Our Prices ARE INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!

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So, the last few days, I have been re-working the online store, and I am getting a bunch of e-mail about it. My prices are pretty simple- Not only do they INCLUDE shipping and handling charges with in North America (IE: Canada and the US) they also are in US funds. That being said, I WILL ship anywhere, but be advised that shipping to some remote place, will cost an EXTRA arm and a leg (thanks to Canada Post).
People have been also asking me "Why are your prices so good on some stuff, and so insane on others". Its simple. The online store doesn't cost me anything but time. It is also a showcase of my collection. Some Items are pretty common, and easily come by. Others, I do not really wish to sell, but if the price is right, its always for sale. That is why my A1200 is $1400, and my PET is set at $2400. I may never get a chance to get these things back without spending that much. If I come across more, the prices will drop.
Also, remember, I am not an expert. last month I sold my A4000 believing there was a problem. I could not get it to boot last spring. I only spent a few hours on it, and put it aside. Last month, it sold, and it turns out, it works just fine. I am not sure if it got bumped enough is shipping to fix it or what, but in the end, the buyer was happy. That is what matters to me.
I state on my store pages that right up front. For example, the xetec hard drive for the A1000- I could not get it to boot. Does that mean it is dead? no, I just haven't had the time or energy to play with it. the previous owner said it had to be aligned "just right" for it to boot.
So, my point is, before you send me hate mail, ask yourself "why" the item is priced like that, and could you replace it for less.- Probably, but with any less hassle? I think not.
The Goal here is not to make any money. In all honesty, The money raised from the sale of any Item doesn't even get taken out of Paypal. It funds my hobby and goes to other online stores such as AmigaKit or ebay auctions.

Back to the C128

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If you remember, a while ago, I started to put some heat sinks, and upgrade my C128. I had ordered in 5 Packages total of Heat Sinks. I could have used 1 more, but as you can see, the results look great. I didn't need the "Long" sinks, so I just placed them on Random IC's just to make it look good.
You can also see the 64K ram upgrade and a "File Browser 6" Rom. I had got in the "Mega 128 Rom", but I wanted to check out this ROM first.
Slowly, this C128 is coming along. I still need an 80 Column monitor, a 1571 disk drive, and a RMU, but slowly this beast will come along.
Now back to the on-line store makeover.

Programming An EEPROM

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Well, After a busy weekend, I finally have a few days off to work on my NCS Kit. I have taken the manuals to work, read, and re-read, the next part on programming the EEPROM. I know what you are thinking "Why waste your time with That" -I know, I have had at least half a dozen people ask me that over the last few days. I even had a few offers to flash it on a real EPROM burner.
The fact is, the kit does come with a fully programed EEPROM, and I know I can skip this long and tedious process, but if I did that, I would learn nothing. I had a real hard time at first, wrapping my brain around the theory and the concept of reading binary and all the "High -Low" translation, but I am confident that I can understand it now.
I also have been working at least an hour a day, re-vamping the on-line store. I have now added the "Commodore Classic" stuff to it.
I also have been asked If I will be selling the NCS kit on my store. The simple answer is "No", you can always order it here, At APATCO Technologies.
In the next day or so, I plan to Finnish the C128 project, work more on the store, and work more on the kit, that is of course, if I can avoid dealing with computer clients and the "problems" they have.

The Commodore PC

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Well yesterday I teased about it, and today I got it in! The only released line of computers I had not talked about was Commodore's infamous PC computers.
The PC line started in Germany, without Jack approving it. According to Jack's philosophy," Why buy chips elsewhere, when we make our own?" But (in Germany) it sold really well, so Jack decided to try it out in other locations.
Now, in 1985, the PC market was strictly a Business market, but some "bright" marketer at CBM decided to try and sell the PC to the home market. They simply took a PC10 and re-labelled it the "Colt". Needless to say the Colt failed, but the PC market did remain lucrative to Commodore well up until 1994. The Commodore PC's were work horses, not great in any way, they just were reliable.
So, Very surprisingly (shipping only took 3 days) I got my PC-10 in today. Actually it's a PC10-II
The first thing I did (even before turning it on) is take the cover off to see the inside. There was only a trace amount of dust on the back of the cards.

This is a very BASIC PC. In Typical Commodore fashion, there is no hard drive, or even a hard drive controller on the motherboard. The motherboard is a revison "A", dated 1985. There is no 287 Co-processor in this unit, but a socket for one.
All the pictures on Google show a battery on the motherboard, but this revision has none. When I can borrow a better camera, I will be documenting this machine more on the web site.
It has 2 cards, 1 in the AT slots for Video. This card has no markings, so I can't tell you if it is the Commodore Original or an aftermarket. It also has a Ram expansion card. This is simply labelled "Commodore Ram Extension 1986". The motherboard itself is relitively small compared to most other Commodore Boards (about the size of a normal MoBO today).

I put it all back together and booted it up. The System disks are labelled DOS 2.11, and indeed the boot screen showed Dos 2.11. I am not sure why Dos 3.2 was not here, but the start disks state Commodore PC-10 boot disks (hand written copies- of course).
The monitor looks to be a 10 inch Commodore mono monitor, but even though it does say Commodore on the front, the back has no Commodore labels or model number.It's not that they have fallen off, it's just the original manufacturer's stickers are there instead. K.A.P Consumer Electronics for those that are interested.
The PC boots just fine. It was stated before that Commodore continued the PET boot up sound to the PC. This is very true. The POST screen shows Commodore PC bios 2.01. The unit just has 640k, I guess they originally came with 320K.
The back of the unit is sparse. Just an RS232 "c" port and a "Centronics" or printer port.-It's actually labelled "Centronics".
The only other thing worth mentioning is the keyboard. The function keys are running up and down the side, instead of across the top. This is kind of cool, and sets them apart from other PC clones.

Now I really Build Hardware!

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It's been a busy few weeks here at the lounge. Many people have asked "what did you get at AmigaKit with your little nest egg? The truth is, I thought long and hard about the Subway USB adaptor, but I decided to do something else, something I have always wanted to do- BUILD a Computer from scratch! I have been assembling computers for over 20 years with "off the shelf" components, but as a hardware junkie, I always wanted to learn design and principle and make a computer "OLD SCHOOL", like they did at Commodore.
After a hunt on the net, I decided to order the NCS 2056T kit from APATCO Technologies.
I got it in this afternoon, and quickly went through the kit. The kit is based off of the 65C02 processor. It comes with 32K of RAM LCD screen, and a PS/2 keyboard adaptor. Infact the only thing that this kit does not have is a way to hook it up to a VGA monitor or a RS232 port to telnet into it. I will add these components later, as after I get this up and running, I plan to do a "wire Wrap" board, then a PCB final board (with the RS232 and VGA), but I have to learn to crawl first, before I can "RUN".
The kit starts with 3 printed manuals in full color. I was expecting some cheap photocopied and stapled manuals, but these are a good quality. The Technical manual has the complete history of the 6502, right up until modern day.
It comes with a nice quality "Bread Board" with a metal back plate. The only thing I can see missing is an actual "Power"Switch, as it look like you will have to unplug it every time. The IC chips were already installed before shipping, I am not sure if that was just for shipping, or to make it easier to assemble. I just layed in the LCD screen for the picture, it is not attached to the board just yet.
All the wires, and components are nicely sorted in this plastic, reusable, parts bin. I don't have to go hunting for each part.
There is also a CD included with all software, documentation etc. You even get 3 ROM EEPROMS:,

1) EEPROM 1 on breadboard is blank. Used in the assembly process.

2) EEPROM 2 with white dot is pre-programmed with the short assembly language program that the assembly manual has you attempt to program into the blank one. This is just incase you fail at the attempt. The small program simply counts from 1 to 255 using the LED's on the breadboard. This ensures that the breadboard computer is working.

3) EEPROM 3 with red dot is programmed with code to control the keyboard and LCD, and has usable routines you can use in your own programs. As well, it also contains a very basic monitor for programming memory locations using the keyboard.

At $180, this kit seems expensive, but when you actually see what you get in it, it is very apparent, the time and energy that went into making this kit right. I think it is well worth every penny. In fact, the ONLY complant is that the IC markings are hard to read, This is not APATCO's fault, but rather the (very Cheap) silk-screening on the individual chips themselves. There used to be a day when the blind could read the Chip ID's because the manufacturer was proud of it, including the company logo (remember, you could spot an AMD chip a mile away, in the dark even, because the silk-screening was so bright). I will update as I assemble this puppy.

Now, I also have one a VERY rare Commodore Item on Ebay over the week-end. It is one of the last Commodore machines I didn't have yet, and I had not made any mention of them here. Yes, Commodore had 1 more Commercial line of Computers, that they sold from 83 or so on until the went bankrupt. Now, other than a CBM II line, I have a representation of all the lines of computers that Commodore sold. I won't say what it is, but here is a Cryptic hint. This was a line designed in Germany for Business Clients only. Later, Commodore tried selling it to the home market, but renaming one of the models after a small horse. Needless to say that approach failed.
While, it didn't sell to home user's, it wasn't a bad machine. Not great, just a workhorse.

More on that when it comes in..

History of the PET

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You knew it was coming! Today lesson is for the kids out there that have never seen a P.E.T. During the 80's, it was the only computer is schools here in Canada, but I will get to that later.
The story of the PET, begins, not with Commodore or Jack , but with a amazing man named Chuck. Chuck Peddle.
Chuck some time in the 60's or 70's.
Chuck in 2007 at the Vintage Computer festival Live, via skype from Shrilanka. Yes, he is still working with computers to this day.
The (abridged) story starts when Chuck was at Motorola and saw the first 6800 processor, and said he could do better. Chuck then left Motorola and went to work at MOS Technologies before Commodore had bought them out and created the 6502 Microprocessor. He had created the 6502 as a low cost Mircocontroler and never even thought of making a computer. Chuck would visit customers, and help out to make the 6502 work. Because it was a $20 chip and Motorola wanted over $300 for the 6800, Chuck was busy designing every thing from Pinball machines, to Photocopiers. He even went to help Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs to bring up the Apple (much later)
It was apparent that people wanted a computer on their desks. Chuck had earlier designed the KIM 1, a circuit board, to play with his 6502 chip, but people wanted a box to do accounting, word processing etc. By this time Commodore had bought MOS, so he went to Jack and began to ask to build a Computer. Jack was weary, as nobody was really doing anything in this unproven market.
Then Radio Shack had approached Jack to build a Computer for them. Jack looked as this as an opportunity to sell more Calculators to Radio Shack, so he then gave in. There was even talks to buy Apple at one point, but Steve Jobs wanted way too much money at that point. (Apple had just made the Apple 1 kit).
So Chuck rolled up his sleeves and started to design the PET. They had until a certain date to produce one, to show RS at some show (I think it was Winter CES in Chicago).
Luck was also on their side, as someone at Microsoft built a BASIC for the 6502. At the time, Bill Gates thought the 6502 was a "Crappy" processor and told the guy to sell it for as much as he could, and move on to something that would make Microsoft real Money. Chuck and Jack, met with Bill and negotiated for BASIC. Jack was a very practical man, he didn't know if they would sell any computers, nor would he gamble on "future Sales" he wanted to pay once, and one time only. So, the story goes that Jack was the only one who ever got the best of Bill. Commodore got the rights to include basic in EVERY machine that they sold, and both Microsoft and Commodore could upgrade it at any time, Microsoft got the right to sell it to anyone else.
How much you ask? Well, there has always been a "gentleman's" agreement not to disclose the price, But unconfirmed reports say between $10,000 and $50,000. If Microsoft knew just how many Commodore computers used the same Basic, they probably would have insisted on "per Computer Sold".
During the making of the PET, Chuck had made a nice curved case and put a full keyboard on the prototype. Jack came back and said "Why plastic?" "I have a file Cabinet maker up in Toronto, lets use metal"and "Why a full keyboard?" "Why not use a calculator keyboard, we have tons of those". Chuck did not know it then, but Jack had no money, as the Calculator business was drying up with very cheap units from Japan.
Now, with the Calculator keyboard, Chuck had room to impliment a cassette deck for storing data. You have to remember, at this time, there was no "Home Computers" so they were making it up as they went along, and Chuck was being very practical, Hard Drives, and Floppy Drives were just about NON-existent or cost way too much. A cheap Sanyo Cassette deck, was perfect at the time for datta storage.

Chuck also knew the need for graphics and designed a graphics set so people could create games and play cards etc. It was based on the ASCII subset, but latter, people called it "Petscii"
So, the electronics show came and Commodore presented their new system to Radio Shack. They passed (It was said they did this to a few other companies, and took all the best Ideas and made the TRS-80).
Chuck was not going to give up, he then went back and perfected the computer. Now it needed a name, and Jack wanted something friendly. A guy made over a million dollars that year selling the pet rock, so they decided on PET. Later Chuck would revel (for a joke) the PET stood for "Personal Electronic Transactor", but really it was just a friendly name. And thus the PET was born.
At the first "official" showing of the PET, they had only a handful of units. Jack needed cash and fast to "Bootstrap" production (they were all made by hand). He than declared, that they were going to sell them on a pre-order basis. You paid in full, and in 90 days you would have your PET or your money back. Chuck got his Beautiful Wife at the time to take the orders, while he demo'ed the unit, and there were so many people lined up to give her cash, it was a frenzy. He went upstairs to the "Big Iron" dealers like Univac and nobody was there, they were all downstairs at the Commodore booth. He said he could see this was the "Death knee" for the big main frame computers".

Eventually Commodore filled all the orders (well past the 90 days- but nobody wanted their money back). The biggest complaint was the Chicklet keyboard, you just could not type on it. Jack said "Ok, we tried that. Let's give them a full typewriter keyboard and see what happens".
So chuck moved the Cassette to the outside and gave both a "Home" Keyboard with Petscii symbols, and a "Business" keyboard with out.
Each subsequent model was a minor improvement on the last, the model numbers being the key. For example in the picture shown above, we have a 4016 (most common of all Pets), which simply means, it has a screen that could show 40 characters and it had 16 megs of RAM. Next to it is the 8050 Double disk drive. I will save the story this beast for another day.
Chuck also built them to open very easily like the hood of a car. they even have a "prop rod" in all metal Pets.
The best PET by none is the Super PET. This Pet was commissioned by the University of Waterloo, and not oly does it have a regular PET inside, but a second 6809 board, makeing it probably one for the worlds first DUAL processor computers. It was certainly the most powerful computer at the time.
All was going well with selling the PET, then they went overseas. Jack hit 2 snags almost immediately. One- PET in French means "Fart" or "Shit", and Two, Phillips owned the rights to the name PET. So, in true Commodore style, they Quickly "re-named" (IE-printed up new stickers) it the "CBM" series.
Commodore also made sure that they gave PETS to schools (here in Canada) beginning in about 1978-79. The heavy Metal housing made it perfect for schools, and the only "damage" you see from a school machine is the corners of the black sticker have been tried to peel off, Commodore must have used industrial glue for the sticker, because very few ever came off, and not for lack of trying.The picture above was not uncommon. Infact, other that the model, (we had the typical 4016) you would see classrooms like this up until past 1988 (when I graduated high school). Insuring, that my generation had at least touched a PET in our lifetime.

Over in Europe, things were a bit different:
Some Pets were made of PLASTIC. That and the fact that now Commodore had released a CBM II line. More powerful, disk drives built in, separate monitors and keyboards.
They came in a few different models, the high profile and low profile, it looks like the low prifile had attached keyboards. They even had a few rare Color models. One such model was essentially a C64 in a PET case the P500.
Even though I have never seen or heard of a CBM II here in Canada, that doesn't mean they don't exist. A very small number have popped up on E-bay from time to time from the US, so it is very possible that they were offered for sale here also, but by the time the appeares on store shelves, they were just too far behind the bossiness computers at the time to survive. You also have to factor in the success of the VIC 20 and C64. Jack's mantra was computers for the masses, which meant cheap, and easy to sell. PETS were not that cheap, and Stores did not want product that was harder to sell.

Now, the PET is all but a memory, but you do see them pop up on movies and TV shows from time to time. From Star Trek:
To Terminator 3:
The PET was an ICON back in the 1980 and early 1990's. Now as computers, get faster and better, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple all want to erase it from history.
BTW, I will gladly give any Super PET or CBM II a good home. I plan soon to make a PET sub-domain just like the TED.

My New PET! and I shall Call her GlaDOS!

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Well, it has been a busy week here at the lounge. After a few e-mails, phone calls and such, priorities have changed a bit. Last week, I was all set for a small shopping spree at Amigakit, and then I found out they were sold out of the IDE 97 board for the Amiga 1200. I got busy trying to get all the A4000 stuff together and ship it out, and as it turns out I had to ship it in 2 boxes- there was just that much stuff with all the books and such. After shipping, no profit was actually made over what I paid for it, but thats the breaks. I did increase most of my prices on the on-line store to compensate for the jump in Canada Post shipping Rates.
I was then trying to decide to get a Subway USB port for the 1200 instead (to hook up an external CD-Rom Drive) when I got an e-mail about my Kijiji Ad.
A local guy named Mike had a PET 8032 and a CBM 8050 Double Drive he wanted to give to a good home. He even dropped them off on Monday. He also had a Commodore 1701 monitor.

It had been about 20 years since I last played with a PET, so I opened her up and did a fast clean of the dust. She boots fine, but some of the keys are not working, so I will have to take apart the keyboard (and we all know how much I LOVE to do that). It seems my chore in life is to take apart and clean keyboards. The cable for the disk drive was missing, so I had to track one down. The Toronto Pet User Group has them listed on the "Items for sale" page, but so far I have not heard back from them. I even wonder if anyone is still around to check the e-mail there anymore. It would be fantastic to get this old system up and running fully.
When I opened it up, I found a ROM in the spare ROM slots labelled "WP-4" The guys on the forums suggest that this is a Word Pro 4 ROM, and I need it to run the Word Pro software. Yes, like the C128, the PET had between 2 and 4 extra ROM slots depending on the Model.
This Model (if you are wondering) is the 8032, which simply means it was a later 80 column model with 32 K of RAM, which also means it has a bigger screen than the original 40 column models. With more Ram and more screen room, it was a "Higher up Model". It also has the "Business" Keyboard with NO PETSCI symbols on it. I still want to get a Super Pet though, they had a 6502 processor and a 6809. Better pictures and internals to come later. Oh, how I forgot how I loved the boot sound on these things.

Another One Bites the Dust

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Well, it's another Sunday, and that means another 11 hour shift at work. It's -7, and I have a very weak Internet connection that keeps dropping here (it's taking forever, just to upload 2 photos). It's also Superbowl Sunday, so hopefully all the perverts will be at home today, and I won't have to deal with them. If you haven't been following the Amiga Buzz for a while, last week, on E-bay, a stock A4000 desktop was sold for over $1000. Normally, A stock A4000 run about $400 or so dollars, so there was a lot of buzz over this on the boards. The seller is, has a good reputation, so a lot of rumours are floating around as to what is going on. I just about put my non-working A4000 up just to see if it was a one time fluke or what. I had plans with Craig from Amitrix to repair this beast, when Craig had the time (I suspect the CIA chips have given up the ghost). I also removed the Indivision card and installed the Video toaster card, and put it up as "fill" in my On line store, asking $450, thinking it would never sell.
Well, this week it did, and tomorrow (if I have time before work) or Tuesday (my days off) I have to carefully package it up and ship it out. I admit, I hate to see it go, for I fear, I will never get another one it that shape, but I did say that about my Amiga 1000 and I found a better one.

So, (because I don't have a bank account- I hate banksters) I have a nice nest egg sitting in my paypal account. You would expect the first thing I would do is go on a small shopping spree at AmigaKit, getting an ECS indivision for my Amiga 1000. I noticed they DO have the A1000 indivision adapter for an extra $14. I am not sure if they just got these in or if they had them hidden elsewhere on the site, but in any case I have found them now. In a perfect world, I would get 4 ECS indivisions for now, 1 for the 1000, 1 for each of the 2 600's and 1 for the 500, but that just is not going to happen yet. I would love to double these and get 6 more for ALL my ECS Amigas, (the A500's piled in the store room), but no.
The first thing I did was order 4 more heat sink packages to finish off my C128 from China. Then, I ordered the "New" version of "AmigaForver" direct from Cloanto. I like to support them also. Because it was cheaper to order the pair together, I also got the C64 Forever. I will post more about them, when I receive the package from Cloanto. I did get the "download" of C64, but the Amiga was too big for the flaky Internet connection.
I also want to at least get a 1571 disk drive for my C128, so I am waiting to hear back from an Amibay member, before going nuts at Amigakit.
I also want to get an IDE package from Amigakit, so I can finally hook a CD-rom drive to my A1200. I know once this is done, I can finally get "on line" with the A1200, as the Internet "package" (including network card) that I ordered from AmigaKit, came with a CD, and no floppies. Which, to me, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since probably only a small percent of A1200 owners actually have a CD rom hooked up to the A1200.

In other news, I lucked out, and came across a few boxed Commodore C2N Dattasettes. The funny thing is, that even though the boxes sort of look the same, they are labelled differently, and one box is actually smaller than the other. If you are familiar with the Dattasette, there seems to be a few different models, probably due to different manufactures. One has the "Stripes" by the Commodore name plate, and one does not. I will investigate this further in the next few weeks.
I also came across a (badly) boxed 1311 joystick, these are the original "white" joysticks that are very similar to the Atari joystick.

After Humans..or Yes Virginia there was a Chip Fab here

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It's Sunday. Its only about -12C and its snowing once again. I am working a double shift, and the store is dead, because of the weather. I was reading the posts at Amiga.org, when one of the members posted a link to the following page. I do not know his real name or I certainly would give him credit. the following are recent photos of MOS technologies down in Norristown PA.
I am reminded of the show on History channel "After People" and it's kind of sad that this site is an environmental hazard now from all the toxic chemicals used.
For those that don't know, MOS technologies was the "Birth"place of the 6502 chip and probably all of the other MOS chips that Commodore used. I like to think that EVERY Commodore computer and Amiga ever made, had at least one chip made here. There are probably thousands of stories just centred here to make a book. In the book "on the Edge" Brian states that the cafeteria had blue prints hanging up on the wall. If the paper was yellow or green, that meant ussually some toxic chemicals were in the air and you didn't go in there.
From the front, it looks nice, and I guess at the time they were still trying to sell it.
At least the tulips grew. It's kind of ironic. Tulip is the name of the company that owes or owned the Commodore name now.
Its around back that things are looking bad. Bil had stated that back in the day, you did not park your car next to the trees, as at the end of the day, you would have this gunk coating your car.
Now the chemic pits are starting to be exposed, but they probably had all toxic chemicals removed long ago.
I though this was a cool shot, probably a backup generator housing, the power consumption must have been mind-blowing.
Inside is just a shell now, I would love to see pictures of what it looked like back then.
Lastly, the garbage area. I would have to think twice about routing around for some long forgotten souvenir, as there could still be some toxic Chemicals lurking.
Anyways, I just it was kind of cool to see what has become of some of the Commodore buildings.

An interesting Call

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Well, I still don't have the Internet back up, but luckily a neighbour has moved their unsecured router and I have a ok connection. Yesterday, was a day off, and I was just messing around on my Commodore's. I wasn't really doing anything important, just trying to create a setup I liked for the 128, when my e-mail alarm went off. I wandered over to the Voodoo, and it was an e-mail from Bil Herd. He had been looking over may post, and noticed a bit of wrong information regarding the CP/M Cartridge. He said to call him some time. So Since I had the time, I tried calling, but there was no answer at the number he gave. I also had e-mailed him back to call me when he had a moment, and then the phone rang, and it was indeed Bil.
Over the next 45 or so minutes, I got a quick education in why the CP/M cartridge didn't work and how he fixed it. Needless to say, I got a quick but cool education on the Z80 processor, and the RAM. I also asked some questions that had been bugging me about the 128, and talked in general about computing today. Needless to say, it was a very good conversation, and I hope to talk with him again.... Unfortunately, with me in Alberta and him in New Jersey, our paths won't likely cross anytime soon.

Another Flipping day in paradise.

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Its taken a few months, but my bout of flu in November has finally caught up with me financial wise. If you remember, I was off work for about 3 weeks with very little income, so I have had to "shut down" the high speed cable, and get rid of the cable TV, so as a result, I have been limited to Internet access. I apologize if I haven't got back yet to your emails, for the only unsecured networks around here are just out of range and I am limited to about 1k a sec. If you feel generous, there is a handy "donate" button on the side of the page, and any donations would and are totally appreciated. If just 10% of the visitors to this site, donated a buck or 2, I could live very comfortably indeed, and certainly afford to actually get into more Amiga projects.
On other news, I have been debating to take down posts older than let us say 1 month. Bandwidth is not an issue, but I have visitors that love to "Hotlink" to photos, and that really burns my butt. If I take down the archives, then people are forced to come to the front page and not continually hit one of my past pages and or photos. This wouldn't be an issue, but these people have no desire to actually read my blog, just look and link to the funny photo. I probably will end up removing the "failed" pictures as a result.
Anyways, I better wrap this up as the connection is fading....

The Lounge is a year old!

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Happy new year everyone! The Amiga Lounge is One year old.
Just a quick thank you going out to all of you this week. We have had close to 100 thousand hits last year, and its been an adventure. I have had the chance to chat with many of past Commodore and Amiga employees and the wisdom and stories they have past on is truely priceless for myself.
What will 2010 bring? Well, I am looking now at a replacement for my ageing Voodoo laptop. Even though it is still a great unit, and I do love it (if you remember my old blog Iboughtavoodoolaptop.com)
It never the less, has to be upgraded soon. The problem is that HP has taken over Voodoo and they no longer have the replacement that I desire. The conundrum is that how do I remain a loyal Voodoo owner when Voodoo is no longer even a spot on HP's roadmap? I certainly do not want to be-little HP, but they do not even come close in overing a "High end" laptop.
I do not want to go to DELL /Alienware, because I fear that DELL has soiled the quality of Alienware products.
I could go with just getting a new Clevo, and building it myself or I can go to Falcon NW.
Falcon NW offers the "Fragbook DTR" which is the upgrade to my Voodoo U709. I am not sure at this point what I am going to do,for it probably be late summer before I do anything.
Voodoo still after all these years are saying "SOON" (it is their mission statement now) so we will just have to wait and see. I may have to get a new domain name soon and do a blog about the Falcon NW- LOL

On the Amiga front.
I am still putzing around and toying with some "upgrades" for my Amiga from AmigaKit.com, but the recent bout with the hardware developers from overseas has still left a bad taste in my mouth over the truly greedy and outrageous pricing of some components. That and the fact that AmigaKit still doesn't have an ECS indivision card for the Amiga 1000, have left me pondering what to do about that.
If you have been living under a rock lately, Hyperion and A-EON have "announced" the new X1000 motherboard available later this year. Translation a VEEERY expensive "high end" Amiga system, that will not sell and be forgotten by Christmas. Yes, the will make exactly the same mistake and launch this board at and outrageous price and sit back and wonder why nobody is buying it, nor developing for it. Its a shame that greed will kill this machine before it is even available to the public. The SAM has proven that over and over. I expect that this system will cost at least $2,500 USD at launch. I will be quite surprised if it is affordable.

On the Commodore 8-bit Front:
All I hope to get this year is a nice C128D unit, and a 1901 monitor. A C116 would be nice, and a nice boxed C16, but those can wait. I am running out of room and I need to either get a basement or start that museum I have talked about.

Here is looking forward to a good 2010 for everyone. I thank you for stopping by and hopefully I will get more juicy updates on a regular basis.

The END is near!

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I have decided to take a break in the blog from the C128 and just go to a general blog today. The end of 2009 is less than 14 days away and I wanted to share my thoughts on the fast year in tech in general, like I do every ear at this time. I ussually go into my "predictions" for the next year, but the tech world is so screwed up right now, I predict that 2010 will bring more of the crap 2009 brought us. So I leave to you a few "Top 10" lists.

TOP 10 TECH things that I WISH would just die in 2010.
in no particular order.

10: The I-Phone- Come on people, wake up out of your zombie like state. There are much better phones on the market, and with the 'droid phones, no one is locked into Apple's hold of death on the apps.

9: Twitter- face it, no one cares what you are doing "Right now" and if the do, they are more pathetic than you for buying into the crap, than you are for posting it.

8: Facebook- There are so many things wrong with Facebook- active scripting, CIA involvement, every single application whats to take over your whole computer, privacy issues, etc. The next major virus to hit and possibly kill the Internet, will be launched through facebook. Also, do you actually have that much low self-esteem that you need 5000 friends that you would never talk to in the real world?

7: MySpace- Another hudge risk on security and just a very "Bad" Idea.

6: Lime Wire- 99% of all and I mean ALL viruses I deal with on a day to day basis come down through Lime Wire. People, just use a bit torrents.

5: Browser Tool bars- In a lot of software (Nero, Adobe etc) are trying to sucker people into installing a "asK" or "Yahoo" tool bar. It is not enough that firefox or IE has this built in to it. I just cringe ant the amount of flipping tool bars people have installed and wonder why they can't see the Internet, because they have 20 on the screen. Of course they have "No Idea" where it came from, or why their computer has spyware.

4: Laptop Touchpads- Yes, I said it. With all this "technology" we have to have SOMETHING BETTER than a useless touchpad that interferes with typing if you accidentally hit it. Even if manufactures moved it ABOVE the keyboard or to the actual side of the laptop, ANYwhere that its not going to interfear with typing (I myself have been actually working on this and drawing up designs- not that anyone cares mind you). God, just a simple blu-tooth mouse that slides in the laptop when not in use is a no brainer.

3: Useless applications that want to load at start-up:- Ok people, look down by your clock on your task bar. How many icons do you have? If the answer is more than 5, you need to really examine what needs to start up. WinZip, Acrobat reader, live-update, weather bug,nero -quickstart, Apple I tunes, Quick Time, the list goes on and on. How long must we put up with this BORG like mentality?
Half of my service calls are from people with slow boot times and they have all these useless programs running at start up, because they just don't know. If Microsoft asked me to help design the next Windows, I would insist that the Start-up be a "protected" mode and none of these would be able to infest the start up process.

2: "Live- Update" features: _one of my pet peaves is that "Live-update". Not only does it halt everything going on on your system to remind you that the latest and greatest version of the software is avalible, you must stop EVERYTHING you are doing and re-boot after it updates. Java is one of the worst for this. I have had DVD's transcodeing for 6 hours and crash, because Java wanted me to update. The worst part, 2 weeks later it wanted me to update again. WHO THE HELL cares about it, when I want to update, I will go to Java and update it myself. I don't need to be reminded every frickin 5 minutes, when I am trying to work.

1: "Busy" Websites - This is websites with so much stuff on the front page, you can't find what you are looking for. This may be ads, or what the website can do for you, but, if there is too much shit on the front page, it will turn people off. GO-DADDY.com is famous for this. I use Go-daddy for my domain names, and all that shit even leave my head spinning. Go-daddy makes enough money, why not hire a REAL website designer and have even more Business.



There are much more I would love to add to this list, but I cut it off at 10.