sideburn

Hello all. First off I want to make clear that I am not one to post rants and I have never had a bad experience in the hobby or community until now. And unfortunately it is Lotharek... I feel the need to get this out in the open and get others input and opinions because all I have now is a bad taste in my mouth from a large email exchange between the two of us that ended in disaster. Thanks in advance to anyone who makes it through this long winded story... It all started with the international shipping… The saga began with my UltraSatan that I had purchased about 8 months prior to the incident, along with a pre-populated SD card that I purchased in order to get up and running right out of the gate without having to muck with drivers etc. The device and card arrived after a few weeks or so and it worked flawlessly on my STacy for many months but then slowly started acting up and having trouble booting until it finally just died and only the green power led would turn on. I tried different sd cards, I opened the device up and checked the battery and inspected the board and voltages etc. (I am tech savvy and I have repaired and sold several boards back to the community). I checked the FAQ page on his website and could not find anything that stood out about what the problem could be so I resorted to sending Lotharek an email. Twice. Once from his support page and after no reply, again directly through email. I described in detail what the issue was and asked him politely what I could do to repair it or get it repaired under warranty. He eventually responded with basically one sentence and a link to his RMA form. Here is the first email where I describe the issue and ask him for some support advice. I never received a reply: Here is the second email where I describe the issue again and ask for advice. In this one he replies with a link to an RMA form and no support advice or links to any troubleshooting pages: I proceeded to download, read and print his RMA form. Here is a snapshot of his RMA form.. You can see he put is large bold red letters NOT to add a value to the item to avoid additional charges: Around this time I had started to use the shipping service called “pirateship.com” and I decide to use them again for this item. I went to the website, filled out the form and obviously did not specify a value of the parcel per his instructions. I wait about a month and after not hearing anything I sent Lotharek an email asking if the item has arrived. He tells me (for the first time) that I did not follow his instructions and the item was not accepted and sent back to the post office because they wanted him to pay a $40.00 fee. I then reply that I did indeed follow his instructions and I do not know what happened. I begin to investigate and discover that by default, Pirate Ship adds a value to the item. I made it clear to Lotharek that I would pay the fees so he can receive the item. Eventually, I clear everything up with Pirate Ship and they refunded / credit me the $40.00.. I notify Lotharek that the issue was with the shipping service and he replies back arrogantly that it was not his fault and it was clearly my fault for not following his instructions (the second time he has accused me of not following instructions). Very frustrating: This is now at least the second or third time he has insisted I did not follow his RMA instructions! After a few more days he replies that if I wait a week or two the fees will be waved and he will receive the item. I replied that this is not a problem I am in no hurry and I wait a few more weeks.. I wait another additional week and after no response from him, I write him an email asking if the item ever arrived. He replied that he did indeed received the item, repaired it, and sent me a link to a video of him doing the repair. Additionally he accuses me now of not following his troubleshooting guides and I could have saved myself and him a lot of time and money if I would have followed his troubleshooting guides and programmed the firmware myself (although I would have to purchase a firmware updater from him so the savings of time and money are questionable). He now for the very first time sent me a link to his troubleshooting page, a link to a programming device for me to purchase, and a link to his service page for me to pay him for servicing my device: What I find interesting here is in the video (his $40.00 servicing of my device), he opens the package, tosses all of my notes describing the issue, plugs in a firmware updater and flashes the board. Fixing it within one minute as if he knew from the get go that the problem was corrupt firmware. He also sends a follow up email saying that the reason the firmware was corrupt was because of pirated software on the SD card. As if I have done this so it is my fault. Even though the card was purchased pre-populated form him: At this point I am very frustrated for several reasons: 1) He has continued to accuse me of not following directions. 2) He is not honoring the warranty and blaming me for not figuring out how to fix it myself by scouring his website for some troubleshooting page. 3) Now the cost of shipping the item to him, paying a $40.00 service fee, buying a firmware updater and shipping it back to me will be more expensive than buying a new device outright. I send him a reply saying a lot of time and money could have been saved if you would have sent me the troubleshooting information and he replies: Again with the package value accusation and now another additional one... My questions are these: • The device was under warranty and it died… Using HIS SD card that I purchased pre-populated FROM HIM. • How could a device that I simply used and it suddenly quits working be MY FAULT and not covered under warranty!? • My initial email to him clearly asked him for troubleshooting information. Why did he not simply link me to a troubleshooting page? In the end he decided to terminate the conversation and keep my device. I would have gladly paid any fees from the shipping mishap but then to additionally charge me for his "service" and not honor the warranty, plus pay for shipping back to me and optionally purchase a firmware programmer incase this ever happens again was just too much. So I am left with no device, frustration from months of dead end conversation and about $200.00 lost. His final note to me (his fee is not $15 it is $40):

I just went through a terrible experience with a well known vender of Atari products and would like some help on how to resolve the issue or make it aware / get advice. Would someone tell me if this is the right place or where I could post such a thing?

Ha! Yep I remember something very similar. I think my dads friend had Prodigy and that was what I saw first and compuserve. I think I bypassed the acoustic couple modem tho. They were on the way out. Probably 1982 or so.

Haha yeah, someone picking up the phone would instantly kill your 2 hour long 64K download. I used the AT commands in my BASIC war dialing program that I used to hack out calling card numbers. I just salvaged a bunch of my programs off an old 5 1/4" floppy. Those floppy disk cleaners do work!

Ahhh ok yeah it has RAS1 CAS1L and CAS1H for a memory expansion.

2nd RAS? I only have RAS1.

That’s actually an older photo. I rerouted all of them (except A9) to the top of the board.

Thanks yes I already ran YAART and it passed as long as I leave RAS disconnected and the machine only sees 2MB. Once RAS is connected I can only get to the desktop. I cannot run any applications without it crashing. So what might be going on when I leave RAS disconnected? I was assuming this is causing only one of the two chips to be accessed. No? The two chips are 5118160 Toshiba DRAM

Hi all, so I just installed a 4MB upgrade into a 520 ST. It’s the new one that Anders Granlund designed (https://github.com/agranlund/STRam) and it’s sort of working. If I disconnect RAS1 then the ST boots with 2MB os ram and everything seems to be working correctly. But when RAS1 is connected the machine boots to TOS, mounds the hard drive and floppy but the UI is all wonky. The menu bar and menu text is garbled and once you launch an app the machine freezes. all of my connections look good and the logic board is perfect NOS. I am leaning towards one of the RAMs being bad but not knowing how RAS and CAS work I really don’t know if both chips are in use or not or maybe there’s some connection failure. photos attached.

How do these work without the cart/apple roms?

I thought the same.

There’s a Spectre 128 on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/204445970145?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=vZuxe2MeTqa&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=vQ425jH5TBq&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

MagicJack is a few bucks a year I use it as my Spam # when I fill out forms and stuff and then keep the ringer turned off.

Ahhh well that changes things.will dig around for one.

Not worth the hassle or the risk of frying something. I realized I’ve got my Ultrasatan plugged into the external HD port anyway so I’d have to disconnect that, plug in Mac drive, and boot off the internal drive, transfer files, plug US back in reboot. Copy files. Not a good route.

Nice! I will check it out...

That pretty much sums it up! 🤣

I’m using a MagicJack (voIP). You can dial into 2600 Network and it’ll route you to tons of BBS’s

How does that work though? I thought the ST was ACSI and not exactly SCSI?

Ha! I forgot about the commas! I totally remember doing that with modem AT commands. ATDT 00911,,,1+xxx xxx xxxx,,,,CC number Another BASIC program I wrote for Atari 8-bit was a tone dialer. I just found it recently on my old 5 1/4" floppies and it still works. It plays the touch tone sounds out the speaker. I was probably 12 or 13 and I had no idea what I was doing but I knew the DTMF tones were two tones. So I painstakingly played two tones out the speaker until a dial tone went away and then I knew I dialed a number... I did this over and over until I figured out 0 - 9.. There were a LOT of "you got the wrong number, oh sorry what number did I dial??" phone calls during the process 😂

Another question. Could you plug a mac formatted SCSI drive, say a Jaz Drive or a BlueSCSI into the back of the ST and would Spectre mount the drive?

Do you think AppleShare is possible in Spectre? If so would I direct connect a cable from the printer port to the back of a real Mac? I have some gender changers and an ImageWriter cable that goes from the round 8 pin DIN to a DB25 so I can make the cable just not sure if it would work. I’m one gender changer away from being able to try it.

I suppose I just click “ignore” then run dd and create the img and then just add its path to Basilisk?

Mac OS. As soon as I put the sd card in, it complains that it can’t mount it. Assuming that’s because it is AHDI format.

yeah i think my interest were more int he line of "what can I get away with without my parents finding out" 😂