Glen's archived blog 2009/06

	RS232 port closed.....
January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 The "New" Lounge PET VIC TED LAB STORE My Collection ABOUT ME coming soon Disclaimer: All the information presented here, was taken from the following sources: Brain Bagnal's Book On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. Available at Amazon.ca The new edition had been delayed at Amazon until Feb.2010 Also, a lot of information has come from Video interviews with Bil Herd and Dave Haynie. Dave has a lot of videos on You-Tube. Search them out.. I wish I could post them here, but I don't have permission. Lastly, more sites on the net have information. There are even a few dedicated sites to the C16. Do a Goggle search, because Bing is just a flash in the pan.:) Please help keep the lounge alive and donate Today.Your donation helps keep an Computer from ending up in a Landfill, and keeping the history Alive for future generations!	Monday, June 29, 2009 Vacation Day 2 PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS Day 2 of my Stay-cation started of a bit late. My Paypal Auctions and my "reverse" Payments to my CC finally cleared. For those that don't know, Ebay/Paypal has a new policy, that if you sell something over a hundred dollars, they will hold that payment for 21 days or until the buyer leaves feedback. My Buyer took forever to leave feedback and in fact had 1 day left until the 21 day hold period was over. I had finished paying for my A600 (piece by piece) auctions and I got an A600 keyboard, floppy drive, OS 3.0 and a book of programs from the Ebay store the seller has. Then, I called up Matthew at AmigaKit. I wanted to actually talk to him and to let him know to ship my stuff Royal Post. It was late in the day for him, and only 11 AM here. I ended up having to break my shipment into 2 orders, because Paypal will not let you "Pay with both a Paypal balance and the rest on CC". They used to, but why they stopped that is anyone's guess. I then went over to Red's Sight and ordered 2 ATX to 500 Cables. I could have ordered them from AmigaKit, but Red has them on for $15 compared to $53.90 from AmigaKit. I ended up buying 2. This is the only product that has such a big gap between the 2 dealers. Usually they are within a buck or 2 of each other. I then ordered another 3.1 ROM. Yea - I should get about 10 of them, as all my Amiga's have been upgraded to 3.1. This afternoon, I went out and seen the new Tranformer's Movie. Robot Chicken summed it up best with "Micheal Bay- EXPLOSIONS, Explosions, Explosions". As a geek who grew up in the '80's, I had loved the Transformers and was expecting them to screw it up in a movie. I was surprised at the first one (But BumbleBee should have been a VW Bug). The second one was even better. It had all the favorite characters, even Ravage. PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS In my opinion, Ravage stole the show with no dialog. Arcee was there, but they split her into three robots with a "hive" mind, and glazed over the fact that she even existed. I thought for sure Megan Fox's character would have Arcee as a "guardian" at the end of the movie. The biggest surprise was Jetfire. My younger brother had 2 of the "original" Jetfire toys. Low and behold, they were the same toys as a Robotech Veritech (Rick Hunter's). An interesting "side note" is how Hasbro lost the Bandi Licencing and had to change the toy. They also changed his name to JetfireSkyfire, in order to justify the whole mess. In the movie Jetfire is an OLD Blackbird SR-71. He even has a cane/crutch. It was a pretty cool adaption, but I would have loved to see the Veritech in action. There is a nasty rumor that Tobey McGuire is "spearheading" a secret "Robotech" Movie. We can only pray. PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS All and all Transformers 2 was good. I would have loved to see less of the parents and a bit less of Sam's Whining, but the Special effects make up for it. Sunday, June 28, 2009 Stay-cation Day 1 Today marks the official first day of my "Stay"cation. I have a whole week off and have nothing really planned. I have 3 Amiga "projects" to do - IF I get around to them. Building an A600, putting a new Power supply in the CDTV, and getting around to the A4000. I also have to desperately clean my apartment, as the recent tough economic times, I have had to let go of my maid (Yeh! that's the excuse). Today, I just vegged out, but I did manage to get all the parts together for the A600. This is the (almost) second complete unit. I had found a Ebay dealer from the UK that sell parts for relatively cheap. I had got in a Case and motherboard in, and today I scrubbed down the case and mounted the motherboard. Today, I got the keyboard for it (won it on e-bay) so It will be another week for it and a floppy drive to come in. This week I had won ANOTHER A600 from the UK, so in a few weeks, I will have 3 units total. One will be going to my Web Host Mike, for he wants to learn to program on it and also play Lemmings. I just got in the floppy version of lemmings (i actually have 3 factory copies, but all 3 are borked or at least one of the disks are- I have tons of floppies like this -Bubble Bubble, Rampage, Shadow of the beast. I hate borked disks). Being home is no joy though, It had not been noon, and a new client dropped off a computer to do a Format and Windows re-install. Looks like I will make more money staying at home this week that actually going into work. I wanted to mention a few things did happen this week. Mike at Software hut refunded my money for the Typhoon card. I was tired of waiting for it. As always with my luck, Softhut DID actually get a batch of the non-Scsi cards in. When I seen the pictures of the cards, they had turned out to be old stock that was re-furbished, not "NEW" cards from GVP. Looking at the pictures of the Cards, something just wasn't right. Alarm bells were ringing. I am not sure why, but something seems off from the pictures. No Crystals, components are weird. I am glad now I did cancel my order. It seems the cover has to be off on the bottom to run these cards (or get a tower set up). My card seems perfectly happy inside the case. I am not putting down Mike or Softhut, and probably will order from them in the future, but if I would have waited, I think I would have been disappointed by these cards. It was not what I expected them to be. Thursday, June 18, 2009 Oh NO! Its Lemmings! So Yesterday was busy, With a bunch of personal stuff, blended in with the support tickets with AmigaKit, I received another couple of e-bay packages. The problem with the A600 hard drive, it turns out is that Amigakit formatted it with SFS, thinking or assuming it was going on an A1200. In my order "Comments" section, I did state it was going on a A600, but I am not sure if I wasn't clear enough or what on the matter. It looks like I am either going to have to order the 97"IDE Fix board for the A600 or get the new "Microdrives" from them. As it stands, I have at least 2 more A600's on the way, so likely, I will be ordering both. In one of the Ebay Packages, I got a Lemmings CD for the CDTV/CD32. I had never played Lemmings back in the day, but everyone I knew had. This was a perfect test for my CD32 on my big screen TV. Other than it takes FOREVER (almost 4 minutes) to load, it works great. Also on the CD is a Jet plane simulator, I have not played it yet, nor is it labeled on the CD. (YES, It is a "Factory" Copy of the CD). Unlike my other Ebay Auction, I got a few Pirated CD's and have reported that to Ebay. If they would have stated that these Amiga CD's are Copied Software, I guess I would not care, but the fact they had tried to pawn them off as legit, well that just begs me to report them to Ebay. Not much more to say today, other than back to Lemmings.... Wednesday, June 17, 2009 The A600 From Hell So, Installing a working hard drive in my A600 has been the chore from hell. Yesterday afternoon, I installed the new RAM, Hard drive and floppy Drive. I had reported that the floppy drive button "Broke" off in shipment, but upon further examination, the button was Sawed off. This is because the "New" floppy drives from Amiga don't quite fit exactly on the A600's and consequently the eject button doesn't line up. I also believe the new drives are a couple of millimeters bigger than the old drives and the case has difficulty closing properly. This is not that much of an issue, as I will send the old floppy to AmigaKit to get repaired, Because I would like 1 A600 that is working flawlessly to take to work with me. After the physical mounting of parts, I booted it up and was hopping for the Amigakit software to come up and ask me for my install disks for OS 3.1. This was not the case. Instead, I was greeted with a software error: Software Failure: SHD3: Software Failure (error #80000003) Wait for disk Activity to Finnish, with a "Suspend or Reboot" option. If I hit "suspend" just a blank workbench screen would come up for a few seconds then it would "reboot" with a GURU error. If I hit reboot, it would just do the same thing. So I went in and held both Mouse buttons down and disabled every drive, but the HD0. After about 20 reboots, Lo and behold the Amigakit software came up. It asked me for my workbench disk, the my local disk. then things went wonky, it asked for my storage disk, but wouldn't let me put it in, it just proceed with the install like I had put it in, then it crashed. After that, now I just get an IDE fix "NAG" screen. I had emailed Matthew, (I believe I was talking with Matthew) on it, and he sent me some suggestions, But after 3 hours, I am just going to send in both my drives and have Amigakit load up a default 3.1 installation on both. That way I always have a back up drive. Matthew suggested I put in a ticket, which I will, but I chalk this all up to inexperience. I also Emailed Joe at Softhut on the status (IF ANY) of those Typhoon cards. I am going to ask for my money back if there is no news 2 months is long enough to wait. Tuesday, June 16, 2009 AmigaKit.com Shameless plug! Today's blog is a shameless plug to AmigaKit.com. I know in the past, I was a bit harsh on them for shipping, but they do make up for it. The picture below is of Matthew Leaman, the owner of AmigaKit (Sorry, I stole it of the net) He has seen to it that all my orders are filled properly. I finally got my package in from Fed Ex today. I had ordered a new floppy drive, a new hard drive and a new 602 Ram expansion for my A 600, and He had also thrown in 5 Battery holders. In the past I had complained that the grey battery holders were crap, and he (without even telling me) had thrown in 5 of the right ones. That's fantastic customer service. He had also sent me the replacement disk for "PinBall" That had come in with my A1200. That rocks. So this afternoon, I will be upgrading my A600. Hopefully now, I will have a hard drive that will install properly.The plastic eject button on the floppy had broken off, but a drop of glue will fix that right up. That of course is not AmigaKit's fault. In the next few days, I will be ordering more (YES, MORE) stuff from AmigaKit. I will be getting an A4000 IDE terminator, A A4000 ATX power lead, An ADF Compact flash Transfer kit and finally an PCMCIA network card to get my A1200 online. This time, I will be very careful to make sure the package gets shipped though Royal Post, and not FED EX. So, if you are looking for those parts for your amiga, do not hesitate to order from AmigaKit.com, even if you are half the world away. You will not be let down. Monday, June 8, 2009 FEES FEES and frigin MORE fees Yesterday, I spent the day Shipping out some products for the online store and also my A2000 HD spare unit. On Friday, AmigaKit shipped my order of A600 parts and I thought today I would be working happily on my A600, BUT NOOOOOO!!!! First, I want to say AmigaKit ROCKS! They have the parts I need usually, and besides the occasional delay on getting to my order, they always have super fast shipping and top notch customer service. That being said, they use FED EX. Now in the past, I have ranted about UPS, But FED EX is starting to pull the same shit UPS does. Fricken FEES. FED EX came to my door this morning and wanted another $20 for shipping. The boarder fricken fee is a FLAT $5!!!!, if they get stopped. What the hell is the use of paying for shipping in advance, if the shipper is going to hose you again at your door and extort money from you!!! I told him to come back AFTER payday. WHO Carries cash these days? And has money half way between paydays? This of course is not AmigaKit's fault, but another example of big corporations bending the little guy over and EXTORTING MORE MONEY from them! plain and simple. In fact, because this has happened twice now for Fed Ex, and ordering from AmigaKit, I am temped to give all my Business in the future to Red's Retro In the US. Jim uses USPS and what he quotes is what you pay. Period. Sure, it may take a week, but you don't get it up the butt in extortion fees. You would think that Fed Ex would give a Courtesy Call to inform you ahead of time that there are fees, so you don't start laying in to the driver when he demands COD payments- is that too much like common sense?, and they don't carry change! How fricken Convenient is that. Sorry, but its about time we start standing up to these yahoo's and do something about all these imaginary Fee's that big Corporations are charging. The Govt takes a bind eye when the big companies do it(mostly because they are paid to look the other way), but if a little guy like me does it, I would be in jail faster than you can shake a stick at it. Alright, enough ranting! I am going to get back to the A4000 tomorrow. A week of leaving it alone is enough time. Since I can't get back on the 6 and all I can do is play with the 12, the 4 seems the next thing to get back into. Wednesday, June 3, 2009 Goodbye...old...friend..... It was with a bit of sadness, that I packed up my A3000 this morning. I am trying to make room around here, and since the A3000 is the "odd man Out" I sold it yesterday, to a guy off of Amibay. He had gotten a stinker of a deal on Ebay, and really wanted another A3000. I was going to sell it without the hard drive, as my drive has lots of "Failed" installs and a failed install of Amiporn. To this day, I don't know what Amiporn is suppose to be, but when I opened up a picture on the hard drive, all I got was a less than attractive girl with an Amiga and I could barely see it because the screen resolution was so low. I warned the buyer of this, and to wipe the drive as soon as he got it. But the old girl did not go away in vain, the money I made from the sale went straight to AmigaKit to order new parts for the A600. I actually lost money on this sale, as I sold it for about $100 cheaper than what I bought it for in January, but at least it went to a Amiga user. I also found a "new" problem with the A600. I suspect one of the Circuits on the keyboard is faulty, as I have a "dead" row of keys. The "4", "F', and "V" keys are all dead. When I put my order in at AmigaKit, I did ask if they had a spare circuit board, as I am afraid I cant use an A2000 in this puppy. I am now experimenting with mirroring this blog over at Amiga.org. The only difference is the "RANDOM" photo will not be published there. This is for 2 reasons: 1) someone may believe that a certain "RANDOM" photo is not safe for work, I really just post them because they make me smile. 2) If they want to see them, it will force them to come to the site :) So today is back to work on my A600. I am going to try to install the IDE FIX for large drives today, but again they are in a different compression scheme and I know that it won't be a cakewalk. A big shoutout "thank you" goes to Burt who gave me a good .ADF file program (TransADF) and actually gave me a "Good" instructions on how to use it to make real floppies. It worked flawlessly the first time. I am still waiting for the "Typhoon" card from Softhut. I did e-mail Joe and he is still waiting from GVP. Its been over a month now (almost 2 since the advert went up). I don't need the card anymore since one "fell into my lap" and I am debating weather to hold on or get my money back at this point. One month is just way too long to keep saying "sometime tomorrow" or "I hope to ship next week". I know this is not Joe's fault, but I paid in full expecting a 2 week turn around tops, Not a month plus.	SPONSORS OF THE LOUNGE ADVERTISE Your Company Here: E-mail the lounge for more information

Monday, June 29, 2009

Vacation Day 2

PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS

Day 2 of my Stay-cation started of a bit late. My Paypal Auctions and my "reverse" Payments to my CC finally cleared. For those that don't know, Ebay/Paypal has a new policy, that if you sell something over a hundred dollars, they will hold that payment for 21 days or until the buyer leaves feedback. My Buyer took forever to leave feedback and in fact had 1 day left until the 21 day hold period was over.
I had finished paying for my A600 (piece by piece) auctions and I got an A600 keyboard, floppy drive, OS 3.0 and a book of programs from the Ebay store the seller has. Then, I called up Matthew at AmigaKit. I wanted to actually talk to him and to let him know to ship my stuff Royal Post. It was late in the day for him, and only 11 AM here. I ended up having to break my shipment into 2 orders, because Paypal will not let you "Pay with both a Paypal balance and the rest on CC". They used to, but why they stopped that is anyone's guess.
I then went over to Red's Sight and ordered 2 ATX to 500 Cables. I could have ordered them from AmigaKit, but Red has them on for $15 compared to $53.90 from AmigaKit. I ended up buying 2. This is the only product that has such a big gap between the 2 dealers. Usually they are within a buck or 2 of each other.
I then ordered another 3.1 ROM. Yea - I should get about 10 of them, as all my Amiga's have been upgraded to 3.1.
This afternoon, I went out and seen the new Tranformer's Movie. Robot Chicken summed it up best with "Micheal Bay- EXPLOSIONS, Explosions, Explosions". As a geek who grew up in the '80's, I had loved the Transformers and was expecting them to screw it up in a movie. I was surprised at the first one (But BumbleBee should have been a VW Bug). The second one was even better. It had all the favorite characters, even Ravage.
PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS
In my opinion, Ravage stole the show with no dialog. Arcee was there, but they split her into three robots with a "hive" mind, and glazed over the fact that she even existed. I thought for sure Megan Fox's character would have Arcee as a "guardian" at the end of the movie.
The biggest surprise was Jetfire. My younger brother had 2 of the "original" Jetfire toys. Low and behold, they were the same toys as a Robotech Veritech (Rick Hunter's).

An interesting "side note" is how Hasbro lost the Bandi Licencing and had to change the toy. They also changed his name to JetfireSkyfire, in order to justify the whole mess.
In the movie Jetfire is an OLD Blackbird SR-71. He even has a cane/crutch. It was a pretty cool adaption, but I would have loved to see the Veritech in action. There is a nasty rumor that Tobey McGuire is "spearheading" a secret "Robotech" Movie. We can only pray.

PHOTO REMOVED DUE TO HOTLINKING SCUMBAGS

All and all Transformers 2 was good. I would have loved to see less of the parents and a bit less of Sam's Whining, but the Special effects make up for it.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Stay-cation Day 1

Today marks the official first day of my "Stay"cation. I have a whole week off and have nothing really planned. I have 3 Amiga "projects" to do - IF I get around to them. Building an A600, putting a new Power supply in the CDTV, and getting around to the A4000.
I also have to desperately clean my apartment, as the recent tough economic times, I have had to let go of my maid (Yeh! that's the excuse).

Today, I just vegged out, but I did manage to get all the parts together for the A600. This is the (almost) second complete unit.
I had found a Ebay dealer from the UK that sell parts for relatively cheap. I had got in a Case and motherboard in, and today I scrubbed down the case and mounted the motherboard. Today, I got the keyboard for it (won it on e-bay) so It will be another week for it and a floppy drive to come in. This week I had won ANOTHER A600 from the UK, so in a few weeks, I will have 3 units total. One will be going to my Web Host Mike, for he wants to learn to program on it and also play Lemmings. I just got in the floppy version of lemmings (i actually have 3 factory copies, but all 3 are borked or at least one of the disks are- I have tons of floppies like this -Bubble Bubble, Rampage, Shadow of the beast. I hate borked disks).
Being home is no joy though, It had not been noon, and a new client dropped off a computer to do a Format and Windows re-install. Looks like I will make more money staying at home this week that actually going into work.
I wanted to mention a few things did happen this week. Mike at Software hut refunded my money for the Typhoon card. I was tired of waiting for it. As always with my luck, Softhut DID actually get a batch of the non-Scsi cards in. When I seen the pictures of the cards, they had turned out to be old stock that was re-furbished, not "NEW" cards from GVP. Looking at the pictures of the Cards, something just wasn't right. Alarm bells were ringing. I am not sure why, but something seems off from the pictures. No Crystals, components are weird. I am glad now I did cancel my order. It seems the cover has to be off on the bottom to run these cards (or get a tower set up). My card seems perfectly happy inside the case.
I am not putting down Mike or Softhut, and probably will order from them in the future, but if I would have waited, I think I would have been disappointed by these cards. It was not what I expected them to be.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Oh NO! Its Lemmings!

So Yesterday was busy, With a bunch of personal stuff, blended in with the support tickets with AmigaKit, I received another couple of e-bay packages. The problem with the A600 hard drive, it turns out is that Amigakit formatted it with SFS, thinking or assuming it was going on an A1200. In my order "Comments" section, I did state it was going on a A600, but I am not sure if I wasn't clear enough or what on the matter. It looks like I am either going to have to order the 97"IDE Fix board for the A600 or get the new "Microdrives" from them. As it stands, I have at least 2 more A600's on the way, so likely, I will be ordering both.
In one of the Ebay Packages, I got a Lemmings CD for the CDTV/CD32. I had never played Lemmings back in the day, but everyone I knew had. This was a perfect test for my CD32 on my big screen TV. Other than it takes FOREVER (almost 4 minutes) to load, it works great. Also on the CD is a Jet plane simulator, I have not played it yet, nor is it labeled on the CD. (YES, It is a "Factory" Copy of the CD). Unlike my other Ebay Auction, I got a few Pirated CD's and have reported that to Ebay. If they would have stated that these Amiga CD's are Copied Software, I guess I would not care, but the fact they had tried to pawn them off as legit, well that just begs me to report them to Ebay. Not much more to say today, other than back to Lemmings....

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The A600 From Hell

So, Installing a working hard drive in my A600 has been the chore from hell. Yesterday afternoon, I installed the new RAM, Hard drive and floppy Drive. I had reported that the floppy drive button "Broke" off in shipment, but upon further examination, the button was Sawed off. This is because the "New" floppy drives from Amiga don't quite fit exactly on the A600's and consequently the eject button doesn't line up. I also believe the new drives are a couple of millimeters bigger than the old drives and the case has difficulty closing properly. This is not that much of an issue, as I will send the old floppy to AmigaKit to get repaired, Because I would like 1 A600 that is working flawlessly to take to work with me.
After the physical mounting of parts, I booted it up and was hopping for the Amigakit software to come up and ask me for my install disks for OS 3.1. This was not the case. Instead, I was greeted with a software error: Software Failure: SHD3: Software Failure (error #80000003) Wait for disk Activity to Finnish, with a "Suspend or Reboot" option. If I hit "suspend" just a blank workbench screen would come up for a few seconds then it would "reboot" with a GURU error.
If I hit reboot, it would just do the same thing.
So I went in and held both Mouse buttons down and disabled every drive, but the HD0. After about 20 reboots, Lo and behold the Amigakit software came up. It asked me for my workbench disk, the my local disk. then things went wonky, it asked for my storage disk, but wouldn't let me put it in, it just proceed with the install like I had put it in, then it crashed.
After that, now I just get an IDE fix "NAG" screen.
I had emailed Matthew, (I believe I was talking with Matthew) on it, and he sent me some suggestions, But after 3 hours, I am just going to send in both my drives and have Amigakit load up a default 3.1 installation on both. That way I always have a back up drive.
Matthew suggested I put in a ticket, which I will, but I chalk this all up to inexperience.

I also Emailed Joe at Softhut on the status (IF ANY) of those Typhoon cards. I am going to ask for my money back if there is no news 2 months is long enough to wait.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

AmigaKit.com Shameless plug!

Today's blog is a shameless plug to AmigaKit.com. I know in the past, I was a bit harsh on them for shipping, but they do make up for it. The picture below is of Matthew Leaman, the owner of AmigaKit (Sorry, I stole it of the net)

He has seen to it that all my orders are filled properly.
I finally got my package in from Fed Ex today. I had ordered a new floppy drive, a new hard drive and a new 602 Ram expansion for my A 600, and He had also thrown in 5 Battery holders. In the past I had complained that the grey battery holders were crap, and he (without even telling me) had thrown in 5 of the right ones. That's fantastic customer service. He had also sent me the replacement disk for "PinBall" That had come in with my A1200. That rocks. So this afternoon, I will be upgrading my A600. Hopefully now, I will have a hard drive that will install properly.The plastic eject button on the floppy had broken off, but a drop of glue will fix that right up. That of course is not AmigaKit's fault.
In the next few days, I will be ordering more (YES, MORE) stuff from AmigaKit. I will be getting an A4000 IDE terminator, A A4000 ATX power lead, An ADF Compact flash Transfer kit and finally an PCMCIA network card to get my A1200 online. This time, I will be very careful to make sure the package gets shipped though Royal Post, and not FED EX.

So, if you are looking for those parts for your amiga, do not hesitate to order from AmigaKit.com, even if you are half the world away. You will not be let down.

Monday, June 8, 2009

FEES FEES and frigin MORE fees

Yesterday, I spent the day Shipping out some products for the online store and also my A2000 HD spare unit. On Friday, AmigaKit shipped my order of A600 parts and I thought today I would be working happily on my A600, BUT NOOOOOO!!!!

First, I want to say AmigaKit ROCKS! They have the parts I need usually, and besides the occasional delay on getting to my order, they always have super fast shipping and top notch customer service. That being said, they use FED EX. Now in the past, I have ranted about UPS, But FED EX is starting to pull the same shit UPS does. Fricken FEES. FED EX came to my door this morning and wanted another $20 for shipping. The boarder fricken fee is a FLAT $5!!!!, if they get stopped. What the hell is the use of paying for shipping in advance, if the shipper is going to hose you again at your door and extort money from you!!! I told him to come back AFTER payday. WHO Carries cash these days? And has money half way between paydays?
This of course is not AmigaKit's fault, but another example of big corporations bending the little guy over and EXTORTING MORE MONEY from them! plain and simple. In fact, because this has happened twice now for Fed Ex, and ordering from AmigaKit, I am temped to give all my Business in the future to Red's Retro In the US. Jim uses USPS and what he quotes is what you pay. Period.
Sure, it may take a week, but you don't get it up the butt in extortion fees.
You would think that Fed Ex would give a Courtesy Call to inform you ahead of time that there are fees, so you don't start laying in to the driver when he demands COD payments- is that too much like common sense?, and they don't carry change! How fricken Convenient is that.

Sorry, but its about time we start standing up to these yahoo's and do something about all these imaginary Fee's that big Corporations are charging. The Govt takes a bind eye when the big companies do it(mostly because they are paid to look the other way), but if a little guy like me does it, I would be in jail faster than you can shake a stick at it.

Alright, enough ranting!
I am going to get back to the A4000 tomorrow. A week of leaving it alone is enough time. Since I can't get back on the 6 and all I can do is play with the 12, the 4 seems the next thing to get back into.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Goodbye...old...friend.....

It was with a bit of sadness, that I packed up my A3000 this morning. I am trying to make room around here, and since the A3000 is the "odd man Out" I sold it yesterday, to a guy off of Amibay. He had gotten a stinker of a deal on Ebay, and really wanted another A3000. I was going to sell it without the hard drive, as my drive has lots of "Failed" installs and a failed install of Amiporn. To this day, I don't know what Amiporn is suppose to be, but when I opened up a picture on the hard drive, all I got was a less than attractive girl with an Amiga and I could barely see it because the screen resolution was so low. I warned the buyer of this, and to wipe the drive as soon as he got it.
But the old girl did not go away in vain, the money I made from the sale went straight to AmigaKit to order new parts for the A600. I actually lost money on this sale, as I sold it for about $100 cheaper than what I bought it for in January, but at least it went to a Amiga user.

I also found a "new" problem with the A600. I suspect one of the Circuits on the keyboard is faulty, as I have a "dead" row of keys. The "4", "F', and "V" keys are all dead. When I put my order in at AmigaKit, I did ask if they had a spare circuit board, as I am afraid I cant use an A2000 in this puppy.
I am now experimenting with mirroring this blog over at Amiga.org. The only difference is the "RANDOM" photo will not be published there. This is for 2 reasons: 1) someone may believe that a certain "RANDOM" photo is not safe for work, I really just post them because they make me smile.
2) If they want to see them, it will force them to come to the site :)

So today is back to work on my A600. I am going to try to install the IDE FIX for large drives today, but again they are in a different compression scheme and I know that it won't be a cakewalk.
A big shoutout "thank you" goes to Burt who gave me a good .ADF file program (TransADF) and actually gave me a "Good" instructions on how to use it to make real floppies. It worked flawlessly the first time.

I am still waiting for the "Typhoon" card from Softhut. I did e-mail Joe and he is still waiting from GVP. Its been over a month now (almost 2 since the advert went up). I don't need the card anymore since one "fell into my lap" and I am debating weather to hold on or get my money back at this point. One month is just way too long to keep saying "sometime tomorrow" or "I hope to ship next week". I know this is not Joe's fault, but I paid in full expecting a 2 week turn around tops, Not a month plus.