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The Vectronix Newsletter Issue 11
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The VEctroniX NEWSletter Issue #11 [November 18, 1997]
Contact VEXNEWS for submissions, un/subscription, information
or whatever reason at all: vexnews@mindless.com
To get previous issues send an email with the subject "get vexnews #xx"
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hey God, i really don't know what you mean.
seems like salvation comes only in our dreams.
i feel my hatred grow all the more extreme.
hey God, can this world really be as sad as it seems
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[ Contents of VexNews Issue #11 ]
1. Heavens Trash exclusive story
2. Dusting off the oldies
3. New Releases by Effect
4. Changes/Corrections/Updates
5. WinSTon is released!
6. Would you be reckless?
7. How to smoke in Sweden
8. Telia delivers top domains
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[1] HEAVENS TRASH EXCLUSIVE STORY by Phoenix [phoenix@weirdness.com]
Vectronix World HQ and TSCC Swedish HQ, Heavens Trash is closing down
once and for all! As the glory days of the bulletin boards as we remember
them is long time gone, and the days of the BBS'es total existence is
counted, Heavens Trash is shutting down! The time has come when I don't
have the time nor the motivation to keep maintaining it, and rather than
see it slowly die by itself from distance I feel I want to end it all right
here, right now!
It's been some great years for sure, I had always dreamed about
running my own board, from the minute I bought my first modem and connected
to the first BBS I thought like "whoooahhh, this is cool, I wanna too!".
Unfortunately I was just a little kid back then, I had no money, no job or
anything, I just couldn't open a BBS how much I wanted it! When I do
something I want to do it the right way, I never even considered running a
BBS on the Mega ST4, Megafile 60 and a 2400 modem which I had back then, or
just have the BBS open for certain hours for example. I did however play
around with every fucking BBS program I could find!
It must have been in 1994 (that's atleast what the last backup disks
here says) sometime when the leading board, Eagles Nest runned by Zaphod
Beeblebrox/ICS shut down, because of some troubles. The atari BBS scene in
Sweden turned into a big black hole, the need of a replacement was obvious
and something had to be done!
I bought the one and only BBS program, RATSoft/ST which I
unfortunately had to wait for over 6 months to be delivered due to the
great service from Rodent Laboratories! As I had seen RATSoft in action I
couldn't even think about running anything else, I had tried all the
alternatives and they all sucked in compare! After I finally recieved
RATSoft I played around with it for a couple of months, I had what to
become Heavens Trash inoffically opened during the days for testing with
friends and from work and so on, customized all menus and everything. I
wanted Heavens Trash to become something of it's own, not a default
installation like everybody else (with some exceptions) was running at the
time.
As the perfectionist I am when it's about things like this I was never
satisfied, it was several months before I opened up officially, I remember
I first planned to open up November 1, 1994, but it all took longer time
than I expected, and when it was finally declared offical opened we was
then in early 1995 already.
Now, the BBS was finally opened, would any people call? There was not
much Atari users in my area code, in fact it was some of my friends and
nobody else! I was fearing people would not call long distance and my dream
die faster than I could imagine! I did not have to wait long for this
answer though, people called for sure, not only from other areas within
Sweden, but from all over the world! "Whooaaaa, are they nuts?!" I thought,
as not many (except for the people from Poland) was able to call for free
at the time. During all times the userbase of Heavens Trash has for some
reason stayed about 50/50 of swedish/foreigner users, and the average age
around 30 years. This was not at all what I had expected!
I think one of the reasons for having problems to make a name in
Sweden was that all sysops found Heavens Trash quickly, and even though
they leeched everything new from us, they nuked our BBS-ads before putting
it online in their own BBS (no names!). This was a real pain in the ass as
it's the only way for a new board to show that everything is passing here!
And I also think the average age of the people calling from Sweden was alot
lower, and it was the swedes more than anyone else who complained about how
expensive it was to call long distance! Oh well, we kicked ass anyway!
Until then I had only done some cracking for my own pleasure, but I
saw the lack of new stuff and started to take care of things, I got alot of
originals from the users of Heavens Trash, and off we went! I also must
send big thanx to everyone who was trading between the boards during this
time, especially the folx from Poland (Vat, Mirek, Cat and so on), there's
alot of people who should be mentioned really, from all over the world! You
know best for your self who you are I think... ;-)
I'm proud to say that Heavens Trash was a great success already from
the beginning! It all went very fast, and before I know it we was competing
with the "big boards" as Hit'n'Run, NightBox, Hang Loose and all the
others. I had proven to myself I could make a successfull board and it felt
good! Everything was great, until... I managed to fool around and destroy
two partitions of files for the BBS, alot of stuff was lost! However, we
got on our feets again and then some months later it happened again, the
whole fucking 1GB harddisk DIED!!! Nothing could be saved, everything was
just lost! I felt this was the end, now I have had enough of this!
Although, within a few weeks (it was in the middle of summer
vacations) I got a new harddisk as replacement, and I started playing with
RATSoft again, I thought about what to do, and decided to open up again! We
lost many users, lots of warez, and the h/p/a conference was totally
abandoned after this. Perhaps not many knows that Heavens Trash was
originally focusing alot on h/p/a, we had one of the most complete and well
sorted libraries of underground materials in Sweden at the time and the
very first users was not Atari users at all, but mainly hackers and
phreakers using Amiga and PC computers! Believe me they was shocked to find
a board which also had Atari software!
Oh well, we was back in business after a short while! And then one day
I met Metallinos on irc, I remember this was very fun, he was that kick-ass
cracker of the german crew Vectronix which name was on all releases
everywhere! We started emailing each others, LOT'S of emails it was, haha,
and still is... man, this guy just kept sending mails all days long like if
he hadn't anything better to do.... or, hmm... was it maybe the opposite?
;-) Anyway, it was great fun!
Faramir who took over the leadership of Elite after Sledge left asked
me to join Elite as cracker, and with Heavens Trash as Elite European HQ
(NightBox was WHQ at the time since Hit'n'Run closed down). I had also
started to realize I needed to have a crewname behind Heavens Trash if I
wanted to succeed any further, and Elite was now offering a EHQ title, it
was somehow cool! Elite members started to send me emails to congratulate
me for joining with Elite, as they assumed I would never let the offer
down. They were wrong...
Even though I had contact with other Elite members since before, my
relation to Vectronix had grown harder and harder and I had become such
close friend with Metallinos that it felt wrong to join with Elite, and he
thought it would be a shame to see me in Elite as well. So, I joined with
Vectronix instead, somehow I felt more like home! Elite was also already an
old and well etablished name in the scene thanx to Sledge and the guys,
with Vectronix we still had to fight for our name, it was more of a
challenge, and I think we managed pretty well! Heavens Trash was originally
the Swedish or Scandinavian HQ of Vectronix, but when NightBox closed down
it became the World HQ!
In 1997 we switched from the RATSoft and the Atari TT with 1GB
harddisk the BBS was running on to a Pentium 133 with 5GB harddisks, 8x8
CD-ROMS with PCBoard 15.x software! The tiny little PC area we had before
got it's own conference and we started supporting PC for real! It all went
very good, Heavens Trash was soon one of the hottest PC boards in the
areacode, the BBS was to become BUSY all days making it impossible to get
in! More nodes was being considered, and so was ISDN. I was about to call
Telia the other day to order a second phoneline to start with, but then got
my eyes on ISDN and decided to wait. I'm glad I did this today, I was a bit
blinded and it took me some time to realize that the end of PC elite boards
is not far away unless you have a real fast internet connection!
After a few months of gigabytes of PC software I got tired of it, my
first thought was that supporting PC should keep the Atari conference alive
as well, and I think many ex-atarians who have bought a PC have been very
thankful for the PC conference. The move to PCBoard was great though, it
opened new challenges and possibilities for me as sysop, I could program
the system the way I wanted and I could offer telnet and also ftp
capabilities and so on! Unfortunately some people didn't really seem
interested in learning how to use PCBoard at all, and just complained, it's
not easy to use a system when not even trying or wanting to learn! oh
well... it was their choice!
The time has come though as said, to close down Heavens Trash! It was
not an easy decision for me as I love BBS'es, I have had a great time
during these years, and I will miss everybody who have stayed with us! The
time is however running away from us, maybe one day Heavens Trash will be
back in some relation to internet, as telnet board or ftp site, who knows!
The official date for closedown is December 31, 1997 so everyone will
understand what's happening.
Just to make some things clear as I have already got questions about
it, this does NOT mean that either me or Vectronix is quitting! It only
means Heavens Trash is going down, we will still be around on the internet
as usual, and this is where we're hoping to meet you as well! Stay with us!
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[2] DUSTING OFF THE OLDIES by Vogue [jon@fatal-design.com]
One of the great things about emulation is that we can look back at
some of the vast amounts of wares that we've said goodbye to in the name of
'progress' (with assistance from Micro$oft ;)). Unfortunately, many
creations may well have been lost for good or are stuck in someone's attic.
But, when you fire up your copy of PaCifiST (or whatever you use) and
see that old friend GEM on the screen, you realise that you really need to
get hold of some of the "relics" that you enjoyed on the ST, rather than
just toying with your desktop.inf file. All those memories of copy parties,
all-night coding and admiring other peoples' mind bending effects come
flooding back!
Well, where can all of the demos, games and menu discs etc. of
yesteryear be found? Take a look at these for starters...
- ST Relics
http://www.fatal.net/strelics/
- ftp.uni-kl.de Demos Section
ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/atari/gfx_demos/
- Little Green Desktop
http://lgd.fatal-design.com/
Also, you can join the PaCifiST mailing list, which is full of
discussion about all things ST-emulation related! Send a blank message to
pacifist-list-request@fatal-design.com with "subscribe" in the subject
line.
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[3] NEW RELEASES FROM EFFECT by Tronic [johncove@geocities.com]
Well, I think the scene needs a reason for the complete and totally
complete demise of the Atari scene group Effect!! Well, we are returning
with two new disks, or at least I am! I will be releasing Industrially Safe
Demo Disk 31 and 35. They will be available on my web site,
http://www.weeshy.demon.co.uk
The reason for the demise of Effect is due to a big heap of expensive
shite commonly known as a PeeCee! I have bought one and I spend a lot of
time playing games and coding, but the coding is not scene orientated.
Other members are pretty much waiting for us coding to full our
fingers out.... I am, and have loads of new graphics and music to use.
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[4] CHANGES/CORRECTIONS/UPDATES by Phoenix [phoenix@weirdness.com]
Because of new mail client software the quite popular get-old-issues
function needed a slightly modification. The correct way to recieve old
issues is now to send an email to xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx with the subject
"get vexnews #xx" where xx = 01 to current issue. It's important that the
first nine issues are preceeding with a 0, please remember this....
As Marcer/Elite obviously thought he was funny by starting a rumour
about Faramir joining Vectronix we just want to deny this. Marcer probably
never intended it to spread like it did, but as we're sick and tired of
missunderstandings and stupid questions we want to make sure nobody gets
this wrong. Faramir did not join Vectronix, and we don't understand why
Marcer thought it would be so funny in the first place.
Below is current memberlist of Vectronix which recenly was updated
because of various reasons. People not mentioned below is not members of
Vectronix, and believe me, when/if this is a subject to change, here is
where you'll read about it first!
Dumpfbacke, Hardball, Jabba, Lon$dale, Metallinos, Moonfall, Phoenix,
Ryder, Senser, Slippy.
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[5] WINSTON IS RELEASED! by Paul Bates [winston_emu@compuserve.com]
Welcome to WinSTon a new Atari ST emulator for your PC. So how is
WinSTon different to other emulators? Well, WinSTon runs under the Windows
environment which means it will run on Windows 95/NT and even Windows 98!
This is the first public release of WinSTon, and as can guess from the
version number(0.0005), there is still a long way to go before the
emulation can be considered to be complete.
So why write another ST emulator? Pacifist is one of the best
emulators for any machine, anywhere. 'Nuff said. Problem is, it cannot run
Paradroid 90 - one of my all time fave' games! So I got thinking, just how
difficult would it be to write my own emulator? WinSTon started off as a
simple disassembler and sort of progressed into a full emulation. I don't
intend to compete with Pacifist or any other emulator, just to take
advantage of the Windows environment with its' support and networking to
offer an alternative.
http://winston.fatal-design.com/
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[6] "WOULD YOU BE RECKLESS" - a poem by Faramir [eoqum.qatalis@genesis.be]
where is hope?
war is nearly over
and the plague is everywhere.
you could not escape the curse of microsoft
would you be reckless,
listen to the voice of reason!
microsoft's weapon is bill gates's unique thought,
people live with it and call bill their friend.
my atari flies high above the cursed crowd,
and the blue azur of my desktop
shows infinity in the universe.
my atari thinks,
"i feel pretty lonely,
for a lot of my fellows
died in attics, trashes,
shortcuts, cupboards,
and have been replaced
by the madness of an evil man
whose poor mind was poor enough
to entrap enough gullible fools
behind him to overcome balance
rts"
the doomed abundance
enslaves masses of fools
who praise the rule of the useless
and abandon of multiplicity.
you couldn't escape it
would you lower your guard.
for whom opens his eyes,
it is not too late:
resistants have yet disappeared not,
and ask nothing but to be used,
and multiplied.
victory needs you!
join the resistance
and shoot at the huge beast
with a heavy gun.
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[7] HOW TO SMOKE IN SWEDEN by Phoenix [phoenix@weirdness.com]
Nobody who lives in Sweden can have avoided the dramatical price
raises of cigarettes during the last years. In just a few years we have
seen a price raise with over 100% and this is simply not acceptable for a
poor little smoker like me. Lucky for us all though, there was not only
drawbacks with the european union, today it's for example fully legal to
import cigarettes on your own from other countries, and this is what people
do, and saves big bucks!
What's even better though is that alot of people have realized the
need for cheap cigarettes is enourmous, they take care of the import and
sell it for what's still very fair prices, and you don't have to worry
about anything! You still save up to 50% to normal prices!
The swedish government currently wants a law change to prevent this
tax free importing, but it will take time for them to get something done as
usual, as they're just sitting on their fat asses doing nothing all days.
In the meanwhile, we will enjoy these benefits they have given us...
http://www.blends.com/
http://home.onestop.net/cigexpress/
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Plaza/9765/index.html
http://www.algonet.se/~dealmake/
http://members.tripod.com/~billigacigaretter/
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[8] TELIA DELIVERS TOP DOMAINS by Susan Falck [susan.falck@idg.se]
This spring there will be seven additonal top domains besides com,
net, org, edu and gov which exists today. As this becomes reality more
companies will also be able to accept registrations. One of them is the
swedish telephone company, Telia.
The seven new top domains is firm for companys, store for selling
companies, web for www-related units, arts for culture and entertainment,
rec for sparetime and entertainment, info for information services and nom
for personal homepages.
To register a name under these domains and the five old ones one can
from this spring turn to Telia who have been selected as registrator of The
Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding.
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All Rights Reserved.
