sideburn
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Posts posted by sideburn
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Has anyone else noticed that the Fujinet won’t boot if there’s an SDrive Max on the SIO bus if it is turned off? I have to power up the SDrive Max and the. Set D1: to “empty” for the Fujinet to boot up. If the SDrive Max is powered down then Fujinet freezes. My physical 1050 can remain on the SIO bus powered down without issue.
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2 hours ago, troed said:
Have you still not gotten an apology and your device back?
I mean, he's just admitted to being in the wrong with regards to your RMA here on the forum.
Nope.
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Maybe you thought it was just a hobby because of all the unprofessional comments and insults.
And yes Lotharek, I can read… 🤨
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5 hours ago, Mark_G said:
Troed,
According to me you totally missed the point.
Lotharek is a hobby project, and I wonder if he can make a descend living with building and selling this devices at that price.
Tread him like a company, is totally over the top.
If those were built by a company with engineers, design team, inspection, etc.., you would have to pay at least 1000,- €/pc.
Taken into account the limit amount of build devices and their complexity.
The chance that they will work better is minimal, but you would get a better answer from their legal department.
My view is :
As hobby projects, we need to be aware that sometimes the devices don't always work like expected, and you must willing to take the loss.
Also don't blame the guys who are still willing to make this stuff.
Huh? It’s a full on company. With a team, in a nice building, with $100,000.00’s worth of manufacturing equipment.
https://smd.lotharek.pl/en/about
And regardless, even if you are a hobbyist and build and sell a product on eBay (which I have done many times) and you offer a warranty, and your device fails from normal use within that warranty. You should honor the warranty.
you should not void it and tell the costumer he failed to scour through his website looking for clues on how he might be able to repair it himself.
If you want to take that route then you should at least respond to their initial email of them describing the problem and send them a link to your troubleshooting page instead of a link to an RMA form and then upon rescinding the item and repairing it tell the customer “you failed to follow instructions”.
* Reminds me of when Apple said “your holding it wrong” when their iPhones had a faulty antenna 😂
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I appreciated him dealing with the shipping issues and said I would pay those fees. He told me I could hold off and there would be no charges on that from the post office. That didn’t pan out and apparently there were indeed fees (which I would gladly have paid).
Everything derailed (dismissing all of the accusations) when he sent me ADDITIONAL charges for the reflashing of the firmware while the device was under warranty.
At that point the costs were equal to the price of buying a new device.
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39 minutes ago, troed said:
I don't know either - I'm just not ok with a European company blaming users for having run "pirated software that bricks the device" when it's simply not true.
Either:
1) The US is a faulty product which will suddenly corrupt its flash. The seller can either replace them all with a fixed version or send out (at no cost) a device anyone can use (so no Windows 95 LPT:) to re-flash the device back to working order.
or
2) The users are running software that willfully uses the device programming protocol to brick them and the seller knows which software that is. Then TELL EVERYBODY (and let us verify)
Point one above is simple European consumer protection law. My assumption here is that Lotharek is on purpose trying to skirt those requirements by laying blame elsewhere. It's the same as the faulty audio on the first revision of the Medusa - that too is something they need to fix for any customer who brings a complaint. Yet they don't.(Lotharek sent me an email saying something about me not being a real man, I think. It was very incoherent. So because of that I'll offer my services to anyone in Europe who wants to learn more about the European consumer protection laws)
* Warranty void if pirated software bricks your device.
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22 minutes ago, remowilliams said:
Understood. Your unfortunate single experience however doesn't automatically invalidate what he's stating multiple other times about impact to the devices.
He should just fix his bug then instead of blaming the users and making them have to deal with having to re-flash their devices or honor his warranties when you ship them back for repair if you didn’t get the memo…
Has anyone shipped theirs back to him to have re flashed and he did it under warranty ?
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7 minutes ago, remowilliams said:
Lothatrek mentioned this to me (and I had no warranty or other problems with him) and he's said it to others, and it coincidentally matched my coincidental experience. I'm assuming he has a reason.
Well I wasn’t so lucky. For me he said I didn’t follow instructions, buy his flash updater and fix it myself and demanded I pay him another $45.00 for the “repair” plus shipping to get my device back. I’m looking for US alternatives…
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10 minutes ago, remowilliams said:
until Lotharek's thoughts on this were publicly posted...
More like Accusations, voiding warranties and holding device hostage. Just sayin’
Only way to really find out is to be able to consistently repeat the issue using the exact same test cases. If your US blows up while playing Stunt Car Racer EVERY time then probly not a coincidence… And you can thank Geoff Crammond for finding the suspect 😆
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Mine was an external on ID 1 and 2 so I could reboot into internal. But yeah you could.
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1 hour ago, masteries said:
Sorry to heard that,
As a hobbyist maker, and Atari ST/E lover, I can´t afford a hard disk owner without his hard disk unit...
I have some of the hard disk units I manufacture in stock,
if you desire I can make an offer to you reducing from 36€ to 30€
an unit, plus shipment to USA (10.5€ for tracked shipment,
declared package value is 15€, realistic and affordable in case of customs)
I saw that the STacy almost replicated the back side of an Atari ST in this photo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_STacy#/media/File:Atari-stacy-006.jpg
Thanks for the offer. It’s ok. The internal drive works in the STacy just on its last leg. I also have an HS204 that works but you have to manually twist the stepper motor at first to get it to spin up.
I am looking into a way to get BlueSCSI to work with the ST and be done with the UltraSatan (and sadly Lotharek).
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20 minutes ago, as... said:
Sideburn,
You know how many stupid messages he got?
I don't know but I can only guess, zaxon sometimes posts "such stupid" messages on Facebook
please chill out
Lotharek is a great man.-always helps, fixes and etc.
Ya well he’s now the proud owner of my Ultrasatan that I bought for him. Hope he makes a double profit off it.
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18 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:
I'm really sorry that this happened to you. If I have any advice to give about this hobby, it's that you cultivate a great sense of patience and and a remarkable facility for forgiveness. I've had some less-than-desirable experiences with some very reputable parties over the years; it's always surprising when it happens, but it's usually more of a genuine screwup than it is a case of genuine malice. I hope that you'll be able to resolve your differences with Lotharek in th end.
Yeah I’m sure the whole issue was a communication problem. He thought I was attacking him and was on the defense. He came in swinging right out of the gate and I was continuously getting more and more disgruntled and frustrated as he continued to make false accusations about me.
I feel that things might have been different if he:
• understood I was not accusing him of wrongdoing about shipping.
• understood I was happy to pay the customs fees and appreciated him dealing with the hassle.
• understood I purchased a pre-populated SD card.
• understood I did try to find troubleshooting information on his FAQ page.
• understood product was within warranty period.
Who knows… as tuf said “it’s single side of the story unless the other side chimes in”
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8 minutes ago, davidcalgary29 said:
I've never had a problem ordering from Best Electronics.
LOL - I actually have a good time talking to him.. he's feisty but as long as I slow down and let him drive its "okay"....
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Welp that’s what he told me while trying to push blame on me AGAIN. Blame blame blame. And I’m the one disrespecting him apparently. What an 🤬. I’m so pissed off about this sorry. He basically STOLE my device from me.
I would have had to pay at minimum $90.00 plus shipping USA to get my device back from him😖😤
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I don’t know. It was definitely his own design on a white PCB. It’s pretty much the only one available for purchase out there. It worked well during the 8 months I had it until it just started fading and then quit completely. Died a slow death. I didn’t play many many games on it so I find the pirated software theory fishy…
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1 hour ago, troed said:
Well this is an issue with the device then - and covered under European consumer protection laws (for Europeans). I'm surprised Lotharek doesn't take this under warranty.
If customers are expected the reflash the device then the flasher needs to be part of the product - and something that customers can be reasonably expected to be able to use (so nothing requiring DOS-machines with LPT: ports).
(Can every single retro-hw developer in their personal capacity be able to keep to this level of functionality? Well no, not when it's a small scale hobby. However, Lotharek's business isn't a hobby so the expectation when buying from there is different)
My feelings exactly. Saying it is my fault for not realizing that somewhere in his website under a section about something completely different (files) there might be a troubleshooting flow chart that might give me some clues as to what might be wrong.
and to expect that I should own all of the additional hardware and software required to connect to the main logic board and re program the firmware is just…. 🤦♂️
To also hold my device hostage now and stop communicating seems like it would be unlawful as well.
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6 minutes ago, remowilliams said:
This is a known thing. I have several (U)Satandisk devices and never had an issue with them, until I had.
My Ultrasatan Mini bricked itself in just daily use one day with random luck of the draw that triggered corruption. After talking with him I ordered an an inexpensive (DUCKBILL) ultrasatan flasher from Lotharek along with some other items, and voila - the unit was back in service after flashing.
I would have done the same if I would have known. Unfortunately the only advice I received from him when asking how to fix it was a link to his RMA form.
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40 minutes ago, 351cougar said:
unfortunate that the "hobby" spanning virtually the entire world, bringing people from all over into it, becomes this way. Im guessing its frustration due to every transaction , at least from his prospective , is this way. Almost all transactions he sees are problems. Fees and tarifs, crossing every state and country border, every government bureaucrat with their hand in your pocket. Ive thought several times over the years of getting some of the cool stuff I see , but then read the 3x 4x cost and that is if it even shows up at all. You also read of the "ive never had a problem" (see the 20+ years of best elect sucks posts ) but as they say your experience may vary.
I guess there’s a “customer is always wrong” policy in Poland.
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11 minutes ago, Forrest said:
It would be nice if there was a U.S. based distributor for Lotharek.
FYI there’s nothing shady about Pirate Ship. You get a discounted shipping rate from USPS, and the packages are shipped by USPS.
Yes pirate ship is good. The issue was they don’t handle RMA / Business international and force an insurance value on the item. I was with support on it for an hour. They credited me $40.00 (I was just never able to get lotharek to understand and stop accusing me of not following directions 😂 🤦♂️).
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I tried to post the exchanges as much as i could find in my email trail I want to be fully transparent. but it went on and on from september to now.
There was definitely a communication breakdown.
His first exchanges right out of the gate were being standoffish and accusatory. I tried to be cordial and i told him i was not blaming him for anything and just wanted to make things right.
I have never had an issue with him either and have purchased multiple items from him over several years. it was mind boggling to me how everything went and now i do not feel like purchasing anything from him again.
Another example of not being able to get through to him that i did follow instructions:
QuoteI do not understand. I absolutely did not declare any value at all and i cut out and attached the labels form the printed RMA pdf.
please, download RMA and read it.. again
line by line....
W dniu 10/23/2023 o 9:21 PM, Tavis pisze:oh my gosh i spent $40.00 to ship it what instructions did I miss?
QuoteW dniu 23.10.2023 o 22:52, Tavis pisze:Also to clarify, I never thought that YOU made a mistake.
But I also knew that I definitely read and printed the PDF and did not put a value on the item when I purchased the shipping label.So I had to dig deeper to find out that the value was added without me knowing.So, You have sent me parcel as to regular customer and declared value i need to pay taxes
USPS would cost You roughly 15USD.....
conclusions are clear... i didnt make any mistake, You didnt follow RMA instructions.
He was IMPOSSIBLE to work with....
Anyway.... water under the bridge as they say... -
1 hour ago, troed said:
That ... sounds strange.
Cannot see how the US firmware gets rewritten from the ST side. And even _if_ that's the case, this is where I would simply stop selling the device if I was a European business selling within Europe. Consumer protection laws will make mincemeat out of anyone trying that argument.
Agreed. to me it sure seems like buggy hardware / firmware. how could a consumers sd card damage the devices firmware regardless if it were the venders pre populated card or not. How could this be my fault!?
And then to say its my fault for not finding his troubleshooting guide (that are hard to find in the first place), and buying more equipment from him to be able to flash the device to repair it.. ridiculous.
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3 minutes ago, mikro said:
Well, to be fair, it was you who wanted to save money and used a questionable post carrier which complicated things (and pissed him off in the first place). Still, no excuse to his replies but if someone makes it so clear that any added value will make his life miserable... I certainly wouldn't take it as a good opportunity to use an untested service.
Your experience isn't unique unfortunately but imagine that 100 people per week are sending him similar emails and good 50% of them messes something up.
The customs offices in eastern Europe are absolute nightmare, I can relate to his anger. 😕
Maybe you could write him in a couple of weeks when he cools off.
I take the blame for not using standard postal service. And I told him i would pay the $40 fee... i tried to tell him consistently but he repeatedly kept saying i didn't follow his RMA instructions which was very frustrating.
The main issue I have here is he did not honor my warranty and then tacked on an additional $40.00 fee to refresh the device which took him literally one minute.
so $40 customs fee plus $25.00 shipping. plus $40.00 service fee plus shipping back to me. I would never have even returned the device in the first place if he wasn't going to honor the warranty.
I do not see how the device quitting working on me using the card provided by him could in any way be my fault and void th warranty.
in the end I payed him to own my device.At least refund me some of the cost for the device.
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#FujiNet - a WIP SIO Network Adapter for the Atari 8-bit
in #FujiNet SIO Network Adapter
Posted
Because I use it. As well as my 1050 drive. I have the cable going from the 130xe to an SIO hub and the SDrive Max, 1050, and Fujinet are all plugged into the chain.
Seems normal to me. Why would I NOT have my SDrive Max connected to my computer?
I just got the Fujinet. Are you saying I should ditch the SDrive Max and don’t use it anymore?