc]

Hello Mclaneinc,

 

Please find the attached collection that I've converted to ATR's.

It's all disks that I could read and have in my disk-box. Treasures of old....

Maybe it's usefull for someone.

 

BR/

Guus Assmann

 

Thank you kind sir, always appreciated and thank you for looking...

[Mclaneinc]

@Mark W...

 

Thank you for that lovely and incredibly interesting trek back in time, yes times do change and I soo appreciated the time you spent on one of my wonderful past machines, The Amiga who I sill play emulated with the ever so rich WinUAE. I think there's a small misconception that I have a grudge against the old guy or anyone who keeps disks hidden away to just bit rot and die, its not a grudge but a sadness, in the day I was many things but I suppose the old term 'spreader' comes to mind and that mentality stays with me, I know its only a silly screen change in some cases but I'm really looking for the lost items more than anything, things that never did the rounds like the wonderful and recently released true Star Raiders 2, its allowed for a return to the enjoyment people had of Star Raider in what was a real product people got denied the seeing of by Atari who instead released a game written for The Last Starfighter and even mentioned in the credits of the film, but yet as a Last Starfighter game it was great but Star Raiders, C'mon people, it was NOTHING like Star Raiders in any way.

 

That's my real quest Mark, to encourage the mass looking for non found titles so that we may have a buzz for whatever length of time.

 

Starry eyed and silly, perhaps, a lot of work for a small buzz, indeed, worth it? To me yes...

 

Not sure of the Paul Irate / Mole link but I knew the Mole very well, Mike was a great guy and a Doctor whose skill at cracking was superb and he was responsible for most of the EA titles getting done, I know, I watched him do his thing on them. as for your stuff Mark, yeah I'm aware of it and thank you, being an Amiga freak and once proud owner of a mega pimped A1200 and again being part of the scene I loved all the music disks etc even tho my 68030 card was a pig for not playing many of them

 

The bottom line for me is I just want to see the Atari not fall foul of losing track of its heritage, alternate cracks etc are ok but not my real thing unless like on the C64 recently where scene groups decided to fix some of those old games which had both crack bugs and in game programming mistake that they lovingly fixed, that I like but its the lost titles I care most about, I'll probably not touch them for more than 10 mins in some cases BUT its the knowing they have been found and saved that floats my boat.

 

So yes, "The times change, and we change with them" is apt and may I say a MUST in todays world but history should never just be erased if we can remember it, we learn from mistakes and idea's, history still has some things to offer us.

 

Paul.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[snicklin]

I'm going to put it short and sweet, as I've had too much wine and can't think more in-depth than that at the moment: (and I *think* that everyone might agree on this if my wined brain is correct)

 

* Multiple versions of an old product are not important - it is just important to have a copy of that old product.

 

i.e. We don't give a poop about the crack intro, we care about the product being preserved, whatever the loader/format etc is.

[Mclaneinc]

Indeed, crack intro's mean nothing to me, purely the fully working item....And any missing items...

[Keatah]

In the Apple II scene, crack intros are very important. The crack intro was the main title page to the game and naturally the first thing we'd see.

 

They served a purpose too. They'd advertise AE lines, Cat-Furs, and BBS numbers for us to call and get more games.

 

Cracking was an art, a game in and of itself in the II scene. Oftentimes the authors would taunt us that it's uncrackable and a week later it'd be all over. Back and forth, back and forth, like a crazed superball bouncing off the walls. Whole magazines were built around deprotection and archiving, kids were skipping school, BBS'es tied up the phone lines, parents went broke..!

 

http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/

http://computist.applearchives.com/harcorde-computing/

http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/.thumbs.html

 

(I'm going to crosspost this in the Apple II section and make no further mention of it here)

[Mclaneinc]

Yes, crack intro;s had a purpose THEN but these days a crack intro is just a minor annoyance and certainly not a fitting reason archive it, the banter they conveyed has losts its meaning and the advertised BBS's are long gone.

 

Remember, I'm talking purely from an archiving POV.

[TMR]

Yes, crack intro;s had a purpose THEN but these days a crack intro is just a minor annoyance and certainly not a fitting reason archive it, the banter they conveyed has losts its meaning and the advertised BBS's are long gone.

 

Remember, I'm talking purely from an archiving POV.

Crack screens and intros are the cracking scene's "fossil record" and the things conveyed like social connections between sceners (and the inter-group rivalries, see Jason Scott's Defcon talk) are of as much interest to me as the games, in a few cases more so; from an archiving point of view, knowing that this stuff may not be recorded is quite sad really...