I hope everyone is OK

[Harrison]

I've not logged in for some time, as I've had so much going on, but was surprised that we haven't had a single post since I last checked the site. Seems the forums are finally dead.

Do I therefore contemplate shutting down the server? I've been thinking about it because the big increase in the cost of living (fuel, energy bills, water, food) means I'm having to consider all ourgoing money at the moment. I don't get any help with server costs. Haven't had a dontion in years. Therefore closing it down might be something I need to do to save money.

Failing that, would anyone still be interested in these forums if I were to regenerate the site and try to put new life through content back into the site?

I've said for a while I wanted to rework the site to make it more emulation focused. Especially with the massive surge in handheld and cheap Android emulation TV boxes we have been seeing recently.

Not sure. Will be considering options until the summer.

Anyway, hope everyone is ok and enjoying the very hot weather.

[Demon Cleaner]

Very hot weather indeed.

I check out the forum every day, but I don't post mainly because I don't get any response. I got so much stuff lately again like the Odin Pro, Switch OLED, Pico Pantera mini PC, installed RetroPie on my Raspberry with 1TB SD card full of games...

So what would be the purpose on keeping the site running? Reworking it makes no sense either in my opinion, as it's a lot of work and there are sites and forums existing for basically everything.

I'm checking also Retro Video Gamer forum, the one from our member Zapiy, but it's almost the same like here, I log in after one week and there has been one single new post.

I'm hanging most of the time around in the LaunchBox forums because I'm currently still very active with it, and there you also find everything emulation related.

So if you ask me :huh2:

[Kin Hell]

The last two years have been very challenging since the COVID pandemic reared it's ugly head. This of course has had a knock on effect in many ways, the cost of living being hit hard almost exponentially. - Fuel hitting over £2.00 a Litre, 20+% on food, 30+% on Gas, electric etc & no pay increases to cover. :dry:

I do recall you asking for donations some time ago H. What ever happened about it?

My back is fux0rd some more now. Couldn't walk properly for three weeks & didn't even dare to drive the whole time, now four weeks ago. Just did my first week back in work & now referred for an MRI with some deep Sports physio.

Deb & I are good though. - 25 years together on October 19th this year; I get treated to my 60th year of residing on this rock; Deb has bought me the T-Shirt already! :huh:

1238

[Harrison]

25 years is great. We have our 14th this year. So many give up the days after only a few years with some lame excuses.

Back problems are a nightmare. I have had a bad back for years now. Getting older for us all. Pit mine out lay year at at Christmas. Went on a diet in thr new year and so far lost 2 stone and that's really helped with my back though and given me more energy.

Regarding donations. I got a few but they only covered 1 month's hosting costs so useful but not long term. I might look at cheaper cloud hosting just to keep the forums running, and close the rest down. Depends how much time I have over the summer.

[Kin Hell]

If you need some breathing space, I can make a donation to help....

[Harrison]

Any donations would be very welcome to help out.

I might actually have found a cheaper hosting solution to move the site over to, to save hosting hosts. Running a VM droplet server. We have been testing one to move Amibay to and it is so far performing well. For Amibay we are ditching vBulletin and moving to Xenforo. Something I originally tried to get them to do but they wanted to stick with vBulletin, which ended in disaster. We won't know how well the VM actually performs until its turned over to the menbers and we see real traffic and the impact it has to performance. If it's good I will definitely be considering one to half my monthly costs. I might also consider moving over to Xenforo too if I then do press on with my ongoing rejuvenation plans for these forums. We will see.

[Kin Hell]

Any donations would be very welcome to help out.

<snip>

See PayPal. :thumbs:

[Harrison]

Thanks mate, much appreciated. 👍

[Kin Hell]

Thanks mate, much appreciated. 👍

:cool:

[Harrison]

After much contemplation my plan now I'm completely rid of Amibay is to focus entirely on Classicamiga and its future. After my August holidays I'm going to start planning what to do and would like to hear any ideas you all have for the site. Doesn't matter what they are.

For me the one thing we have all lost due to social media is a proper retro community like the old days. I'm fed up with Facebook and most social media, but there are lots of great people out there creating great content on Youtube for the retro community. So I want to bring back community spirit for retro and emulation like we once had. I know this forum has never gone away but the members stopped posting a long time ago because I just didn't have time to geberate the interest needed and neglected this project for the sake of another in my spare time that I finally realise was a complete waste of my efforts over the many years.

Anyway I'm back to being devoted to this site and promise it will somehow rise from the ashes and hopefully start to see members return.

I'm going to field ideas from others I know, including some very well respected friends I have from the Amiga days such as well know creators of the Amiga and Amiga publishers, artists and musicians. Just to get ideas of what they would like to see to honour the Amiga's menory.

[Demon Cleaner]

I'm still here, won't leave so easily :)

Next Friday I'm leaving to Finland once again for 1 month until August 13th, after that I will be available again.

I never used any kind of social media, never have been on facebook, I really don't need it, and strangely enough I've become like a "dinosaur" when it comes to that, have no idea how anything of that stuff works because interest is zilch.

You should let us know about the server and hosting costs, then I will also contribute and donate, but at the moment I have no idea where you're at? (@Kin Hell: How much did you donate :hmmm: :lol:)

I'm more than ever into emulation during the last 3 years than I ever was before, including emulation in LaunchBox, Batocera, SimpleMenu, EmuElec and the last 2 weeks I'm busy adding stuff to my 1TB SD in my Odin Pro on which I use Launchbox for Android. So I got Windows, Android and Linux covered.

Talking about emulation, sometimes it's really self inventing. Example? Yesterday I spend the whole day adding Amiga games to the Odin. Sounds easy? Well not exactly. Launchbox has one nice feature which was added recently, export to Android. That works also fine with "normal" ROM files, you chose your games then click on export, chose the images you want and it exports the database to a folder and also creates the needed platform xml file. Then you click on a button and it transfers it to your SD card. Done. A little bit of tweaking but not much on the Odin Android side.

For the Amiga in Launchbox I have 2 different platform entries, one for lha and one for adf. For both of them I use FS-UAE as it uses configuration files to start the games, a lot of them were pre-configured, some of them I did myself. Problem with the export is that it will download your config files and not the lha or adf, as they are stored somewhere else. So you cannot use that method. So basically what I did, I did a 3rd entry in Launchbox for Amiga Android, and added my 1775 games to it. Once added, I went through all of them to add the images I need which are clear logo, front box and gameplay picture :crazy: Don't need to tell you, it took me around 6 hours to do only that. Ah home office.

Once that was done I did the final export, but still had to manually add games that use more than 1 disk, as for those I'm using m3u files which is the best when it comes to RetroArch as it handles them fine. They were already existing as I also use them on my handhelds, Android boxes or Raspberry.

For the larger ROM files I go through all of them and only take the ones I want, as I cannot just use them all being limited to 1TB. That would then be starting with Saturn, DC, PSX, PSP, GC, Wii, PS2 and that stuff. But I'm almost there, at least everything from 32bit and down is complete. Still having to figure out how to import ScummVM though, as again, in Launchbox I launch them via bat files, not possible on Android. I installed ScummVM on the Odin and they run fine from there, but the idea is to launch everything from within Launchbox and not by using the external emulators. I mean I use Redream for DC, but I launch the game within Launchbox and it runs in the background in the Redream emulator. But for 32bit and down I'm only using RetroArch, once configured with the controls and best cores, it runs everything good enough. Most cores have come a long way. Even PUAE 2021.

Lots of talking here, but then you have something to read, as not a lot of people come by. Hopefully that will change once again. Let me know if you need anything else.

DC out.

[Kin Hell]

<snip>@Kin Hell: How much did you donate :hmmm: :lol:<snip>

That's a bit like asking a woman how old she is.... :eyebrow:

It's also a bit like giving a gift, of any type. - Doesn't matter what it is, it's always the thought that counts.

:D

[Harrison]

Lol.

Right I've been thinking about this.

My plan for the autumn is to upgrade these forums to current software, then we can start to try and inject some new life into them and concentrate on the retro stuff we still find interesting. Like the old days, not taking it too seriously but sharing retro and emulation stuff. Posting about up coming new releases etc.

After that we can look at doing other stuff.

For this I will need to ditch vBulletin as the forum software. We are running version 4, and it's now long abandoned. The current vBulletin 5 is bad. I upgrade Amibay to it and had regretted it ever since. All plugin and mod developers jumped ship and abandoned it so it had no support or features. The vBulletin 4 devs left and created the forum software they had always wanted and that is Xenforo. I therefore I plan on migrating this forum to Xenforo. But that does cost money so I need to work out a way to buy it. Donations would be welcome but not expected.

Anyway that's my current plan for classicamiga. I'm on holiday for 3 weeks in August then I will start planning things.

[Kin Hell]

160 Bucks for self hosted (https://xenforo.com/purchase/self-hosted)....

Crikey @ their cloud rates (https://xenforo.com/purchase/) though. :eyebrow:

[Harrison]

The licence isn't a bad price. Although they then charge 50 extra per year for support and access to software updates.

Thr cloud hosting is really aimed at businesses that don't want the hassle of don't know what they are doing. Many are doing this now. VBulletin offers a similar hosting.