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John Polka
Jan 16, 2024
In General Discussions
Hi everyone,
In case you haven't heard, Basement and Part-Time have been down since Saturday due to a power failure.
We got hit with a very strong wind and snowstorm. Several trees fell and took out power lines. Over 100K power customers were affected.
Our neighbors on either side had very tall trees fall. We were lucky to have been spared. Some homes have been damaged on our street.
It also was very cold with temperatures dropping into the teens. Our house temperature dropped into the 30s.
Power was restored at 4pm PT today. The house right now is still warming up to our usual temperature of 70 degrees.
Our Internet is not back yet. I did not get an estimate from Xfinity when I reported. Perhaps some of their cable lines are down. I just have spotty cellular service.
Bad weather returns tomorrow. So there may not be any Internet tomorrow either. At this point, I just hope we keep our power on tomorrow too.
I will let you all know when we are back online.
-JP
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John Polka
Dec 14, 2023
In General Discussions
Rick H, an old user from the Basement BBS, reconnected recently and mentioned that he was calling the Basement again using the same homemade 300 baud modem that he used in the 80s. I asked him to share some more details and photos of his homemade 300 baud modem. Below are his words in an email to me: (and yes, he shows how old school he is when he types in all caps 😁):
JOHN,
THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST IN SEEING MY MODEM.
YOU CAN POST THEM ANYWHERE OTHER ATARI ENTHUSIASTS MIGHT SEE THEM.
I BUILT IT WITH SPARE PARTS FROM THE COMPANY I WORKED FOR IN THE 80'S.
I HAD BUILT A PREVIOUS VERSION THAT WORKED, BUT THEN DECIDED TO BUILD A DIRECT CONNECT VERSION. I ATTACHED A FEW PHOTOS OF MY MODEM AND ONE OF MY EPROM BURNER WHICH WERE LOTS OF FUN TO BUILD.
I ALSO MADE A VOICE SYNTHESIZER, AND AMONG OTHER PROJECTS, AN EPROM BURNER TO LOAD EPROMS AT HOME FOR PROJECTS ALL FOR THE ATARI.
I GOT ALL MY ATARI STUFF OUT OF STORAGE IN 2019 AND AND FOUND A FRIEND HERE IN NEW MEXICO ON THE ATARIAGE WEBSITE.
NOW WE HAVE 7 GUYS THAT ARE STARTING A NEW USER GROUP "AACE 2.0". THERE WAS A USER GROUP IN THE PAST "AACE" THAT MY FRIEND WAS PART OF.
I HAVE TWO DESKS IN THE HOUSE EACH WITH ATARI COMPUTERS SET UP WITH 4 DRIVES ON EACH.
I KNOW HOW TO UPGRADE ANYTHING AND REPAIR ANYTHING. I HAVE 7 ATARI COMPUTERS IN MY COLLECTION.
IT HAS BEEN VERY SATISFYING TO SEE MY MODEM WORKING AGAIN!
THANKS FOR BRINGING BACK THE BASEMENT BBS AGAIN.
RICK H
In a second email, he also added the following:
I STILL NEVER PUT IT IN AN ENCLOSURE
BECAUSE IT LOOKS SO BEAUTIFUL!
I USE THE SAME FLOPPY WITH AMODEM
7.22 THAT I USED IN THE 80'S TO CALL
THE BASEMENT. THE MODEM DOES AUTO
ANSWER ALSO.
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John Polka
Oct 08, 2023
In General Discussions
I am aware there is a lot of lag on our BBS connection today. I am investigating it.
-JP
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John Polka
Sep 16, 2023
In General Discussions
As you all know, I have an Atari BBS Status event process that runs at 11:50pm every day. It creates the BBS Status page that you see linked on this website and in the library page on The Basement BBS. I added the ability to send an email alert when the process deems a BBS is down. If you're an Atari SysOp and would like to receive an email alert when your BBS does not respond, let me know by providing me a good email address to send the alert to.
-JP
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John Polka
Aug 11, 2023
In General Discussions
We are finally getting a heat wave in our next of the woods. Next week will be hot with temperatures in the upper 90s and low 100s. The computer that runs the Basement and Part-Time is in a non-air conditioned location. So, if it's down for part of next week, you all will know why. 😁
-JP
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John Polka
Apr 19, 2023
In General Discussions
As I posted on the Basement BBS, Xfinity has some maintenance scheduled beginning at 12am PT on 4/20/23 (which is 12 midnight tonight). So, if the Basement and Part-Time are down tomorrow, you will know why. Hopefully it does not last long. They upgraded our network not too long ago and it led to multiple outages. Hopefully that will not happen this time. -JP
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John Polka
Jan 31, 2023
In General Discussions
Bob_C on the Basement BBS asked about ways to improve the video quality of the Atari 800XL. I knew there is a resistor that could be clipped, but wasn't sure which one so I asked my friend, Paul Westphal, of EightBitFix.com . He provided the following information:
One simple fix to the Atari 800XL's video is to clip video limiting resistor R57. If you have it, you can remove it from your Atari 800XL motherboard. Later revisions of the motherboard already had it removed. But if you you have R57, you can just clip it and your video will appear crisper on either a TV or monitor.
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John Polka
May 04, 2022
In General Discussions
https://fox8.com/news/live-couples-say-yoda-one-for-me-in-star-wars-weddings/
...and happy May the 4th everyone!
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John Polka
Feb 22, 2022
In General Discussions
Those who have run a BBS on Windows (or on an emulator like Altirra) are very familiar with the occasional restart after a Windows update. If your Windows box has a single user account that automatically logs in after a reboot, then it is possible to create an event that automatically restarts your BBS. Unfortunately, I run two BBSs on the same machine. This means each BBS needs to be in their own account since each instance of Altirra saves its profile to the Windows registry. Therefore, creating an automatic restart of both my BBSs is not trivial. After a Windows restart, my BBSs will be down until I manually restart them. To help speed up the process of restarting my BBSs, I created an event that sends me an email when my Windows box restarts. I figured this might be helpful to some other SysOps, so I wrote the attached tutorial that explains how I created this email alert. Let me know if you questions on the document.
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John Polka
Dec 04, 2021
In General Discussions
In last night's monthly Zoom meeting I told the story about an Atari Pirate Group in the Cleveland, Ohio area that had a story appear on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. The Group called themselves Atari Pirates Incorporated, or API for short. I was not a part of this pirate group, but I knew some of them at school. I remember one of the pirates, "The Dark Knight", bragging on one of the local BBSs about the forthcoming newspaper article. And he was declaring "victory" over the other rival pirate groups in the area.
The date was Sunday, August 4, 1985 when the article came out. I remember being surprised by it when I retrieved the newspaper that morning. The article made a big splash, but probably not as the pirates expected. For starters, non-Atari users would ask, "What in the hell is a happy disk?" And rival Commodore Groups ended up making fun of this alleged "Happy Disk" and how the pirates sounded like little kids in the article. If that wasn't enough, the members of API ended up getting busted by the Feds shortly after the article ran. How did the feds find these guys? The photo that ran with the article included an overhead shot of one of the pirates called Dr. Demento. Next to Dr. Demento, in the photo, was a telephone. Back in the day, most telephones had a telephone number tag on them. The telephone in this photo was no exception, so the feds zoomed in on the photo, read the telephone number off the phone, and traced it back to Dr. Demento's house.
The original newspaper article is included below. It is split into two pages. Enjoy!
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John Polka
Nov 14, 2021
In General Discussions
Inspired by the Fujinet in a Velvet Box that was auctioned at VCF Mid West, we bring you the Fujinet in a Fishnet Box! This special edition Fujinet features the V: handler which is an N: handler that has been optimized for reading/sending email and surfing the web on your Atari 8-bit computer!
Many Thanks to BBS User, Phigan, for beta testing this special edition Fujinet!
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John Polka
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