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Recovered clip art for the ST from the Action Annex BBS.


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Hi folks,

The Atari 8 bit BBS ran from 1982-1988 at (206)-892-8969. I helped write some of the code for the BBS back in the day with Mike Calvin.

Donna Calvin used to make newsletters and artwork from scanned images on her ST later.

Some of which was hand edited after scanning.

Some were put on the labels that she printed for her MIDI and Pokey music collection disks sold locally.

 

You can have these as a gift and a blast from the past.

I recovered these from Atari ST formatted disks that were in storage since 1996. I used my PC and the Omnifloppy program.

About 3950 files, in .pcx , .img, and .tny format

 

Free to use , public domain, put them on an archive site if you like.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8UbEU_f0GvGV0dqR3I0Z2ljN3c

 

Enjoy!

 

Edited by mechanerd
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Awesome find.

 

Just curious: do you have any BBS-related materials from Action Annex? Copies of door games, VT-52 or ATASCII animations, text files, etc?

About 500 floppies of files. About 15 floppies of the 8 bit were mechanically toast.

About 50 floppies of the ST MIDI were screwy to the point that it is going to take a Kryoflux archival floppy reader to get the files.

 

There are MIDI files for ST. About 1500 files. See the catalog.txt

The catalog for the 8bit files has a list of titles from what I could read from the labels or the insert paper of the original disks. This also helps decode the short 8 character filenames is which song. The filenames for the ST MIDI conversion pretty much stayed the same.

The original .MUS files from the 8bit were converted and included in the ST archive attached.

A sprinkling of .CFM, mode 0, and lost of standard MIDI files.

I converted the AMS files to SAP format for pkey lovers on the PC/Mac/Linux.

 

Just the AMS 1, 2, and Midi Music System files for the 8 bit (3000+ of those. )

.MID files are standard MIDI files playable on ST, PC, or hardware/software that supports MIDI.

.MUS files play with Midi Music System 8-bit Atari version 1.0 or 3.0 or eqivalent. Can be ran in Altiris emulator with

PC output.

.SNG format files are for EZtracker.

The catalog for the 8bit files has a list of titles from what I could read from the labels or the insert paper of the original disks.

This also helps decode the short 8 character filenames is which song.

The original disks for the BBS software itself. Action Annex version 3.0 and 4.0 for the 130XE ramdisk. It appears to run under Altirra with some coaxing.

I worked on earlier versions pre-1986. It's basically an extended version of AMIS BBS. There is a story behind the creation on the document disk for the BBS archive, see the 8bit section when I get that done.

 

There was a 10MB Miniscribe hard disk drive that died before I got the stuff out of storage. Alas, I don't know what was on there.

 

Most of that "other" stuff was lost .... I loved the ASCII and ATASCII art of pinups when printed. :}

The Action Annex BBS was 10 blocks from my house, I spent many an afternoons or Saturdays on the sneaker-net and bicycle-net.

 

The original BBS Atari 800 with the 4KB SRAM mod for the assembler code for I/O still works. I booted it up, It needs a new top case though.

The BBS was moved to a 130XE with the Omnimon ASM debugger around 1986 The assembler code that Mike was working on. He fixed a bug in the Midi Music System. I have a typed letter from the author thanking him.

I have the source code for MMS, but haven't gone through it yet. I need to contact the author/company to see if it's ok to release it.

MMS 1.0 as a binary is included in the 8bit files archive.

 

The remaining hardware was sold off and two Amazon tablets were donated to the Sharehouse homeless shelter. A bunch of yarn scarfs and hats made from my ex-wife were made from Donna's leftover yarn and donated also.

 

Cheers.

ST_MIDI_CATALOGGED.zip

8bit_files.zip

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The miniscribe might not be dead... put one drop of lubricant on the spindle bearing then spindle side up.. use the freezer method to loosen it up... as it warms up it will pull the lube in and if possible by hand gently counter clockwise turn the the motor or spindle with the bottom of the drive facing you, then freeze and defrost again. with power connected this time with the drive no longer frozen or sweating, you may have to give the spindle a clockwise nudge, it should come up to speed... and function, do not turn off the drive for a day or two after this! start reading an extraction of information after the first 2 1/2 to 3 Hours of it running. Your drive should work. It may become stuck again or develop other issues, so copy the data asap...

Edited by _The Doctor__
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The miniscribe might not be dead... put one drop of lubricant on the spindle bearing then spindle side up.. use the freezer method to loosen it up... as it warms up it will pull the lube in and if possible by hand gently counter clockwise turn the the motor or spindle with the bottom of the drive facing you, then freeze and defrost again. with power connected this time with the drive no longer frozen or sweating, you may have to give the spindle a clockwise nudge, it should come up to speed... and function, do not turn off the drive for a day or two after this! start reading an extraction of information after the first 2 1/2 to 3 Hours of it running. Your drive should work. It may become stuck again or develop other issues, so copy the data asap...

I physically don't have the drive anymore. It was sold or tossed before I got into the storage unit stuff. Sorry that I came through confusing.

 

Right, fixing the stiction problem. You are correct.

I rescued a bunch of PC hard disks that were pre-MR head by freezing them and thawing.

The most notorious was that Quantum 5.25" wide IDE. I would freeze then tap those and get the data off of them before they quit spinning.

The other fun was just changing boards on the bottom of the drive before they started putting analog encoding unique to each drive.

 

 

 

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  • 3 years later...

This really is a fantastic collection of clip art and music. 

 

I wanted to follow up on the BBS stuff ... you mentioned having "the original disks for the BBS software itself." Any chance you will post those, or any other BBS-related files?

 

How about the MMS source code?

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

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