1995
* First, there was BBS Express! from Orion Micro Systems. Used it for about a half year, with 4
diskdrives, and 2400 baud modem, connected to an Atari 850. The computer I used was an Atari 130XE,
expanded to 320Kb memory, which burned to dead shortly after.
And then I decided to go for the real thing. |
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1996
* Then there was BBS Express Professional 5.0b. Some months after we ordered it (a friend of my runs
the same software), I finally got the package. Officially, the board went online in 1997, on the 1st
of January to be exactly, but I did testdrive it for almost a year or so. I didn't had a harddisk
interface at that time, and used SIO-2-PC to have acces to my PC harddrives. A real hell, since the
Sparta-Dos provided with the BBS package didn't support highspeed serial I/O, so the BBS was
extremely sloooOOOooow.
* Later I tried A.P.E. to use my PC harddrives, to discover that A.P.E. didn't display anything on the
screen when a monochrome monitor was used, however the program itself worked great. Invested some time
in writing a batchfile to start-up A.P.E, and when that worked, I could run it blind. Later I wrote a
letter to Steven Tucker (the author) about it, and the next version did run great on monochrome
displays too! A little later I layed my hands on a color monitor.
* After all, the PC-harddisk chapter didn't last long, and after a zillion crashes due to PC-failures
and drivespace-gadgets, I ordered a Black-Box, which replaced my 850 interface at the same time.
Immediatly after I had my Black-Box, an updated version of Sparta-Dos was released, WITH highspeed
routines. Too late...
* After having demolished 3 harddrives, I bought two 676Mb Imprimis harddisks, and ordered a second
Black-Box. Also bought a 14K4 modem, and as today, the same configuration is still in use, except that
the 130XE for the BBS now has 320Kb of memory.
* The board is still online, and can be reached at the number +31 416 279990, and is online from 21:00
hrs to 08:00 hrs. That's Central Europe time!
* For more info, choose "BBS-list" at the mainpage, or
click here. |
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1997
* The first Thunderdome homepage became a fact. It contained nothing but one graphic and some text
about how to reach my BBS, and at what times. Right then, I couldn't even browse the internet, since
my only non-Atari 8-bit computers were a ZX81, a defective MSX, some 8086's, 8088's, a defective
286, and one 386 AT system with too less memory to run Windows, and even a DOS browser (Arachne)
wouldn't run on it. Oh well, it was a nice SIO-2-PC try-out thingy, and my Atari 8-Bit was capable
enough to do my internet Emailing.
The page was created on a friends system, and how ironic, I couldn't take a look at the page myself!
This friend was also one of my two co-sysops, and he now has created a site with all kind of info about
our other hobby. Go to the
Trouble Magnets
site to read more about our car projects, mainly German Fords, Cadillacs and Chevrolets, or to take
a look at the pictures.
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1998
* After being unemployed for 2 years or so (did go back to school for 14 months due the lack of a job),
I found work again in March. Nice ofcourse, but it also means I have less time for my Atari and car hobby.
Well, life is all about priorities I guess. That's probably the reason why I've never left the Atari
8-bit scene.
* Got myself a cheap Pentium 75 system to have real internet-acces, and created a small homepage at
the url where my old one was located (ldx call). Nothing special. |
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1999
* More extensive page was created after I learned myself a bit of html. This one was located at a free
internet-provider server, so I only had to pay for my telephone-costs (local call). Also converted
some Atari 8-Bit documents to html code and placed them on my page.
* I upgraded my old Pentium a bit. It now has a 200mmx cpu, external 56K modem, 72Mb memory, 2 local
IDE harddisks, 4 local SCSI harddisks, 2 local CD-Rom players, printer via network, and I even
installed a soundcard. Also built an extra 486AT system, networked with the Pentium, since it has a
defective lpt-port. The 486 is a DOS-machine, mainly to run the registered version of A.P.E. to
exchange files between my Atari harddisks and the 7 PC-harddisks. This setup also allows me to read
CD-Roms on Atari XL/XE, such as the Pooldisks.
How strange, this whole bunch of equipment, with megabytes of memory, and gigabytes of diskspace, is
still not able to replace my Atari 8-Bitter, and probably never will. The only thing it is usefull for
is browsing the internet. Even an emulator isn't half the Atari 8-Bit fun. Well, the speed is o.k. The
errors arive at lightspeed!
--- NOVEMBER ---
* Site is now joining the "Atari Webring", and the "Atari 8-bit Webring".
--- DECEMBER ---
* Added a hit-counter to the Atari menu page.
* Extra link on openings-page to our Car-Projects (currently Ford Taunus, and some USA cars).
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2000
--- JANUARY ---
* Started to submit my url to more search-engines than just "AltaVista" and "Yahoo".
* Added a Favourite-Links page. Most are Atari links, but there are also some others, like links to
Ford-sites (mainly Ford Taunus), and a bit of electronics related url's.
--- FEBRUARY ---
* Html-ed MAC/65 manual of the diskbased version is now online.
* Started to html-ing more Atari 8-Bit manuals. Got some help from an anonymous fanatic.
--- APRIL ---
* Yes! Free internet! No expensive phonebills anymore, just the abbo. Well, that is, if I can connect
to the provider. It's busy for hours and hours!
* Assembler manual of MAE is now html-ed and available on Thunderdome. Thanx to John Harris.
* Added a Sparta-Dos download-section to the pages.
* Enlarged download-section. Now includes demo's, game's, dos', packers, and utils.
* Opened an extra site at "IMaroc". Banners! It's empty now, except for a re-direction page.
--- MAY ---
* Submitted to more free homepage providers. They all show banners!!!
* Added a PC-utils-for-Atari download section.
* Linked the site to a short-url redirector, www.dial.to/atari (ed: disabled now)
* "Thunderdome-pages" are now named "Thunderdome site", and have moved from
"TMFweb" to "eWebCity", which provides some MB's of free webspace. Till now, the
service is o.k, and you don't get nasty banners.
* Added a site-map, and a search-engine to search on Thunderdome site.
* Moved the hit-counter from menu page to openings page.
--- JUNE ---
* I asked Nick Kennedy if it was okay to make a html version of his personal instruction manual of the
Atari Macro Assembler (AMAC). It's online now. See the 6502 programming section.
* Created an additional site to store my MP3's at "Crosswinds". Seems to be the only
provider where I can store a 100Mb of data without banners.
* Added Atari-related MP3's I found on MP3.COM
* "Crosswinds" has kicked me out, and deleted my site without any warning due the presence
of ZIPped MP3 files! Hey guys! These are just free MP3's, mostly from Atari 8-Bit demo musics!
* Converted most MP3 ZIPs to RAR archieves.
* Opened an extra site on "eWebCity" for the MP3's. Don't know if this is allowed...
* [11th] Added a guestbook. Don't know why, but it's there in case you want to leave a message for
other surfers.
* [13th] Decided to add the size to all downloadable files in stead of only the MP3 files. Sizes are
"about" and are in KiloBytes.
* [14th] Started to write this "history" list.
* [15th] Sent a mail to the webmaster of eWebCity about why I get script-timeouts when I upload a big file.
* [16th] My complaint did help! Now my site is unreachable cause they're reorganizing their servers!!!
* [17th] Seems that the site is only invisible for visitors, cause I'm able to logon myself! Well,
added "TT.EXE" in the PC-utils downloads. It converts textfiles from ASCII to ATASCII or
reverse.
* [18th] Created a new "Thunderdome" logo for the menu-page. The size of the animation has
decreased from 6Kb to just 3Kb.
* Started adding extra tags on each menu-page to switch more easely between pages.
* [22nd] The download site seems to be reachable again.
* [23rd] Changed the layout from the "Pin-outs" page. Same with the "Game-docs" one,
on where I enlarged the characters of some titles, with the result that some of the tables will not
fit on a 640*480 screen anymore without having to scroll to the right. I think this is still a better
solution than keeping the tiny and hard to read fonts I was using.
* [24th] The whole Thunderdome site is back again.
* [25th] Subscribed to more free webspace providers. I now have some extra space on "CyberCity"
and "50megs". There's nothing on it yet.
* [26th] Finally I could upload that huge RARed MP3 file to my site. How much trouble one can have with
just one file of 6.5Mb! Anyways, "Pokey's Last Ride" is no longer a dead url.
* [27th] Had some nice chats with Tom Hunt about Atari 8-bit BBSing. His site also grows larger and
larger by the day!
* [29th] Couldn't log to my dial-up for the last 3 days. That's free internet in the Netherlands!
* Deleted an important html-file on my local system. Had to dial-up using an expensive account to
download the file from my online site.
* Created an extra download area for things like terminals and EPROM-programming and such. As now, it
only exists on my local system. 3 Versions of Bobterm are waiting to be loaded-up, as is a complete
package of how to build an Atari EPROM programmer.
* [30th] "Datacommunications" downloadsection is online now.
--- JULY ---
* [2] Shrinked the titles of some pages to make the site-map more readable.
* [3] Added Audio/Video pin-outs info.
* [21] Created an additional homepage called "Natural Narrative Network". These pages have
nothing to do with the Atari 8-Bit computers. Here you will find all weird quotes, taglines, acronyms
and more stuff to feed the brains. It's located at
http://home.wanadoo.nl/fox-1
in case to want to take a look.
* [30] My 15" SVGA monitor burned with a lot of smoke! Now I use an old VGA monitor to browse the net and update the site.
Strange feeling when downgrading to a resolution of only 800*600 with only 256 colors on a 12" screen.
--- AUGUST ---
* [2] Changed the animated "Thunderdome" logo at the very first page. It's now 28Kb in stead of 35Kb.
* [3] Added a small schematic of the "STXL link" interface under "pinouts".
* [18] Created directory for Atari-musics. Here you will find songs in the formats:
"AMS" (Advanced Music System), "CMC" (Chaos Music Composer) and
"MPT" (Music ProTracker). Till now, only some CMC data is online.
* [29] Painted 2 big Atari fuji's on both sides of my van. Also put 3 times the words 'ATARI' on it.
--- SEPTEMBER ---
* [1] After a 12 hours trip we arrived in Germany at 6:00AM to join the 'UnConventional Atari Party'.
* [3] End of the 'UnConventional' convention, so we got back to the Netherlands, together with Nir Dary, our friend from Israel.
We won the first price in the Atari 8-Bit demo competition, however the demo wasn't that good (more of an intro), but there were only
2 entries, and I really did like the other entry!
* [6] I noticed the site has reached over 2000 hits since December '99.
* [8] Registered an additional redirection url. The site can now also be reached on
http://atari.netmenu.nl (re: disabled now). Unfortunately you'll get a pop-up window when selecting this one :-(
* [9] If everything goes well, the 'Defender 2000' music from the Jaguar game (track#6) will be available tonight in the downloads.
* [10] Placed some Advanced Music System files (AMS) in the downloads and also 2 songs from the Intel Outside
demo in MP3 format.
* [11] Created an MP3 of the "Ray of Hope" demo-music from Zelax. It's on the site right now.
* [11] Started to expand the site with an extra 100Mb on "AtoZasia.com" provider.
* [13] Put 'Website Graphics' on that server. Here you will find pictures of Atari meetings we went
and some logos I made. Unfortunately this server places a banner below ever page. Have tried to move
the banner as low as possible.
* [14] Added an extra 30Mb webspace to store some extra MP3's.
* [14] The provider of my main-site have changed their name. This means my url will be changed too in
the near future!!! The thing that will change is probably the 'ewebcity' part of my url, which will
then be 'brinkster' I guess...
* [14] Added SCSI-Bus pinouts. Maybe useful for someone who has a BlackBox or Mio interface.
* [28] My free-internet dial-up provider decided to drop the 'free' aspect. End next month I have to dial-up
using another account where I have to pay for every second I'm connected. This will make no difference
for the site, since it's located on another server. Only updating it will be much more expensive for me.
--- OCTOBER ---
* [1] Started to convert the "Sparta-Dos Construction Kit" to HTML code.
The first 10 chapters are done.
* [4] Added "Endless Dream", "Incedible Story", "SSMB's Music Kaleidoscope"
and "Atari Dealer Demo" to the downloads.
* [23] Since all MP3 files on the site are stored as a "RAR" archieve, I placed an MS-Dos version
of 'RAR v2.00 beta' in the "PC-Utils" download section.
* [26] After some experimenting with 'Opera' browser I discovered some pages on the site looked really
bad. Some items which should be centered wheren't with 'Opera'. Fixed now.
* [28] ABBUC jhv meeting in Herten, Germany.
* [29] Returned from Germany. Got interesting stuff from Andreas Magenheimer, namely 4 songs of the
Atari singles recorded on minidisc. Will make MP3 of those and make them available on my site asap.
Also some bad news this time. The ABBUC Box (ABBUC support BBS) was running for many years on a
real Atari 8-bit computer. First with Wolfgang Burger as the Sysop, thereafter Heiko Bornhorst took
over the job for some years. They decided to end this chapter, and now the BBS is offline :-(
It will return on the internet, but a lot of Atari feeling is gone... I'll miss the clicking sound of
my modem in the middle of the night when the BBS started to call to Germany to get the latest mail...
I'll miss the ringing phone at Saturday-night when the opposite was happening...
* [29] Added downloads in demo and game section ("Wanted" and "Naturix").
* [30] Just sent a mail to the local provider to get internet by cable. Will try to make the BBS
accesable both by real phoneline and internet (telnet). This will not be for tomorrow.
--- NOVEMBER ---
* [2] Added "Alien Evil Contacts" to the demo downloads.
* [20] Before adding the "Journey" demo (320Kb) to the site, I tried to run it on an emulator.
Never seen such a slow demo before. It runs only at 30% of the real speed on a Pentium 200mmx system, and this
is with "frame-skip" enabled!!! Well, I don't really care, since I usually use a REAL Atari computer...
* [22] Another 320Kb demo added, "X-Demo" from MadTeam, together with "X-files",
"Bonus Side" and "Slideshit".
* [27] In the middle of the night the powersuply of the BBS computer and my programming 130XE broke down.
* [28] Finally I have a cable-connection to the internet. It's still pretty expensive, but it's at least
flat-fee and much faster (duh, like a needed that for mail). It's a pitty I've no time to use it this
week cause I have to work till 23:00 hrs :-(
* [29] No time to fix the powersuply and the BBS will be offline the next few days.
--- DECEMBER ---
* [2] Powersuply seems to be really dead. No time to fix it, so I ripped one from an old 286PC.
After some troubles it seems to work now. I will testdrive it to the next day and will put the BBS online again.
* [3] BBS is online again. Modem does strange things sometimes. No time to dive into it yet.
* [19] Removed the WAVe audio on the entry screen. It get's annoying after a while :-)
* [29] The provider where I had a free guestbook stopped their services! Added another one, but didn't
really test it.
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2001
--- JANUARY ---
* [21] Added link to "Kraftwerk" faq. After all they used Atari ST's to create music.
* [22] Thunderdome-site has got 3295 hits.
--- FEBRUARY ---
* Warning: a full month of non-Atari related text ahead!
* Really busy month, both at my work as at home. Besides that, I also bought
an extra car (a Ford 17M), which definately needs some attention :-)
* I now have a local network running on one cable-modem, which is not allowed by
my ISP, and also not possible. Well, there is a sollution for everything as it
seems, since WinRoute does the job. A Pentium 200mmx is now connected to the
internet day and night and acts as a router, NAT, firewall, and mailserver.
Since I don't know very much about TCP, NIC, router and more of that, it took me
a while to get it to work the way I wanted it to.
My new A-Bit BE6 Pentium-II 400 set-up works also great now, with 384Mb memory, a 10Gb DMA33
harddisk, an 80Gb DMA66 harddisk, a Yamaha CDRewriter, and several SCSI harddisks. Also
added a new Terratec 24/96 soundcart, which also caused problems due IRQ and DMA conflicts.
It works, but it is set-up exactly the opposite way as written in the manual.
I seem, to attract such strange problems...
--- MARCH ---
* [1] This is really weird! I can browse the whole internet, without any problems,
but cannot view my own site online! Well, I can do it on my server, but not on
my workstation!?!
* [2] Cost me one evening, but now I can see my own site again at the right place,
so it's time for some small updating.
--- APRIL ---
* [8] Added extra link on the first page which brings you to the Atari Lynx downloads.
* [27] 06:00AM, the start of our trip from the Netherlands to join the ATARIADA Party in Czech republic, but
we have to pick up Mad Butscher (Foundation Two) in Germany first. Well, we finally arrived at his place at
about 15:00 hours.
* [28] 03:00AM. After some searching we found the house in Prostìjov where Zdenìk Burian
lives. We knocked at his window to wake him up, since we wanted to have some sleep :-). The next morning
we drove to the party-place of ATARIADA 2001.
* [28] Slight problem at the party due to the local television crew. Their film-spots required so much power
it got cut off several times, with the result I got harddisk-problems on my 8-bit system.
The party itself was very great. We had very interesting talks with people from Czech and Slovakia.
After the party we talked some more at Bohdan's place were we would sleep that night.
* [29] At 16:00 hours we started our 19 hours trip to go back to home. We had a great time. Many thanx
to Zdenìk and Bohdan from FLOP Magazin. Czech people are great!
* [30] Tired, sleepy, and more of that... But it was worth it.
--- MAY ---
* [22] After several crashes when running the 'Xitami' webserver, I installed 'Apache'. Works great!
* [28] Placed 'Drunk Tank' from Quasimodos in the demo-downloads.
--- JUNE ---
* [8] Top-Dos 1.5 is available for download now.
--- AUGUST ---
* [27] Modified and updated links page.
--- NOVEMBER ---
* Stopped running 'Apache' webserver. Too much abuse.
* My 'new' ftp-server however seems to run o.k.
--- DECEMBER ---
* [18] Created a new entry page. Those Webring companies seem to make changes over and over again, so I quit joining any Webring...
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2002
--- JANUARY ---
* [24] Changed the pinouts page. Added pinouts from 400/800 left-slot cartridge.
--- MARCH ---
* [02] Added Atari 8-Bit FAQ to the links site.
* [13] Since I sold my van a while ago, I bought another car to paint fuji logo's on. It's a '74 Cadillac Eterna Z90, a hearse.
Difficult to park in the Netherlands, but what the heck, it runs great!
* [16] Due to work, I missed the "Schreiersgrün Atari 8-bit meeting" in Germany (#$@^%!)
--- JUNE ---
* [28] And for the same reason I also missed Platariada, an Atari meeting in Czech Republik!!!
--- JULY ---
* [04] Bought a digital photocamera and placed a screenshot of the BBS mainmenu on the BBS-list page.
* [17] My new domain at atari.org is accepted, so to acces my site you can also use
http://thunderdome.atari.org.
* [28] I just got permission from Barry Gordon to place his 'COPY OS' utility on my page. It's there now.
--- AUGUST ---
* [03] Andreas Magenheimer provided some more demo and AMS-music info.
* [07] Removed link to my Email-address from the site. Incredible amounts of spam! Those who want to mail me have to use another address,
which is "fox-1 AT home DOT nl" (encrypt it from this text)
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2003
--- JANUARY ---
* [04] After some silence, Animkomials meets Boris Valleyo demo has been added to the downloads.
--- JULY ---
* [09] Updated the fake Atari picture's on the 'webgraphics' page.
* [09] One can also use 'mnx AT fox-1 DOT nl' to contact me, as this is my own domain since a while.
--- AUGUST ---
* [01] As this free provider has a 500MB traffic/month limit, I relocated the Sparta-Dos downloads to another url. Except from a
changing url-name in your browser you won't notice anything of it.
* [01] Added NNTOOLS (Nelson Nieves' Sparta-Dos tools package) to the 'Sparta-Dos External Commands page'.
* [01] Also moved the Atari DOS System Disks and Utilities to another url to spread the datatransfer over several url's.
--- OCTOBER ---
* [24] Tomorrow it's JHV time again, the annual Atari 8-bit meeting from ABBUC in Herten, Germany.
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2004
--- JANUARY ---
* [22] Finally... no more advertizing or banners or whatever on the Thunderdome site. The site is now hosted on the server from one of my own domains.
It was ment to be used for my mix-hobby, but since it has 800MB of storage there is room enough to also host the Atari pages.
--- FEBRUARY ---
* [03] I started to modify a Visual Basic Telnet-tool (Windows) to make it work with my BBS. It makes it possible to logon to the BBS by internet
in stead of using a modem and a phoneline. The original version was made to connect to a BBS system running on a C=64, but it emulates RS232 signals,
but what I need is something that emulates a whole modem. I'd never even seen a single line of Visual Basic before, so I'm having a hard time right now :-))
* [12] Added DB9 & DB25 nullmodem info to the pinouts page.
* [19] Added some more demo's to the downloads area.
* [24] Created a new download page dedicated to BBS Express! Professional. Only interesting if you are a SysOp of such a board.
* [24] Still working on Leif Bloomquist his Telnet-server software to make it 100% compatible with my Atari Pro! BBS. It now works for 90% at my
system. Only need to weed out some small problems, but basically it works without errors at 19.200 baud with hardware handshake.
* [26] Due to a server migration today, the hit counter has been reset. I've no idea how many hits there were till today so I'll just make a fresh restart :-)
--- MARCH ---
* [06] Improved the Visual Basic code from the Telnet BBS server a bit more. It now really checks for an ATA in stead of just pausing and skip it.
* [07] Added several data sheets in .PDF to the pinouts section.
--- SEPTEMBER ---
* [01] In a few days the annual UnConventional Party is about to take place. Still haven't found a solution how to bridge the 1400KM gap this year.
* [13] Missed the convention due the lack of a car which doesn't consumes a lot of fuel.
* [28] Did some re-design. A little more buttons, a little less text.
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2005
--- JANUARY ---
* [02] Missed some more international Atari meetings due the lack of money and a car with an acceptable fuel consumption.
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History of the THUNDERDOME Site
