Thank you - FJC, Candle, Lotharek, Simius, VCF people, etc

[Xebec]

If inappropriate, please delete post

 

... but I saw what happened with TerribleFire* over in the Amiga community over a few years, and I hope we don't see anything similar happen in the A8 community.  I just wanted to say thank you again to all of the people here who make this community awesome and give us wonderful toys to play with and a strong dose of nostalgia at the same time.

 

This group is especially awesome as I was a bit too young to really get super involved in local groups related to the Atari 8bit so, (outside of BBS experiences and 1 copy 8bit party back in the day) I enjoy getting a real taste of what that might have been like..  today.  

 

Thanks Atarians! 

 

*TF did a lot for his community (and for the ST) and seems like a great person.  I wish him well.  

[tuf]

Hopefully TF will continue to work on his ST stuff - he mentioned he might.  And yes, thanks to all the people you mentioned above - these guys are awesome.

[+mytek]

32 minutes ago, Xebec said:

... but I saw what happened with TerribleFire* over in the Amiga community over a few years, and I hope we don't see anything similar happen in the A8 community.

I'm curious. Can you paste a link to what happened (don't want to over shadow this topic).

 

[flashjazzcat]

Likewise. TF is great (and was a regular in Louis Rossmann's chats for a while) but I was unaware of the troubles.

[tuf]

Long story short, someone cloned one of his boards and threatened to clone everything he ever does going forward b/c he won't ship to Poland (because there's lots of issues with getting packages in, apparently).  I might have that horribly wrong but that's my understanding of it.

[+Firedawg]

"

Re: End of all TF (Amiga) projects

Post by exxos » Mon Sep 21, 2020 6:41 pm

I'm going to summarise and roundup things here now.

I read some things on ppa where the moderators are not understanding the full story of what is going on anymore. I'm not looking to stir this up or create any more friction between anyone, but I think because of all the posts, a lot of people are not really understanding what has happened properly.

TF had issues with shipping to Poland because of bad Postal Service where he got abuse from people because packages were not turning up. Later he decided not to ship to Poland because the Postal Service was terrible. To which he got even more abuse to the point he cancelled all orders and did not want to deal with shipping any more. I took over distribution at that point, so nobody had grounds to complain as I was shipping worldwide.

The guy "Bound" ordered it seems 20 boards from my store with the whole intention , I assume, reselling them, but later allegedly cloned them out of pure spite towards TF, calling him racist that he would not deal with the Polish people. I don't know how you can be racist against the whole country, but it was not the people anyway, it was the postal system.

I might add here also, if half the packages I was shipping to Poland (or anywhere in the world for that matter) got lost, I would just simply stop shipping them myself also, at least until the issues were resolved. Further to my point, Some USA sellers on ebay do not ship to UK and I don't start accusing them of racism. If it was such a big problem, eBay would force everyone to ship worldwide, but they do not. Sellers have the right decide where they want their products to be shipped or not. In any case, shipping of TF's products still happened to Poland and the rest of the world via my UK store.

It also turns out that "Bound" has also been cloning other people's boards as well. So it seems the whole racism thing which is simply an excuse to rip off somebody's work, as he was doing it already anyway. I'll also add here that racism is of course not tolerated here. We judge people on if they are a asshole or not, not ethnic background.

While we was investigating this, we suspected a leak on JLC as we thought it was more likely than someone going to the effort of cloning a board when it was due to be open sourced in a few months anyway. While we could not prove a leak on JLC, we have however proven that there has been a security issue on JLC's site (where someone could indeed obtain ANY files from anyone) , which myself and TF reported and now seems to have been fixed. Some people on PPA seem to think this was all made up, but it was not! and that security issue was there and there's now been fixed.

I suggest we all just move on now, and get back to what we all love doing with our retro computers!"

[flashjazzcat]

That sucks. Such feuds and grudges are tiresome, and the weaponization of cloning is especially distasteful in my opinion.

[candle]

sounds familiar

i know there are u1mb clones, side2 clones, and vbxe 1.2 clone with some work done to clone vbxe2 - all they need right now is avr code to make it complete

sadly - all of this comes from poland

in the past i published schematics and cpld cores, so if anyone had a problem with one of my creations, could fix it, replacing damaged part, or reprogramming cpld chip if shit hits the fan - my reward was ostracism in polish atari community in words of those who call me "greedy capitalist" over polish atari related forum, and army of conspiring cloners - monkey see, monkey does...

funniest thing is that they find the applause for what they do

 

now, with everything i do i need to consider certain amount of resources to be utilised on copy-protections - 10 years ago i couldn't belive any of this would be nessesary

 

my only way to fight with clones is to make new versions of my projects, making clones unappealing to anyone interested

 

 

[tuf]

23 minutes ago, candle said:

my only way to fight with clones is to make new versions of my projects, making clones unappealing to anyone interested

I completely agree with you on this.  Might make existing owners unhappy but it'll keep the cloners hurting.

 

[jamm]

It's amazing to me that there's enough of a market out there for this stuff to make cloning worth the effort.  It's also amazing to me that, knowing the problem exists, people in the community - in whatever country - are willing to bypass official sellers to get things cheaper.  Are the clones able to make working devices cheap enough to make it worth it for the buyer and still make a profit?

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, candle said:

sounds familiar

i know there are u1mb clones, side2 clones, and vbxe 1.2 clone with some work done to clone vbxe2 - all they need right now is avr code to make it complete

sadly - all of this comes from poland

in the past i published schematics and cpld cores, so if anyone had a problem with one of my creations, could fix it, replacing damaged part, or reprogramming cpld chip if shit hits the fan - my reward was ostracism in polish atari community in words of those who call me "greedy capitalist" over polish atari related forum, and army of conspiring cloners - monkey see, monkey does...

funniest thing is that they find the applause for what they do

 

now, with everything i do i need to consider certain amount of resources to be utilised on copy-protections - 10 years ago i couldn't belive any of this would be nessesary

 

my only way to fight with clones is to make new versions of my projects, making clones unappealing to anyone interested

 

 

That really sucks to hear   To me, the worldwide A8 community is so small now, it should be treated all as a respectful family.  The occasional bickering is to be expected, but outright intellectual theft (hardware and software) is not cool at all.

[+Stephen]

The Atari Jaguar scene is rife with this.  People don't want to pay crazy prices to collect original games.  So they just counterfeit them, including labels and everything, including shit that is still active homebrew.

[+DrVenkman]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

The Atari Jaguar scene is rife with this.  People don't want to pay crazy prices to collect original games.  So they just counterfeit them, including labels and everything, including shit that is still active homebrew.

A year or two ago some asshat was doing the same thing to Batari's Harmony Cart for the 2600, selling them on eBay. 

[jamm]

2 hours ago, Stephen said:

The Atari Jaguar scene is rife with this.  People don't want to pay crazy prices to collect original games.  So they just counterfeit them, including labels and everything, including shit that is still active homebrew.

At least there I understand where the prices are out of control.  I don't think there's anything like that going on with A8 hardware mods.

[+Stephen]

1 minute ago, jamm said:

At least there I understand where the prices are out of control.  I don't think there's anything like that going on with A8 hardware mods.

No, but still.  I don't like the fact that I cannot afford a 69 Dodge Charger.  That doesn't give me the right to steal someone else's car.

[jamm]

1 minute ago, Stephen said:

No, but still.  I don't like the fact that I cannot afford a 69 Dodge Charger.  That doesn't give me the right to steal someone else's car.

I'm not saying I condone it - I'm just saying I understand the motivation.  At least when we're talking a once-$70 game that is now going for $300 or whatever.

 

[tuf]

2 hours ago, jamm said:

It's amazing to me that there's enough of a market out there for this stuff to make cloning worth the effort.  It's also amazing to me that, knowing the problem exists, people in the community - in whatever country - are willing to bypass official sellers to get things cheaper.  Are the clones able to make working devices cheap enough to make it worth it for the buyer and still make a profit?

Absolutely.  For systems like the Gamecube/Saturn/Dreamcast there's lots of clone options - and they're significantly cheaper than the official stuff.  It can be the difference between something like $50 USD vs $300 USD, which is going to get lots of people who may not drop for the real deal to go for the clone. 

[jamm]

3 minutes ago, tuf said:

Absolutely.  For systems like the Gamecube/Saturn/Dreamcast there's lots of clone options - and they're significantly cheaper than the official stuff.  It can be the difference between something like $50 USD vs $300 USD, which is going to get lots of people who may not drop for the real deal to go for the clone. 

That's amazing. I had no idea the cloners could build the stuff that much cheaper.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

30 minutes ago, jamm said:

That's amazing. I had no idea the cloners could build the stuff that much cheaper.

Even so, keep in mind there is always a balance here, cheaper = lower quality, crap components and parts, little or no support etc. IE: the old saying always applies YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. 

[tuf]

1 hour ago, jamm said:

That's amazing. I had no idea the cloners could build the stuff that much cheaper.

Yep, but more often than not the clone isn't supported, firmware upgradable, outdated quickly by revisions, has weird quirks, isn't exactly a clone, etc.

[pixelmischief]

#1  Thanks for all of the honest, kind, quality support.  All of the named superstars - and several not here-named - that make an important part of a good life so much better.

#2  Don't feed the trolls.  Haters gonna hate.  Dishonest sellers will always find dupes and bargain whores to sell to.  Those are facts not worth expending any effort on.

#3  I don't agree that the cessation of support for an entire community because of the dick-headery of a few bad actors is the right response, but oh...wait...it doesn't matter what I think because it isn't my hard work and kind service being stolen and exploited by some idioterous f%&ktard.  Conviction is a luxury for those on the side-lines and I am definitely a spectator.  I would say, however, that when you stop doing what you love for the people who love you for it, you let evil win; in your life and ours.

Edited September 30, 2020 by pixelmischief

[TGB1718]

Personally, I agree with this thread, the named people and probably many more (too many to mention) deserve all the applause we

can give them, they constantly provide support for this Community,  develop and build fantastic mods and upgrades also providing

exemplary support.

 

I will always purchase originals from these guys.

 

Two fingers up to the "Pirates" 

[+Firedawg]

We have all, well most, been around a while since the early days and have seen what happens when folks cannibalize the hard works of others.  It's this behavior that kills the spark to innovate and develop when the effort is being robbed for personal gain without regard to those who have painstakingly put in the hours, days, months, and years to bring an idea to fruition.  We should all protect our developers and expose those who have obtained these hard works outside of the wishes of those who own them.   Just my 2 cents as I have, like many of you, much respect for those who innovate, develop, and code these wonderful mods and bring great joy to a hobby that would have simply drifted into the attics, closets, and storage units.  I thank you all very much.

 

Mike